Chapter Eighteen: The Blade That Wept

Wren doesn't rush the blade, she talks the woman down and puts her own hand over the thread and feels it, cold as wire under the blood, and understands the size of her mistake: emptying the holdfast didn't FREE anyone, it opened a door, and she marched forty of the Warden's threads through her own gate. Bael says the clean answer out loud, cast Odalie out or let him end it, the exact throwing-away Roderic warned of, and Wren refuses to be the kind of pack that survives by discarding its own. But the thread is a real thing, and a thing can be cut, and the one wolf who knows how it's tied is Roderic, who is at that moment the Warden's mouth. Comment if you'd have trusted Wren's mercy, and add to library.