CHAPTER SEVEN THE SILVER AXE
T he silver axe had not been lifted in three generations.
Euan knew that because his father had told him so when he was a boy, standing in this very Grove with snow in his boots and pride too large for his young chest.
It had seemed different then.
Larger perhaps, but less cruel. The old trees had looked like guardians, not judges.
The black stone had been only a stone. The axe had hung above it dull and cold, a relic from a time men liked to frighten children with.
His father had placed a heavy hand on Euan’s shoulder and told him law kept the wolf from becoming no better than those who hunted them.
Euan had believed him.
Children believed a great many things before blood corrected them.
Now the axe gleamed in torchlight, and there was nothing dull about it.
The Grove Keeper stood before him with the old words still rolling out in a voice that had grown hoarse around the edges. Euan knelt on the black stone, wrists bound in ritual silver, head bowed because if he looked too long at any one face, he might see something that made this harder.
He did not deserve easier.
The silver cuffs burned steadily. Not enough to weaken him past endurance. Enough to remind the wolf of every chain Aldrich had locked around him, every silver hook, every time men in clean coats had waited for him to break.
His wolf hated the restraints.
Good.
Let it hate.
It was the wolf that had bitten Marion in fever, though Euan knew better than to place all blame there. A man carried responsibility for the beast in his blood. A chief carried more than that. He carried the cost when instinct became death.
A sound moved through the circle.
Not speech. Grief trying not to become speech.
Tavish stood near the first ring of trees, jaw clenched so tightly Euan could hear his teeth grind. Fergus stood beside him, one hand on the lad’s shoulder. Rhona’s eyes were red. She did not wipe them. Niall remained still near the far edge of the circle, both hands resting on his walking stick.
Too still.
Euan noticed it and dismissed it in the same breath.
He had no room left for suspicion. If the clan had enemies inside it, others would have to deal with them after dawn.
He had made what arrangements he could. Morna would protect Georgie.
Tavish would take her north if the castle fell.
Fergus would stand with Rhona until a new chief rose or the old blood scattered into the mountains.
The thought should have cut him.
It did not.
Perhaps there was only so much a heart could take before it became tired of bleeding.
Aodh lifted his hand, and two warriors came forward.
They did not meet Euan’s eyes as they adjusted the old binding at his wrists and pulled the chain through the iron ring set in the stone.
One of them was barely older than Georgie might be in another decade.
His hands shook so badly the chain clicked against the ring.
Euan looked at him.
The young warrior went white.
“Steady,” Euan said quietly.
The lad swallowed. “Forgive me, Chief.”
“There is nothing to forgive.”
That was almost funny, and Euan would have laughed if any part of him remembered how.
The chain was secured.
There was no need for it. No one believed he would run. The chain was ritual. Symbol. Law liked symbols. It made murder easier when dressed properly.
Aodh came closer and crouched in front of him with difficulty. Old knees cracked. Under any other sky Euan would have offered a hand and earned a curse for his trouble.
The old man reached out and touched Euan’s brow.
“Last chance,” he murmured, too low for most to hear.
Euan’s eyes met his. “No.”
“There are those who would follow if you walked from this place.”
“I know.”
“Then know this too. The law has broken good men before. It need not break you.”
Euan looked past him to the axe.
“I broke before I came here.”
Aodh’s face tightened. “You loved her.”
The words went through Euan as if they had teeth.
“Aye,” he said.
“You did not mean to harm her.”
“No.”
“And if she stood here now, she would strike you across the face for this.”
Something flickered in Euan’s chest. Not amusement. Not hope. Pain with a shape almost like memory.
“Aye,” he said again.
“Then perhaps you should fear her more than the Grove.”
Euan closed his eyes.
Marion would be furious. God, she would be magnificent in it. Her chin lifted, eyes bright, hands planted on her hips. She would call him arrogant. She would accuse him of turning guilt into a crown and wearing it badly. She would tell him that deciding for her, even in death, was still deciding.
He knew her too well.
He had learned her too late.
When he opened his eyes, Aodh was still watching him.
“She is not here,” Euan said.
The old man looked as if he might argue, then he slowly rose.
“No,” Aodh said. “She is not.”
The formal recitation resumed.
Euan let the words pass through him.
Claimed mate.
Unlawful death.
Chief’s debt.
Life returned.
Blood cleansed.
The clan shall stand.
Such clean words. Such careful words. None of them smelled like Marion’s hair after rain.
None of them sounded like Georgie laughing because Euan had not known how to eat a sugared oatcake without getting honey on his fingers.
None of them accounted for the fact that one woman’s absence had made the whole world feel badly made.
His gaze moved once, unwillingly, to the path leading into the Grove.
Empty.
Of course.
A strange warmth stirred beneath his ribs again.
Euan’s hands tightened.
No.
He would not do that to himself.
Grief had tricks. Poison had tricks. The bond, wounded and hollow, had worse ones.
It would give him echoes now. It would make him think he smelled lavender or heard Marion’s voice telling him not to be a fool.
If he let himself believe even one breath of it, the axe would become mercy and the waiting would become torture.
So he shut it out.
