My Mate Gave My Wolf to His Mistress novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Stonefell

Hesper wakes in Bram's keep, learns he has searched the Aldane ashes for seven years, sets her terms, and goes down to face Torin's riders at the gate.

I woke in a strange bed with a wool blanket tucked up to my chin and silver burns throbbing on both wrists.

The room was small and square, with a fire in the grate and shutters closed over the window.

A man's shirt was the only thing I was wearing.

It smelled of woodsmoke and horse and something sharper that I could not name.

Bram Askew sat in a chair at the foot of the bed with his boots on the rail.

He had not slept either. His coat was gone, and there was blood dried on his sleeve that was not his.

"Morning," he said. "You've been out since the gate."

"Where is this?"

"Stonefell. My keep. You're in the east tower, and I'm not going to lock the door."

I looked at the door.

He was telling the truth.

It had no lock on the inside or the outside.

"The healer cleaned your wrists. The burns went deep, but they'll close." He nodded at the bowl on the table. "She says the salve stings."

"I know what silver does."

"I know you do. I watched you take it off the altar with your bare hands."

His voice was even, and his green eyes stayed on my face.

I sat up against the headboard and pulled the blanket over my knees.

"Why did you stop them?"

"Because it was a murder, and I won't watch one."

"The council has a law that says it wasn't."

"The council has a law for everything Torin Harrow needs it to have." He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. "Why did you say your name?"

"Because it was the only thing I had that he didn't."

He took that without a word.

Then he stood and went to the window, and for a moment I thought he was going to open the shutters.

He rested his hand on the sill and kept it there.

"My mother was raised in the Aldane hall," he said. "Aldith. Your mother's foster sister."

"She married into Stonefell before you were born."

My breath stopped.

"Aunt Aldith," I said. "The one who sent the blue ribbons."

"She talked about you until the day she died."

"Seven years ago I was sent to a fostering in the south," he said. "I came back eleven days after the fire."

"The hall was ash. The council had already cried the sentence on the Aldanes, and nobody on the moor would speak the name."

"I've gone back to that weir every spring since. I never found a body that was yours."

I stared at him.

Nobody had looked for me.

I had spent seven years believing that nobody had looked for me, and he was telling me a man had.

He had gone to the ashes, every spring, and found nothing.

"I was under the weir," I said. My voice scraped. "For two days. I came out when the fire was cold."

"And you went to Ravenhold."

"Yes."

"Willingly."

I heard the question in it. I heard something under the question that I did not like.

"I went to take him apart from the inside," I said. "That was the plan. Seven years of it."

"It's a long plan."

"It was a patient one."

He looked at me for a long moment, and I looked back.

Then he said, "I've no right to ask you for anything."

"Then don't."

"I'm going to anyway. Stay in this keep until the Moot. Under my roof, under Stonefell law."

"And what do you get out of it?"

"A witness who can say the name Aldane in front of the council and be believed."

I had expected a trade. I had not expected him to name it so plainly.

I held out my wrists.

"Then I'll set the terms. I'm your guest, Warden, and I'm nobody's prize. Nothing touches but the fight."

"Done."

"Say the words."

"Nothing touches but the fight."

He crossed the room and knelt by the bed.

He took the wrist with the worse burn and turned it over in his hands, carefully.

He wound the linen round it from the bowl, and his thumb stopped on my pulse.

It was racing.

I pulled my hand back, and he let it go.

Neither of us said anything.

A horn sounded outside, very far away, and then again nearer.

Bram's head came up.

A boy ran up the tower stairs and hit the door with the flat of his hand. "Alpha! Riders at the gate. Ravenhold colours."

"How many?"

"Twenty. And a carriage with a council writ."

Bram stood.

"They've come for you," he said.

"I know."

I swung my feet off the bed.

"Then I'm going down to meet them."

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