Chapter 17: Stonewater Burns

Ronan left at midnight with two hundred wardens.

I stood at the tower window in his shirt, with Elias asleep on my shoulder, and watched the torches go down the road toward the river.

He had kissed the baby, and then me, and said one sentence at the door.

"Don't cross the river without me."

"I have a son who is four hours old," I said. "Where would I go?"

"Wynne."

"I won't."

He went.

Edda put me back in the bed and told me I would stay there for three days.

I stayed there for one.

On the second morning I came down the back stairs with Elias in a sling against my chest, and Edda met me at the bottom with her arms folded.

"Wolves heal fast," I said. "You told me so yourself."

"I told you wolves heal fast and fools heal never."

"I'll sit down in the kitchen. Look, I'm sitting down."

She watched me do it, and then she shoved a bowl of porridge across the table, which meant I had won.

I had eaten half of it when the boy ran in from the courtyard.

He was the gate boy from Stonewater, the one with the split lip, and a bandage now wound over his shoulder.

"Luna," he said, and stopped, and went red to the ears. "I mean, Wynne. Miss. Somebody is at the north gate."

"Who?"

"A lot of somebodies."

I went out into the courtyard with my son on my chest.

The snow was coming down thick and silent.

At the gate, the King's guards had drawn back the bars, and the people of Stonewater were walking in.

They came in twos and threes at first, and then in a long ragged line.

They were omegas, mostly, the people Torin's pack had never thought to count.

Washerwomen in shawls.

Stable lads and kitchen girls.

A bent old man who had stoked the Moon Hall boilers for forty years.

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