Chapter 32 · At the Sovereign Gates

The gate slammed down, and the mountain rang like a struck bell.

I felt it right behind my back teeth. Snow broke off the parapet in a thick white sheet, blinding me. Behind us, Maya was screaming my name out the truck's shattered window.

I couldn't turn around. Not with twelve pack rifles leveled straight at my forehead.

"Ironcrest," Theron muttered. Dead flat. Like a curse he'd been saving up for months. "You actually brought us to Ironcrest."

"You wanna walk home? The border's that way." I jerked my chin through the sleet.

He scoffed, his boots planted in the frozen mud. His rifle never dropped an inch.

Ahead of us, the black iron portcullis had bitten a foot deep into the stone sill. Ancient iron, rusted at the hinges, spiked on the bottom like a shark's maw. Behind the bars, the keep road rose into suffocating fog. The only lights were wind-whipped torches guttering against the stone.

"Alpha." A rasp drifted down from the walkway. Dry. Brittle. "You're bleeding on my threshold."

Elder Voss. I recognized the bulk of him against the glare—hunched, thick-shouldered, beard plaited in the old northern knots.