Chapter 21: Every Alpha in the Hall

The crack ran from the top of the black stone to the floor, and white light poured out of it.

It climbed the pillars.

It lit the faces in the tiers one after another, until two hundred Alphas sat in it with their mouths open.

Six rings of carved lines ran around the stone's flank. They had never been lit past the third, and now all six burned.

A bench scraped back.

Then another, and another, and a chair fell over.

The Speaker rose from her seat on the dais, slowly, leaning on her stick.

"Supreme," she said.

"There has been no Supreme in this hall in two hundred years."

"There has been one in Ironwood for eighteen," I said.

I took my hand off the stone.

My palm was warm and unmarked, and the light went on pouring out of the crack without me.

My father had risen from the bench.

He had both hands on the rail in front of him, and his knuckles were bone white.

"Speaker," he said. "A test stone can be fooled. Her mother's grief..."

"Be quiet, Alpha," said the Speaker.

He closed his mouth.

I turned to face the two of them.

My mother had sat down again and was staring at the floor.

"I have a question for you both," I said.

I did not raise my voice, and I heard it carry to the back wall of the hall.

"Tell the Convocation what you did to me. Tell it truthfully. All of it."

I felt it go out from me.

It was a pressure behind the words, and it landed on both of them.

My father's jaw fought it.

I watched him fight it with his teeth and his neck and his eyes, and I watched it go through him anyway.

"I bound her rank into her twin," he said.

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