Chapter 19: The Cup

Gunnar couldn't exile me.

Pack law keeps a refused wolf at the Alpha's lodge until the Stone, and no Council can take her out of it.

Torin put his shoulder against that law and held it.

So Gunnar waited.

Torin showed the black-edged scar to Oda the next morning.

She made a sound in her throat I'd only heard her make over spoiled milk.

"That's poison, still in the bite," she said. "Two years in the skin. The healer will know it."

Torin pulled his glove on over it and said nothing, and I didn't ask him to.

We both knew the ridge was the place to show it.

It was the longest waiting of my life.

It ended on the twenty-ninth night, when Oda and I sat on the sofa in Torin's rooms with the full moon coming up red over the lake.

"Tomorrow," my grandmother said, "you stand on a rock in front of every wolf you know."

"Thank you, Oda. That helps."

"I'm only saying wear a hat."

Torin was downstairs with Anders and the elders who'd come over to his side, counting votes for the morning.

He'd kissed me on the way out and said, "Lock the door."

I hadn't locked it.

I'd been listening for a knock for an hour.

I knew my best friend, and I knew she wouldn't let the last night go by.

It came at ten, soft and polite.

"Lin?"

I opened the door.

Ingrid stood in the corridor in a plain grey sweater, with no cuff and no braid, her hair loose around her shoulders.

She held a tray with a teapot and two cups.

"Gunnar says I can't come near you after the boathouse," she said. "I came anyway."

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