Five Mates Let Me Burn, So I Rejected Them All novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Market Square

Dahlia weeps in the square that Althea robbed them; Althea sells the mill's grain at half price, turns the crowd and faces down Ronan; the Temple summons her to a hearing.

The next morning I took six carts of flour into the capital's main square and set up a stall under the clock.

A sign on the first cart said: MOONMILL FLOUR, HALF PRICE. NEW OWNER.

The black-waxed cask was locked in my cellar, and the Festival was twenty-eight days off.

Dahlia had made her first move with wine, so I made mine with bread, in front of everyone.

By the time the bell rang eight there was a line to the fountain.

The baker's wife from the north street bought four sacks and kissed my hand.

A boy with a cough bought one sack for his mother and asked if I was the lady from the temple.

"I'm the lady from the temple," I said, and gave him a second sack for free.

The Fitzalan pack had held that mill for thirty years and never once lowered the price.

I could hear the line saying so.

Then the crowd at the back parted.

Dahlia came across the square in a grey cloak with her hair down and her face already wet.

All five of my former mates walked behind her.

"Thea," she said, loud enough for the baker's wife to hear. "Please. Please stop."

I kept weighing flour. "Good morning, Dahlia."

"They've lost half of everything." Her voice cracked. "The whole pack will go hungry this winter, and these are your own husbands."

"They aren't my husbands," I said. "They're my former husbands, and they signed."

"Grief makes people cruel," Dahlia said to the square. "I know you're hurting. We all want you to come home."

A few heads turned toward me with pity.

I could feel the whole square leaning toward her the way it had leaned in my first life, one sad face at a time.

So I put down the scoop.

"May I answer that?" I asked the baker's wife.

She nodded, very slowly.

I climbed onto the cart so everyone could see me.

"Until yesterday I was the Fitzalan pack's Luna," I said. "For two years I kept their ledgers. I know what they charged you for flour."

Somebody in the crowd whistled.

"This morning your flour costs half," I said. "That's the Moonmill's new owner. If the Fitzalan pack goes hungry, it isn't because I cut the price. It's because they wanted it high."

The line cheered.

Corin stepped forward, red in the face. "Those are our prices. It's our right."

"It was your right," I said. "Now it's half mine, and I'm charging half."

"This is theft!" Ronan shouted.

"It's the Moon Law," I said. "Would you like it read aloud?"

He didn't answer.

Beside him Elias had gone very still, looking at the sacks.

Nolan was looking at a boy with a cough.

The healer stood a little apart from them, hands in his pockets, watching the crowd and not Dahlia.

Dahlia pressed her handkerchief to her mouth.

"You've turned them against us," she whispered.

"I told them the price," I said. "They did the rest."

Ronan came across the cobbles then, fast.

He had twelve warriors with him, and he had not told me he was bringing them.

"Load it back," he told them. "All six carts. It's pack property."

The warriors hesitated.

I stepped down from the cart and stood in front of the first horse.

"Alpha," I said, "if one of your men lays a hand on my cart, you forfeit the other half."

"You don't scare me."

"It isn't me. It's the law."

I pointed over his shoulder.

Two Temple wardens in grey robes had come to the edge of the crowd.

One of them held up a staff with the silver moon on top.

"The mill and its goods are the female's property under Moon Law," the warden called. "Interference is a forfeit offence."

Ronan stopped with his hand halfway to the harness.

He stared at his own hand, and then he let it fall.

"Stand down," he said to his warriors.

They stood down.

The square laughed, and this time it laughed at him.

I gave the baker's wife her fifth sack.

Dahlia was still holding her handkerchief to her mouth.

She stepped close and kissed my cheek, and it was cool and quick.

"You're so strong, Thea," she murmured. "I'm proud of you. I'll see you very soon."

She went back across the square, and the five men went with her.

Only the healer looked back.

At noon a warden I had not seen before walked up to my cart.

He held out a sealed scroll with the Temple's silver moon pressed into the wax.

"A petition has been lodged with the Moon Court," he said. "In three days you will answer it."

"Lodged by whom?"

He unrolled it.

The name at the bottom was written in a round, sweet hand.

*Dahlia Ekberg.*

*On behalf of her beloved sister, whose rejection was made in a moment of grief and a mind not her own, she asks the Court to void it.*

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