Chapter 12: Silver at the Door

Ronan was out of bed before I was.

He pulled on his trousers, picked up his shirt, found it had no buttons, and gave it a look of sorrowful reproach.

"That was a good shirt," he said.

"It was your only shirt."

"I'm aware."

I got up too, with the scar glowing softly under my ribs, and put on the grey robe that hung beside the hearth.

My blood sang under the skin.

I could feel the hunters through the stone, thirty of them, spread over three flights of stairs.

I could feel the silver.

It prickled in the air.

"Stay behind me," I said.

"I don't think so."

"You're unarmed."

"So are you." He grinned, and it was a wolf's grin, quick and white. "That's never stopped either of us."

I opened the door myself.

The stairwell was full of men in mail.

Each of them wore a silver breastplate and carried a crossbow with silver-tipped bolts, and every bolt was pointed at me.

At the head of them stood the eldest Elder in his morning robe, with two others at his shoulders.

"Isobel Ashmere," he said. "In the name of the Court, you are taken as a danger to the blood."

"Taken where?"

"To a cell with silver bars. You will be kept until you are calm."

"I am calm."

"You broke the pact. You melted iron with your hand. You are a feral thing, wolf-marked, in the house of your betters."

"My betters?" I said.

I stepped over the threshold.

The nearest hunter flinched.

I lifted my hand, and thirty silver bolts shivered on their strings.

They bent.

The metal went soft and curled like candle wax, and thirty arrows drooped toward the floor.

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Blood Awakened, His Reign Ended from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.