The Cursed Blood novel · Chapter 24 of 32

Chapter 24: The Grave

I didn't cry in the passage.

I thanked the healer, and went back in, and told Alden I'd see him at the stones.

Then I walked up out of the valley with Margaux beside me and the black climbing my neck.

Conall was on the marker.

He took one look at my face and stepped down off the stone to meet me.

"One day," I said.

He nodded once.

"Then we'd better find something they can hold," he said.

Then I went to the Gap.

Half the Line came with me.

The old man and the honey elder rode down in the east-slope wolves' handcart, wrapped in blankets, complaining about the bumps.

The east-slope alpha walked beside it with her cane.

Hettie came with her new knuckles bandaged and a sack of honey buns.

Margaux came too.

The rockfall sat where it had sat for eight years.

This time I didn't kneel.

I looked at the rocks.

"Stand on the stones," I said. "They remember."

"You think she meant these?" Hettie said.

"I think she meant whatever was lying on top of the truth."

The biggest rock lay at the bottom of the pile, half sunk in the ground. It was the size of a wagon.

Conall was looking at it too.

"That one came down first," he said quietly. "When I dug her out, her hand was under the edge of it."

"Her hand."

"Flat on the ground." He swallowed. "Like she was reading. I couldn't move it. I had to dig her arm out from beside it with a knife."

I put my hand on his back.

"Then it's been lying on that ground for eight years," I said. "Nobody could salt under it."

The old man sat up in the cart.

"Get the chain," he said.

The east-slope wolves had the chain. They'd trussed the beta in it the night before.

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