Chapter 24: After the Moon

The thaw came to Hallowmere on a grey morning in the last week of winter.

I woke with the window open and Ronan's arm across my waist.

The sea was loud against the cliff, and the air smelled of snowmelt and salt.

For a moment I lay still and listened to the house.

Three years of mornings had begun with a footstep outside my door and a silver bowl.

There was no footstep now.

I slid out from under his arm and went to the window in my bare feet.

Down in the courtyard of the east gate, a man in a plain black coat was tying a bedroll behind a saddle.

He had no guard and no banner.

A tall woman on a black horse waited for him at the gate with an axe across her knees.

"You'll chop first," Ronan's sister said, "and we'll talk afterward."

"I'll chop," Lucian said.

She tossed the axe to him, handle first.

He caught it, and for once nobody laughed.

He swung into the saddle, and turned his horse toward the road.

At the gate he stopped.

He looked up at the tower, and at the one open window high in the wall.

I stood in it with my hair loose and my hand on the stone.

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