Chapter 16: The Grave

Caleb's POV

I left her asleep in the charcoal burner's hut on the ridge with the door barred.

Then I went down to the burial hill in the dark.

I told myself it was to check that nobody had touched the grave.

It was to look at the man who had put her in it.

He was there. Of course he was.

Alastair knelt in the wet earth in his shirtsleeves.

He had pushed the wreaths aside, and his bare hands lay flat on the mound.

Nobody had been left to guard him.

I stood in the pines at the edge of the clearing, and I stayed where the wind carried me away from him.

"I came to say it properly," he told the grave.

His voice was hoarse, as if he had been talking for hours.

"Not in front of them. I couldn't, with my mother holding my arm."

The wind moved in the branches.

"It stayed in my coat for six years, and I never once burned it.

"I told myself you'd be better off. I told myself it was Ansley who needed me.

"Every winter you coughed, I thought, it's the wound, it isn't the bond. I thought, she's safe in my house."

He pressed his forehead to his wrist.

"You took a bullet for me at the border, and I carried you three miles.

"I should have known then what I was."

My wolf rose in me, slow and cold.

I took one step out from the trees.

"They've sent the cup to my study," Alastair said. "The cup you dropped. The captain thought I should have it."

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