Chapter 19: The Vault

The stair to the vault went down behind the kitchens, through a door nobody had opened in years.

Lucas took the lead with a lantern.

He didn't say a word, and he walked too fast.

Ansel and I came after him, and Dad and Hattie were stopped at the top by two guards and a council member reciting the old law.

"Only the Apex and her sworn wolf," the man said, and I saw Dad's jaw working.

"Yell if you need a wrench," Dad called down the stairwell.

I almost laughed.

The air got colder with every turn.

At the bottom was a round stone room with a vaulted ceiling and an iron door standing open behind us.

Three black cuffs hung on three iron hooks along the far wall.

Each hook had a small brass plate under it, with a year stamped in the metal and nothing else.

I walked up to them slowly.

They were like mine, only the black had gone dull and grey.

"Twenty-nine years ago," Ansel said, reading the first plate. "Seventeen years ago."

He stopped at the third hook.

The plate under it showed the year of the worst morning of his life.

He lifted the cuff off the hook with both bandaged hands.

There was a dent on the inside edge, near the clasp.

"He hit it on a barn door the week he got it," he said, very quietly. "He forgot to duck. I laughed so hard I got a nosebleed."

I put my hand on his back.

He didn't flinch.

Beside the third hook there was a fourth, empty, with its own plate.

I read the year on it, and then I read it again.

It was this year.

"That one's mine," Ansel said. "He had the plate stamped before the Trial."

"For your cuff."