His Moonsilver Mate (Abby and Kade) novel Chapter 178

Chapter 178

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Mon, Nov 2

Chapter 178

Abby

The Council gave its ruling at eleven the next morning, and it took Harlan of Stonecrest less than five minutes to read it.

I had thought there would be more. Speeches. Arguments. Some-last chance to stand up a say the thing I had lain awake all night trying to find words for. Instead there was the hall, and the gright from the tall windows, and the thirteen of them along the curve with their faces closed and clerk with a single typed sheet in front of her, which she passed along the tables to Harlan, and which be unfolded, and put on his glasses to read.

Kade sat beside me. His hand was under the table, on my knee. I could feel through the bond how hard he was holding himself, like a man bracing his whole weight against a wind.

I had put on the blue dress again. Ivy’s pins. I didn’t know what else to do.

“The Council has considered the representations brought by Greyhollow,” Harlan read, “and the answers given by Moonhaven.” He cleared his throat. “On the first representation, the fitness of the Alpha of Moonhaven to hold and defend his house: the Council finds that the Alpha is afflicted, through no fault of his own, by a working laid upon him by a witch. The Council finds no cause to remove him from his chair.”

Garrick, on Kade’s other side, let out a breath through his nose.

“On the second, the traitor Sloane Sinclair: the Council finds that the Alpha of Moonhaven sent her beyond his border of his own will and without the knowledge of his council, and has since had dealings with Malachi Blackwell. The Council censures him for it. The Council requires that he have no further dealings with Malachi Blackwell, nor with any rogue under him, without the Council’s leave.” Harlan looked at Kade over his glasses. “That is not a request.”

Kade didn’t answer. I felt what it cost him, and what he put away to pay it.

“On the fourth, the attack in the Luna’s rooms,” Harlan read, “the Council finds that the girl Isla of Greyhollow was the hand that held the knife, and that she was not in possession of herself when she held it. The Council lays no blame upon her. The Council cannot determine, on what it has heard, whether any other hand was upon hers.”

He turned the page.

“On the third,” he said, “the power held by the Luna of Moonhaven.”

The hall was very quiet.

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He paused. He didn’t look up.

The Council does not find the Luna of Moonhaven guilty of any wrong. Neither can it find that she is safe. Not to her pack, nor her mate, nor the valley. Until the matter of the witch and her working is understood, the Council places the Luna of Moonhaven in its own keeping.”

I didn’t understand it, the first time. The words went past me. I heard Kade’s breath stop.

“She will reside at the seat of the Council,” Harlan read, “which for this year is Greyhollow under the Council’s guard, drawn from the packs of this Council and not from her own. She will be treated with every courtesy owed to her rank. She will not use her power, upon any person, for any cause, while she is in the Council’s keeping. She will not leave the seat of the Council without its leave. Her case will be heard again at the spring session, or sooner, should the Council learn anything that bears upon it.” He folded the paper. “Moonhaven keeps its seat at this táble. Its Alpha keeps his chair. That is the Council’s ruling.”

He took off his glasses.

***

For a moment, nobody moved.

Then I felt it come up in Kade.

It came all at once, from the bottom of him. Rage. Pure and white and absolute, the way I had felt it only once before, the night Sebastian stood in our hall and said what he said about Nathaniel. It went through the bond into me like a current, and under it, under his ribs, I felt the thing that lived there lift its head and open its eyes. Wide awake. Interested.

His hand on my knee had gone hard as iron.

He was going to stand up. I could feel it. He was going to stand up in that hall and refuse. And I knew, the way I knew my own heartbeat, exactly what came after that. Moonhaven out of the Council. Alone. Every pack in the valley with a reason to look away. Sebastian Thorne at our border with the Council’s blessing, and a curse waking in Kade’s chest with nobody to bind it, and a war he couldn’t fight on his feet.

Kade, I said. Through the bond. As quietly as I could. Kade. No.

He didn’t hear me. Or he heard and couldn’t stop. His weight shifted. His chair scraped.

So I stood up first.

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“I accept the Council’s keeping,” I said.

voice came out clear and steady and very foud in that high, cold hall. I hadn’t known it would.

Beside me, Kade made a sound. Low, in his throat. I didn’t look at him. I couldn’t. If I had looked at

him I would never have been able to finish.

“I accept it,” I said again, to Harlan. To all of them. “I don’t think it’s right. I think you’re afraid, and I understand why you’re afraid, and I don’t blame you for it. But I won’t be the reason Moonaven stands alone.” I lifted my chin. “I’ll stay. I won’t use my light. Not on anyone, for anything. And when you’ve understood what you need to understand, I’ll go home.”

The hall was so quiet I could hear the clerk’s pencil roll a little way across her table and stop.

