Chapter 103

Malachi

My brother’s son came toward me through the moonlight, and he was burning.

That was the only word for it. Knox was black, as black as Nathaniel’s wolf had been, but every hair along his back and shoulders was tipped with silver light, and it moved on him like wind through grass. It was pouring into him from somewhere behind him. I didn’t have to look to know where.

The silver wolf stood thirty yards back with her legs braced and her head low. She was the source of it. I could see the light leaving her and going into him in one steady stream.

Cressida had told me this was the point. Kill the boy, and the light had nowhere to go.

She had told me a great many things over the years.

***

Cressida’s men had walked Sloane out of the dark at dusk, limping, in my coat from the hook by the door and a collar too tight, her lip split where she must have fought them. She looked at me once across the stones they were setting in the ground a