Chapter 8: The Ledger

I dressed in the time it took the king to find his shirt.

Neither of us said anything about it.

We walked to the north gate side by side, with a guard on each flank, and I kept my face still and my hair pinned in the wrong place.

The whole city had come to the walls.

Torin sat his horse in the road outside, with forty Greywater wolves in rows behind him.

He had not slept either.

His eyes were bloodshot, and he held the reins so tightly that his knuckles had gone white.

Evander climbed the gate stair first.

I followed and stood at his shoulder, which no healer should do.

"Alpha Brackley," the king called down. "You ride armed to my gate at dawn."

"I ride for what's mine," Torin shouted.

"And what is that?"

"Elspeth, who your guards let out of a window. And the healer, who is still bound to my pack by blood."

"The court ruled that she isn't."

"The court is yours."

A murmur went along the wall.

That was a dangerous thing to say about the law, with the whole city listening.

Torin saw it too, and his mouth twisted.

He looked up at me.

His nostrils flared.

"You reek of him," he said.

The wall went silent.

My face burned, and I did not drop my eyes.

"I do," I said. "And I'm not ashamed of it. Say what you came to say."

Torin stared at me, his expression tightening.

"Ten years," he said. "I gave her ten years, and she ran from me through a window. And you stand up there with the man who opened it."

"You gave her ten years of being lied to," I said. "Open your own eyes."

"You haven't any proof of any of it!"

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