Mother's fingers are still pinching my jaw hard enough to bruise, and every face in the hall is turned on me, and my knees stay straight.
Marda: Say it. Say you trapped him. Say it or I drag you out of this hall by your hair.
Selba: Say it, you sneaky little bitch. Everybody's waiting.
And the bond still tugs in my chest toward a man who told this whole crowd he'd rather bed a dead body. That shame sits on me like a wet coat.
I turn my head and spit the blood out onto the stone between my feet.
Riona: No.
Riona: He smelled me and he ran. I won't kneel for a coward and I won't kneel for you.
Her hand comes across my face so hard my ear rings and the candles jump sideways.
Marda: You don't get to say no to me. You're a mouth that eats my food and a body I can sell.
Her hand knots into my curls and yanks my head back so far that the rafters swim.
Marda: I'll give you to the logging men up north. They'll take turns with you until people forget you ever had a name.
I believe her. In twenty-two years she hasn't told me one lie about the harm she'd do.
But there's a hot thing under the fear now, and it will not lie down.
Selba: And you two. Briar, I'll have your stall struck off the roll before the sun's up.
Selba: Get on your knees and tell this hall what my sister is, and maybe I let you keep your little stall.
Briar: Then I'll be the woman with no stall, and you'll still be a bitch in a nice dress.
Nico: Sell weeds from a pail if we have to. Do your worst.
Selba shoves Briar back into the candle stand and Briar's hip cracks on the wood, and three candles go down in a spray of hot wax.
Briar: Fuck. Ow. That all you've got?
Then Caelum is there, and the whole hall gets small around him.
Caelum: Enough. Nobody puts hands on her again tonight, and that includes her family.
Marda: This is family business, Alpha heir. She's mine, and I'll thank you to remember it.
Caelum: She's a pack wolf standing in my father's hall. I'm done asking nicely.
Caelum: Riona. Look at me, not at them.
Caelum: You don't owe this hall one word. Come with me.
My hand is shaking, but I put it in his, and his fingers close around mine like that's where they were always going to go.
Riona: I'm not apologizing. Not tonight. Not ever again.
Selba: Walk out that door and you're not my sister anymore!
Riona: Good.
We come out into the cold and Briar is limping, and Nico's arm is around her waist, and not one of us looks back at that hall.
Nico: So. Nice ceremony. Bread was good.
I laugh, and it comes out cracked and wrong, and then it stops being a laugh at all.
Briar: Hey. You're okay. You did good in there. You said no to all of them.
The Alpha House is lit up at the end of the road, and its door is the most frightening thing I've ever walked toward.
Caelum: My mother's inside. My father too. It's warm, there's food, and nobody in that house is going to hit you.
Thera: Who did this to her face?
Caelum: Her mother. Her sister. And a northern heir who's going to wish he'd kept his mouth shut.
I step over the threshold into the light, and down the dark road behind me, a rose-colored dress stands perfectly still and watches me go in.
Riona: Let her watch.