Chapter 17: The Border Stones

The Ashmoor captain found me at the lavender house gate at dusk.

"We caught the cart at the border stones, Luna," he said. "She's alive."

I rode there with the omega maid and the thin gray woman behind me on one horse.

The border stones stand at the foot of the mountain, where the north road crosses from Redfern into Ashmoor land.

The covered cart sat in the road with its horse blown.

Four Redfern guards knelt in the dirt beside it with their hands on their heads.

Rowan stood at the tailboard.

He turned when I rode up. His face was tired and closed.

I looked past him.

Cora's mother sat on the tailboard in a torn shawl with a bruise coming up on her cheek.

Her shoulder was bandaged where my light had burned her.

"They said I was being sent to my sister's," she said. "I have no sister."

I got down from the horse.

"Who gave the order?"

"The Alpha." She spoke fast and low. "He told his captain in my hearing. I was in the next room."

"What did he say?"

"That I was to be put over the border and kept there until the moon had passed."

"And Cora?"

She pressed her bandaged hand to her mouth.

"He said if Cora spoke again, she was to be quieted. He used that word. Quieted."

The kneeling guards looked at the ground.

"She's his daughter," I said.

"She's the only one who knows his hand in all of it. He said she couldn't be trusted since the cup."

"Your own daughter," I said, and I heard how cold it was. "You didn't stop him."

"I didn't know until tonight," she said. "I swear it on the Goddess."

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