The Silver Wolf novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: The Warden Goes Down

Cormick's POV

I stood in my cabin for an hour after she left.

Then I put the knife on my back, took the hatchet off the wall, and went down the ridge in the dark.

I had made one promise to myself in twelve days that I meant to keep.

If I was going to be a killer, it would be Edric Hartwell first.

I didn't go by the trail.

I went by the creek, the way the Guard used to, and came out at the border cairn a little after midnight.

Someone was sitting on the cairn with his head in his hands.

I knew the smell before I saw him.

Cedar oil and old fear, and under them the sour sweetness of a wolf that is slowly starving.

I crossed the last twenty feet in a run and had Alder Hartwell off the stones and against a pine before he lifted his head.

My forearm sat across his throat.

"Where is your father?" I said.

"Long House." He wheezed it. "Study. Third floor."

"Who's with him?"

"Eight men on the porch. Four inside."

"Good."

"You can't," he said. "You'll die on the stairs."

"Then I'll die on the stairs."

"Warden." He caught my wrist with a hand that had no strength in it. "Kill me, if you want. I'd understand it. But listen to me first."

I should have pressed down.

I had a hatchet in one hand and every reason in the world.

But I'd watched him kneel in that grass and say the words, and I'd seen what it cost him to say them.

I eased off.

He slid down the trunk and coughed until red ran down his chin.

"I told her I was wrong," he said, when he could. "I meant it. I meant it more than anything I've ever said."

"I heard you."

"I want to tell you something else I've never said."

"Say it fast."

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