A Hatred Most Pure novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: All of It

The Speaker looked at me for a long moment.

Then she lifted the brass bell and rang it once.

"Speak, Cora Tarrant."

I turned my back on Dietrich, and on the benches, and faced the Urekai along the fence.

There were hundreds of them, all the people I had lived among for two weeks and been afraid of.

The cook was in the front row with her arms folded.

The scald woman stood beside her with the little boy on her hip.

"I'm going to tell you what I did to your Alpha," I said. "Nobody has asked me to.

"I'm saying it because it's true, and because you should hear it from me."

Nothing moved in the yard but the banners.

"I was fifteen. He was ten.

"I was the Beta's daughter and he was a charity child, and I decided that made him mine to use."

My voice shook, and I let it.

"I took his shoes in the snow. I pushed him off the east pier when he couldn't swim, and I told the others to laugh.

"I ate his bread.

"That's not all of it. I taught the little ones the word pup, and I made them say it every time he walked past."

A woman near the back drew a hard breath.

"I told the children his mother had been a thief. She hadn't. She had been dead two months, and I knew it."

"I cut a hank of his hair at the market for a bet and kept it in my pocket for a week."

I made myself look at Ansel.

He stood by the stones with his bare hand open at his side, and his face was white and perfectly still.

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