Chapter 9
Astrid was sitting against the mounting block, her white silk gown soaked in her own vomit and blood. Her warrior's braid was torn free, her fingernails bloody where she had shredded her own skin. When she saw Ronald, she did not look at him with love or pride; she looked at him with the wide, hollow eyes of a beast that had gone completely mad with pain.
"Ronald..." she wept, clawing at his knee as he stumbled past. "My father's pack... the scouts say the northern pass is tearing open... the earth is swallowing the outposts..."
Ronald kicked her hand away.
He didn't care about Astrid. He didn't care about her father’s three hundred lancers. He cared only about the boundary line.
"Elder Orson!" Ronald roared, scanning the burning yard.
Orson was leaning against the stone well, clutching his throat, his face black with burst capillaries.
"The vanguard!" Ronald shouted, grabbing the old man by his torn velvet tunic and hauling him upright. "Where are the border sentinels? Where are the fast riders?"
"They... they saw the boundary stones fall," Orson gasped, blood bubbling at the corner of his lips. "They thought... we thought the girl had brought a horde of rogues to sack the valley. Commander Kael took forty mounted warriors... the heavy cavalry... silver lances..."
Ronald’s blood went freezing cold. "Where did he go, Orson? WHERE DID HE GO?"
"Into the Outlands," Orson whispered, pointing a trembling, blackened finger toward the northern pass. "To hunt her down. To cut her throat before she could lead an army across the river. He swore he would bring her head back on a spear."
"No," Ronald breathed. "No, no, no—"
He turned his gaze toward the northern horizon.
Beyond the dead pines, beyond the shattered perimeter trench, the sky above the Abyssal Verge was no longer dark.
It was blazing.
Not with the diseased red glow of the blood moon, and not with the warm gold of a rising sun.
A pillar of pure, sovereign silver fire shot straight into the stratosphere, miles into the night sky, splitting the storm clouds with the terrible authority of an unchained god. The light was so brilliant, so immaculate and terrifyingly pure, that it cast razor-sharp shadows across the burning courtyard of the Sunriver Pack.
The earth beneath Ronald's boots did not shake this time.
It held perfectly, dreadfully still.
Ronald looked up at the towering pillar of silver light, his knees shaking violently, the brass words of the First Alpha burning behind his eyelids.
Forty mounted warriors. Armed with silver lances, riding out into the dead wasteland to drag a weeping, broken pariah back in chains.
They thought they were hunting a wolfless stray.
They were riding straight toward their executioner.
