The Cursed Blood novel · Chapter 13 of 32

Chapter 13: Near Miss

The lantern swung on past the stone, and the light went with it.

The bell in the stone stopped.

My knees went out from under me.

I would have gone off the top headfirst if Conall hadn't been standing right under it with his arms up.

He caught me against his chest and we both went down in the frost.

"I've got you," he said. "I've got you. Breathe."

"It was him," I said. "The beta."

The door of the warden house banged open.

The three elders came out in their blankets.

"You stood on it," the old man said.

"The postcard said to."

"That's round five, girl. You've stood round five before round four is cold in the ground."

"What did it show you?"

I told them.

"The stones remember," the honey elder said quietly. "We've always said so. Nobody living has heard them."

"Then bring the council up here," I said. "Put him on the stone. Let it show them."

"The stones show a warden," the old man said. "Nobody else. A council won't strip a beta on what one girl saw from the top of a rock."

"I'm her daughter."

"That's the problem, love," the honey elder said gently. "Every wolf in the Greywater will say you'd see anything to hang the Mardells."

"Bring them something they can hold," the old man said. "Then we'll talk about councils."

For four days I did exactly that.

Every morning I knelt at the salted grave under the rockfall and got nothing but rot.

On the third day Conall came down with a shovel and dug beside me until it got dark, and we found more salt.

On the fourth night I came back to the post with my fingernails black and my temper worse.

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