Chapter 23: Through Every Wall

Corwin's POV

I let her finish explaining before I said no.

She stood in the infirmary corridor in my coat, barefoot.

She laid it out as plainly as she had laid out the forged A in front of the Council.

The Alpha wanted her, and wanted her willing, with a Southbay witness and a contract.

She would go to him and let him draw it up.

A betrothal written in his own hand, naming the Rite and the cure and the price, was a confession.

"The Registrar's clerk can sit in the next room," she said. "The Alpha won't know. He thinks he's already won."

"No," I said.

"Say the rest."

"You'll be a day's ride from me, in the house of the man who has held your sister's life over you."

"Yes."

"If he locks the door..."

"Then your Guards break it. You've said so."

"Linnet."

She waited.

I had said it to her wolf in the night, with my hand between her ears.

I had not meant to hear it said back.

"Say it," I said. "It isn't mine to allow."

"It isn't yours to allow."

She stepped closer.

I could smell her, warm now, with the infirmary on her skin and the heat of the wolf beneath it.

"But I'm asking you to send them with me," she said. "And to trust me."

I took a long time to answer.

Six years ago I had trusted a paper, and it had cost both of us.

"The Registrar's clerk goes. Twelve Guards on the south road, a mile behind."

"If anything goes wrong, I will come through the wall myself."

"Done," she said.

That night I could not make myself leave her.

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