Chapter 15: The White Law

Lucan's POV

I woke before dawn with her hair across my chest and the taste of iron in my mouth.

My side had stiffened in the night. I did not mind it.

She was asleep with one hand spread over my heart, and for a quarter hour I did not move at all.

Then the horn started up again, and she was awake and reaching for her boots.

"How long?" she said.

"The watch has been blowing since midnight."

We walked up to the north ridge in grey light. I was not steady, and she would not let me say so.

Rowan was on the crest with Drew and Ellis and two hundred of Ashgrove's wolves.

Below them, filling the valley from the quarry road to the river, stood the horde.

I had counted rogue armies before. I stopped counting this one at fourteen hundred.

They stood in silence, under black banners nailed to spear shafts.

In front of them, on a rock, stood the Rogue King in a long coat, his forearm bandaged.

He lifted one hand to Keira and waved.

"He wrote," she said, and her voice was perfectly flat.

"Where is your host?" Rowan asked me.

"Forty ships left Stormhold at midnight. They will be at the cove by midday."

"Midday is too late."

"Yes," I said. "It is."

I had sent the word the moment the paper burned. Half my lords had answered. Half had not.

A king with no paper can only ask for a war. I had asked, and the ones who liked me had answered.

Keira was looking at the valley, and I knew the look.

She had worn it on the sea wall, and in the water before I took her hand.

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