Chapter 11: The Wall

"Stay on the stairs," Elias told June, loud and plain, with his eyes on her mouth. "If anyone comes, stamp twice."

June nodded, white to the lips.

"You can stamp," he said. "I'll feel it."

She went back up and crouched on the third step with her candle held low.

The brass key turned in the iron lock with a small clean click.

My father had told me my whole life that nobody could open that door but him.

Elias put his shoulder to the oak, and it swung inward on a breath of cold air.

The whine came up in the back of my skull.

I clamped my teeth and went in anyway, with Elias's hand at my elbow.

"Bryn," the voice said, soft and wet and breaking. "You took everything from me."

It was louder inside.

It came from every wall, and it sounded like a woman crying into her hands.

I felt my knees want to fold, and I did not let them.

"Don't listen," I said to myself, out loud. "It is not her."

Elias could not hear any of it.

He walked to the middle of the round black floor and set the candle on the stone dish beside the dark stone.

He held up one hand to tell me to look.

I looked.

The walls were covered in carved letters, row on row, from the floor to as high as a tall man could reach.

I could not read them.

They were an old script with hooks and curls, nothing like the plain letters of the pack ledgers.

Elias put his palm on the first line and began to read it aloud, slowly, facing me so I could see his mouth.

"The first Luna of this pack gave her heart to the stone so that the pack would not starve in the winter," he said.

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