Chapter 12: Dashiell's POV

Dashiell's POV

I heard the last thing Honora said through eleven feet of stone.

I have a wolf's ears, and I was not leaving that stair.

Your father screamed for four minutes.

Then I heard Elowen not make a sound, and that was worse.

I carried Fenn up to the herbwife and told Aldous to put four men on the cell door.

Then I did what I should have done six years ago.

I read the paper before I signed it.

Honora kept her rooms in the east tower guest wing, and she had left the door unlatched.

She is a woman who has never once been afraid of being searched.

The desk had a false drawer, and I found it in under a minute, because my father had one in the same place.

Inside lay a velvet bag, and in the bag lay a heavy gold ring with a white wolf's head cut into the face.

I had seen a drawing of that seal on a wall at Ironwood when I was a boy.

It was Aurel Brae's.

Under the ring was a ledger.

It ran six years, month by month, in Honora's neat hand.

E. Vane, twelve drops daily. Delivered by L.

Beside the last line, someone had added a note: Dashiell Harrow signs what he is given.

I sat down in her chair, because my knees were not reliable.

She had used me, and she had known exactly how.

She had put a pen in my hand at twenty-six while my father lay in the ground.

I had written my name under a sentence that killed a woman at my own gate.

I put the ring in my pocket and the ledger under my arm.

When I came out into the courtyard, the sun was down, and the full moon stood over the ridge.

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