Chapter 15: The Hill of Black Stone

Evander's POV

She had said no horse, so I ran.

I shifted at the lake gate in the dark, with my shirt knotted in my jaws, and I ran north on four legs until the dawn came up grey.

My wolf did not argue.

He ran with his head low and her name in his chest.

Two days later I came to the Hill of Black Stone.

I had seen it in my father's war maps, a flat mark with a red cross through it.

The real hill was a ruin of burned walls and fallen towers, black from the base to the broken crown.

Nothing grew on it.

Twenty-six years, and the ash still lay in the cracks.

I changed back at the foot, shaking, and pulled the shirt on over the scars.

I climbed the old gate road on foot.

My father had ridden up this road with five hundred riders and torches.

I was the first Kray to walk up it.

A spear came down across my chest at the first broken arch.

"Stop there," a voice said.

A man stood in the shadow of the arch, grey-bearded and thin, with a boy of twelve at his side holding a hunting knife.

Behind them, a dozen more came out of the stones.

They were all in rags.

They all had pale eyes.

"Moon blood," I said, before I could stop myself.

"Kray," said the man. He had smelled it on me.

I did not reach for my sword.

I had left the sword in Greyhollow.

"Yes," I said. "I'm Evander Kray, King of the High Crown. My father burned this hill."

The boy threw his knife.

It cut a line across my cheekbone and rang off the wall.

I did not move.

"Do it again," I said to the boy, quietly. "I won't stop you."

"Kill him," a woman said from the dark. "Kill him on the step where my husband died."

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