Or tried.
Beyond the tree line, somewhere far off, something moved.
Euan lifted his head slightly.
A wolf might not have noticed. A man would not have. But he was both, for a little while longer, and his senses caught the faintest wrongness in the air.
Iron.
Horse sweat.
Silver ash.
His eyes narrowed.
At the far side of the Grove, Niall shifted almost imperceptibly, turning his head toward the same patch of dark trees.
So he had heard it too.
Aodh paused. “Chief?”
Euan said nothing.
There it was again. A creak of leather. A muffled snort quickly silenced. Men hiding badly, but not badly enough for grieving wolves too lost in ceremony to notice.
Crown.
A cold, hard clarity entered him.
Aldrich.
Even now.
Even here.
A bitter laugh almost rose in his throat. He had brought the clan to a sacred death, and the Crown had followed the scent like carrion birds.
No, not followed.
Expected.
Someone had known.
Euan’s gaze moved again to Niall.
The elder’s face had gone blank, but his hand tightened on the head of his stick.
There would be no time.
If Euan shouted warning now, the Grove would erupt. The execution would halt. Warriors would scatter. The Crown might strike from hiding with silver smoke and fire. Georgie was at the castle. Marion’s body was at the castle. Morna was there. If chaos began here, what force guarded them?
His instincts tore at him.
Live, the wolf demanded.
Fight.
The chain bit into his wrists as his body moved before his mind allowed it. Silver burned. He looked down at the cuffs, then at the axe.
A chief’s life belonged to the clan.
So did his death.
If the Crown attacked after the sentence, his warriors would at least be free of divided duty. They would fight. Fergus would lead until Rhona named another. Tavish would remember the northern pass. Morna would keep Georgie alive.
If he disrupted the law now, if he made it about survival, some would hesitate. Some would think him afraid at the last breath.
Euan did not fear death.
He feared leaving the clan leaderless in the breath before war.
Aodh came closer. “What is it?”
Euan lowered his voice. “Crown men beyond the east trees.”
The old man’s face did not change, but his scent sharpened with alarm.
“How many?”
“Enough.”
Aodh’s eyes flickered toward the warriors.
“Do not break the circle,” Euan said.
Aodh stared at him. “You would finish this knowing they wait?”
“I would finish this so the clan knows where duty lies when they strike.”
“That is madness.”
“No,” Euan said, and for the first time his voice carried enough that the nearest wolves turned. “It is command.”
Aodh flinched as if struck.
Tavish took a step forward. Fergus caught him.
Euan looked at him then, really looked. “When it begins, you take the child north if the castle is breached.”
Tavish’s face twisted. “No.”
“That was not a request.”
“You are still chief,” Tavish said, voice shaking with fury. “And a chief can change his bloody mind.”
A murmur went through the circle.
Niall’s mouth tightened.
Rhona stepped forward. “Euan, if Crown men are here, the law can wait.”
“The Crown has made us wait generations to breathe free,” Niall said sharply. “If the chief has invoked law, the law must stand. We cannot bend ancient blood because humans skulk in trees.”
Fergus turned on him with a growl. “Careful, elder.”
Niall lifted his chin. “I am careful. That is why some of us still honor what keeps us from becoming beasts.”
Euan’s wolf surged so violently the chain rattled.
There was a moment, only a moment, when he imagined breaking the cuffs, crossing the circle and closing his hand around Niall’s throat.
Then the hollow place where Marion had been opened inside him again.
He exhaled.
“No more,” Euan said.
The circle quieted.
He looked to Aodh. “Finish.”
Rhona made a broken sound. “Euan.”
He could not look at her.
“Finish,” he said again.
Aodh stood frozen, then turned toward the iron frame where the axe hung.
The old man’s hands shook when he reached for it.
Euan bowed his head.
The silver blade slid from its resting hooks with a sound like ice cracking.
The whole Grove seemed to draw one breath.
Euan closed his eyes and let his final thoughts go where they had gone all morning, where they would go until thought itself ended.
Marion.
Her stubborn mouth.
Her tired hands.
The first time she had looked at him without fear after seeing the beast in him. Not without caution, no. Marion was too sensible for that. But without disgust.
He wished he had told her that she had saved him before she healed a single wound.
He wished he had kissed her in daylight.
He wished he had heard her laugh one more time without pain near it.
And Georgie.
Little terror.
He hoped she would remember more than blood. He hoped she would remember him pretending offense when she called his wolf shaggy. He hoped she would grow wild and clever and impossible to frighten, like her mother.
Aodh’s voice came from above him, thick with grief.
“For the death of a claimed mate, for blood taken without lawful return, for a chief’s debt to the heart he failed, the Grove receives what is owed.”
Euan opened his eyes.
The sky beyond the trees had begun to pale.
Dawn.
The axe rose.
At the edge of hearing, far beyond the east ridge, something thundered through the snow.
Euan’s heart stopped for half a breath.
Not horse.
Not man.
Wolf.
The sound came again, faster than any wolf he knew.
His head lifted.
Aodh’s grip tightened on the axe.
The blade hung above him, bright with cold morning light.
Then the forest exploded.