The Queen No Alpha Can Command

e up

h the total certainty of the dying, that the cup was poisoned and the hands were Rowan's. I f

rning, and the hands were Mira

er mother's-milk pallor gone grey, her trapped leg stretched out in front of her splinted with two pieces of oar and

w l

ered it by becoming brisk. "Finn carried you. I directed. I'm extremely good at directing, it

much. Finn was asleep against the wall with his wounded shoulder bound in strips of his own

The room decli

me," I

lways would, that one.

they had travelled. Yesterday they had been at my wrists. Now they stood in a branching net past my elbows, reaching, patient as ivy, for my shoulders. Where they r

was not there. On the road I had told myself I had the same two days - said it to keep my voice

," I

his eyes opened. Hun

id, "or I will, and

the black, let the poison out with the blood, pack it with ash and salt. It - mostly worked. When it worked." A pause that conta

do it bef

et. Like it found a wolf with no wolf to throw it off and just... sat down." He looked at her and then away. "She can move. She's been moving all night, she carried your w

till and very proud. "It's

u in the ri

le

shattered ankle, and that thing was in you, and the whole

ith enormous dignity, "th

-morning, because my vote o

ter, and a length of leather for my teeth. Mira positioned herself behind me and put both arms around me, hard, the splinted leg straight out in the dirt,

"Out loud. Don't stop

, and Finn opene

f the trap, of Bram's road, silver coming out of me in black strings. I remember deciding, with great clarity, at twenty-one, that I would not scream in front of these two children because they were watching me to learn what a person do

he world went strange a

ommand still sat on it exactly where Finn had said. Set. Seated. It was not a leash, like Finn's had been. It was a nail, driven in and bent

age would kill this girl. The nail would ri

of Bram's nail and I unbent it. A fraction at a time. The way you talk a frightened animal out of a corner. The way you do anything, I w

e out

all night, a candle other people could blow out - unlocked and folded forward over me, gasping, shaking, hers again all the way down, and she

go. It's - he was in my head, all this t

ere very far away and very tired. "Writ

wonder, looking at the

I did and dreamed with my eyes open, propped against the ferry-house wall with my b

at dusk, white to the lips, and said the thing that chan

just listen first. Th

what it did

he's got no left ear, he's got the brand. They followed the hounds' trail backwards. They followed your howl, Elara, from two valleys away, o

what,

was something else, something that had been growing

king Commands," he said. "That a wolf got told sta

- close enough to ask, far enough to run - two old exil

erything, but I got up, and I walked to the door of the ferry house on

answer