The Cursed Blood novel · Chapter 8 of 32

Chapter 8: Twenty Days

I didn't step back.

"Then hang me," I said. "On the Line. Under the treaty. In front of the council. I'll wait."

The Alpha straightened up.

He looked at the kneeling wardens, and the old man with his stick, and the hum still coming up through the frost.

Then he turned and walked off the Line, and his men went after him.

The beta went last.

At the edge of the pines he looked back over his shoulder.

Not at me.

At Margaux.

She stood very still until he was gone, and then her knees gave, and she sat down in the frost and didn't get up for a long time.

I almost did.

I didn't.

Hettie moved into the post with me that night.

She came with a sack of flour she'd begged off the warden house, a jar of honey from the honey elder, and an opinion about my stove.

"This oven is a disgrace," she said, head inside it. "When did it last bake bread?"

"Eight years ago."

She pulled her head out and looked at me.

"Right," she said, quieter. "Well. It's baking bread tomorrow."

It baked bread the next day.

By the third day, the wardens had started dropping in.

The big bald woman came first, said she'd smelled bread from the stones, and ate half a loaf standing up.

The gray brothers came together, mended the shutters without being asked, and argued the whole time about which of them had done it better.

The woman with the baby came and handed me the baby.

"Hold him," she said. "I haven't sat down since the summer."

She sat down on my floor and fell asleep against the wall.

I held the baby for two hours.

He drooled on me.

Conall came in at dusk, saw me with a baby on my hip and three wardens at my table, and stopped in the doorway.

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Cursed Blood from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.