Page 37

Ruby flinched beside me, as if the words had struck her.

I lunged forward, putting my body squarely between them, my hackles up and a snarl ripping out of me so loud it echoed off the rocks.

A hand settled on my back.

“Conan.” Ruby’s voice was quiet. Steady. “No.”

I turned my head. She stood beside me with her hand buried in my fur, looking down at the small figure in red below.

I couldn’t argue. I couldn’t speak. I could only look at her and hope she understood everything I couldn’t say.

She met my eyes. Something in her face softened, just for a heartbeat. Then it hardened, determined like never before.

“I have to face her alone.”

RUBY

Icounted the paces down the slope.

Old habits. Forty-one to the foot of the ridge. Sixty more across the meadow, through frost trampled to mud and stained dark in places I didn’t look at. Wolves and operatives stood frozen where her raised hand had stopped them, still bristling, still bleeding, watching me pass between them. Nobody moved. I doubted anyone even breathed.

Behind me on the ridge, Conan stood with his side bound in a strip of my cloak. I didn’t turn around. If I looked at him, I wasn’t sure I’d keep walking.

Nine paces from my grandmother, I stopped.

Up close, she was just as I remembered her. Small with gray hair. Her face soft and lined, her eyes the same gray as mine. What was different was the cloak. The full-length red cloak hung from her narrow shoulders and fell down to her feet. She’d tied the hood back and I could see her face.

And she could see mine.

“There you are.” She smiled, and her voice rose at the end, pleased, the way it did when I’d scored well on an assessment. “Let me look at you.”

Her sharp gaze traveled over me slowly, taking inventory, and stopped at the hem of my cloak. At the ragged edge where I’d cut a strip free for Conan’s wound.

“You’ve torn your cloak.” A small frown as she moved her gaze up to my hands. “And that isn’t your blood.”

“No.”

“Wolf’s?”

“Yes.”

Her lips thinned, just slightly. For eighteen years, that small tightening had been enough to make my stomach drop. I’d have done anything to smooth it away.

Now I just watched it.

“Why?” I asked her.

She tilted her head, the same way I did. How many of my mannerisms had I learned from her? “Why what, sweet girl? You’ll have to be more specific. I taught you better than that.”

“Mays, Ruby. Field rank, second class.” I repeated what I’d memorized after I read it in the cottage before my body gave out. “Last known location: Lockridge, north corridor.” I took one step closer. “Resolve.” I held her gaze. “Your seal. Your hand. Why?”

Behind her, a horse shifted its weight. Mervyn sat on his dark mount a few yards back, his gloved hands folded on the pommel, watching us with polite interest. As if this were a hearing and he was waiting for the verdict.

My grandmother sighed. It was the sound of displeasure she used for trainees who hadn’t learned quickly enough.

“You asked questions,” she said.

“That’s it? I asked questions?”