Halfway along the curve, Aurelie of Highmoor was looking at me. She didn’t incline her head this time. She didn’t do anything. But she was the only one at that table who didn’t look away.

Harlan cleared his throat.

“The Council notes the Luna’s acceptance,” he said. His voice wasn’t quite as heavy as it had been. “It is ” He stopped. “It is to her credit.”

He gathered his papers together and squared them on the table.

“This session is closed,” he said.

***

Kade didn’t speak to me on the way out of the hall. He didn’t speak in the long red corridor, or on the stairs. He walked beside me with his hand clamped round mine so hard it hurt, and his face perfectly calm, and I felt everything that was going on under it, and it was like walking beside a burning house.

He shut the door of our rooms behind us. He leaned against it with his eyes closed.

Then he turned round and looked at me.

“You had no right,” he said.

His voice was very low and very rough. I had never heard it like that. Not even on the night of the argument, with the door between us.

“I know.”

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why did it.”

“We could have-”

What?” It came out sharper than I meant. “We could have what, Kade? Walked out of that ha? Gone home with every pack in the valley turning its back on us? With him at our border, ande Council saying he had the right?” My voice cracked. I made it stop. “And then what? The moon’s in three weeks. Imogen can’t bind you alone. She said so. You’d have gone home with me, and he thing in your chest would have woken up, and I’d have had to pour into you again to keep you alive and every drop of it would have gone straight to her. And Sebastian would have stood up at the nex session and said, you see. You see. She did it again.”

He didn’t answer.

“And they’d have been right,” I said. Quieter. “That’s the worst of it. He’s right, Kade. Every time touch you, I feed her. I can’t stop it. Nobody can, while the blade’s whole. So maybe it’s better if I’m somewhere I can’t touch you. For a while.” I swallowed. “Maybe that’s the only thing I can do for you right now that doesn’t make it worse.”

He looked at me across that beautiful room, with its hellebores and its tall windows over the gray river. His face had gone white.

“And me?” he said. “What am I supposed to do?”

I went to him then.

I put my arms round him, and he put his round me, and held on so hard I couldn’t breathe, and I didn’t care. I felt him shaking. All of him. The whole length of his body, against mine. He didn’t make a sound. He only shook, with his face in my hair and Ivy’s grandmother’s pins digging into his cheek, and I held him up.

“Go home,” I said into his shirt. “Look after your mother. Look after our pack. Let Imogen do what she can at the moon. And find her, Kade. Find that woman and break that blade. That’s what you can do.” I tightened my arms. “And then come and get me.”

He didn’t answer at once.

“I don’t know how to do this without you,” he said at last.

“Neither do I.”

***

They gave us an hour.

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12:09 Mon, Nov 2

Liam came in after that.

He came and stood in front of me, and looked at me, the way he used to look at me when I was small and had fallen out of something and he was checking for broken bones. Then he pulled me against his

chest.

“I promised her,” he said into my hair. Roughly. “Sloane. I promised her I wouldn’t let him get you

alone.”

“You didn’t let him. I said yes.”

“That’s worse.” His arms tightened. “That’s so much worse, Abby.”

I didn’t have anything to say to that. I stood in my brother’s arms, and over his shoulder I saw Imogen in the doorway.

She didn’t come in. She stood there with her basket on her arm, and looked at me, and I saw something in her face I had never seen there. Not pity. She would never have pitied me. Something more like anger, turned inward, and held very still.

“Remember the bowl,” she said.

“I will.”

“Remember the mirror.”

“I will.”

“And remember this.” She came in then, two steps, and put her hand flat on the inside pocket of her coat, where the scrap of paper was. Where the coven’s letter was. “I’m not finished. Do you

of it.” understand me, Abigail? I’m not finished with any

“I know.”

She looked at me a moment longer. Then she nodded, once, sharply, and turned, and went away down the corridor.

Garrick didn’t come in. He stood at the end of the corridor by the window and waited, and when I

came out with Kade, he took my hand in his old dry one and held it, and didn’t say a word. Then he let

go and went down the stairs ahead of us, one step and the cane and then the next.

李*

They had the trucks drawn up at the foot of the steps. The same four. Moonhaven’s warriors

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The warriors had seen us coming. Every one of them was looking at me.

the end of the line, by the last truck, Callum Fletcher stood with his hands at his sides. He was red to the ears again. As I came down the last step, he took his hands out of his sides and put them, both of them, palms up, in front of him. The pink new skin across them, catching the light

He only held them there.

And one by one, down the line, the others did the same. Not all of them. Some of them only bowed their heads. But most of them. Their hands, held out, palms up, empty, in the cold.

I stopped at the bottom of the steps.

I couldn’t do anything else. I couldn’t move. I stood there in the ‘blue dress, with Kade’s hand round mine, and looked at them, and my eyes filled, and I let them.

Kade turned to me.