Chapter 12: On His Knees

They put Joss in the silver cell under the hall.

It was a concrete room with bars of iron plated in silver, built for rogues, and I had balanced its supply budget myself.

The elders set the trial for the next full moon.

Four nights.

Agnes got me a witness's pass, which meant I could stay on pack land until then, and nothing else.

Ridgeback's wolves waited at the gate in their trucks, sixty of them, with the engines off.

At midnight I sat on the back steps of the hall, in the snow, beside the little barred window at ground level.

I could see Joss's boots through it.

"You should go to bed," he said from the dark.

"No."

"Valerie."

"I'm not leaving you to sit in there by yourself."

"It's not that bad." A pause. "The company's terrible."

I laughed, and it hurt.

I put my fingers through the bars, and he caught them.

His hand was warm.

The silver bars would burn him if he touched them.

He had pushed his arm out between two of them, as far from the metal as he could.

"The knife wasn't mine," he said.

"I know."

"Do you?"

"I knew it the second she unwrapped it."

I pressed my forehead to the cold stone.

"There was no blood on that blade, Joss. It had been inside me. Nobody cleaned it."

"Good eyes."

"I've seen your hilts. Your crest is carved into every one. Hers was burned on after."

His thumb moved over my knuckles.

Behind us, the hall door opened.

I stood up too fast.

Lucan came out onto the porch alone.

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