Chapter 39: What He Could Pay

Ronan's POV

I took the farm truck, because I couldn't have run it.

By the first cattle guard my hands were cold on the wheel.

By the Mill Road bridge I could not feel my feet on the pedals.

I knew what it was now.

It wasn't altitude.

It was the distance.

Every mile the odometer turned took a little more of whatever Mara had put in me.

I left the truck at the stone wall half a mile below Orchard Hill and walked up the road.

I fell twice.

The second time I stayed on my knees in the gravel until the black went out of the edges of my eyes.

I had the Moot's knife in my coat.

I had no plan except the one I'd made at the courthouse that morning.

I had watched Mara spend her voice on nine men at once.

I could not spend her voice.

So I would spend the one thing I owned.

The heavy gray-haired wolf met me at the bottom of the porch steps with three more behind him.

"You were told a mile," he said.

"I'm alone," I said. "I have one knife, and I'm giving it to her."

I held up my empty hands.

"Tell her I'm here."

He looked at me a while.

Then he looked at my face, and whatever he saw there made him step aside.

Opal Harkness received me in the white kitchen, standing by the sink in a navy cardigan with her gloves on.

She was looking at her teacups.

"Mr. Draycott," she said, without turning. "Ms. Linwood will be vexed with you."

I took out the Moot's knife and laid it on her table, handle toward her.

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