Chapter 19: The Pyre

I did not remember getting dressed.

I remember the horse, and the climb in the dark, and Rowan beside me with his coat half buttoned.

The torches were burning before we reached the slope.

Forty Redfern wolves stood in a ring around Tilda's grave.

The gray stone had been pried up and thrown aside. It lay split in two on the grass.

Beside the open hollow lay a long bundle in a white shroud.

My knees nearly went.

"Tilda," I said.

Someone had dragged my daughter out of the ground and laid her on a heap of split logs.

The logs were wet. The stench of lamp oil hung heavy in the air.

Gareth stood at the head of the pile with a lit torch in his hand.

He wore his black coat. His jaw had swollen purple where I hit him.

Cora stood a step behind him, in a gray cloak, with her bandaged hands held against her chest.

Rowan's wolves came up behind us and spread out.

"Hold," Rowan said sharply, and they stopped.

Gareth's wolves had silver blades out, and every blade was pointed at the Ashmoor line.

"Not one step more," Gareth said. "Not one."

He lowered the torch until the flame hung a hand's width above the oil.

"Put it down," I said.

"Come closer, Linnea."

"Put it down, Gareth."

"I'll burn her."

I could not speak for a moment.

"She was your daughter."

"She was a girl who read what she should not have," he said.

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