Chapter 13: The Stones Decide

I did not know how to come back.

The wolf in me was huge and calm, and she liked the cold grass and the wolves pressed against my sides.

"Mom," said my younger son, "are you stuck?"

I thought of his hand in mine, and my spine folded down the other way.

I knelt in the grass, human and naked, with the morning wind on every inch of me.

Coats came flying out of the crowd from every direction.

Gareth got there first and wrapped me in his, and my daughter stood in front of us with her arms spread to hide me from three hundred people.

"Nobody look," she ordered.

Nobody did.

I got to my feet, shaking, and turned to face the stone block.

Hugh had not moved.

He stood among his fallen guards with his hands hanging open, and he looked at me with open, hungry interest.

"Why did you let me live?" I said.

"You want it in front of everyone?" he asked. "Very well."

He turned to the pack.

"Twenty years this valley has had no famine, no rival at the border, and no sickness," he said. "Who among you complained of it?"

Nobody answered.

"It ran on one woman's blood in my cellar," he said. "I never asked any of you to look."

A woman near the front covered her mouth.

"The girl was the real prize," Hugh went on, calmly, to me. "Her mother sealed you too well, so I needed you to wake in grief."

Behind me, Gareth went very quiet.

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