تسجيل الدخولChapter 85 — Corinne's POV"It's the front page, madam. And the second. And I'm afraid the third."I laid the morning papers on Mrs. Blackthorn's breakfast table in a tidy, symmetrical fan, as I had every morning for four years, and I did not look at the headlines. I had read them in the hall. *Heir Apparent Weeps at Business Breakfast. A Blackthorn Unravels. Who Is the Father?* The last one was from the *Courier,* the same paper that had once printed Mr. Damon's own smear, which struck me as a kind of justice, though I would never have said so aloud."Thank you, Corinne.""Shall I take them away?""Leave them." Mrs. Blackthorn did not touch her tea. She sat very upright, as she always did, in a gown the color of wet slate, with her pearls in place and her hands folded in her lap. She looked, I thought, exactly as she had looked the morning after her husband's funeral. "Is my son awake?""Not yet, madam. The doctor gave him something at midnight.""And Patricia?""In the nursery.""As
Chapter 84 — Helena's POV"The car is waiting, madam. Mr. Damon is already in it." Corinne paused, with the careful delicacy of a woman reporting weather. "He's singing.""Singing what?""I believe it's a hymn. Though not, I think, the right words."I closed my eyes for the length of one slow breath, and then I opened them, and picked up my gloves. It was a quarter to ten in the morning. The Eastern District Business Breakfast began at ten, in the great glass dining room of the Granville Club, and every Alpha and merchant of consequence between the river and the hills would be present. Five weeks ago, I would have looked forward to it. It was, after all, the sort of occasion at which a Blackthorn was expected to be seen, to be gracious, and to be, above all else, *whole.*I had not slept since the letter."Has he eaten?""He declined breakfast, madam. He took a decanter into the garden at seven.""Then he'll be in a state.""He's in a state," Corinne agreed gravely, and followed me d
Chapter 83 — Ofiura's POV"No, no, no. You have to guess with the *string.*""I don't want to guess with the string.""It's a *game,* Mom." Tessa held up a spool of pink ribbon in one fist like a sacred relic. "You unroll as much as you think goes around her belly. Closest one wins a prize.""What's the prize?""Honor.""I'd prefer a biscuit.""There are *two* prizes. Honor and a biscuit." Tessa flung out the ribbon with a flourish, and it unspooled across my mother's living room carpet in a long, fluttering pink streak. "Margaret. You're up."Mrs. Alder, in the best armchair with Pudding in her lap and a paper crown on her white hair that Tessa had made her wear, took the end of the ribbon in a wrinkled hand and considered me with narrowed, professional eyes."Stand up, dear. Turn to the side.""I feel like a melon at a market.""You look like a very *distinguished* melon." She measured, and snipped, and held up a length of ribbon with great confidence. "Thirty-one inches.""That's f
Chapter 82 — Ofiura's POV"This tribunal finds," said the Arbiter, "that the declaration of formal protection was filed over the explicit and repeated refusal of the protected party."A sound went through the chamber, a long, low, collective breath, like wind through dry grass. I did not move. I sat with my hands locked so tightly in my lap that my fingers had gone numb, and I looked at the carved wolf above the old man's head and listened to every word as though it were being written on my bones."It further finds," he continued, in the same dry, even voice, "that the danger invoked as justification was not, in the sense the Charter intends, immediate. A hearing set nine days hence is a process. It is not an emergency."Beside me, Judith did not so much as twitch. But I felt her go very still, the careful, held stillness of a woman who has waited thirty years for a sentence and is afraid to breathe on it."However."The word dropped like a stone."The tribunal is mindful that the hei
Chapter 81 — Ofiura's POV"All rise for the Tribunal of the Alpha Council."The words rang through the stone chamber like a bell struck underwater, and two hundred people stood at once in a rustle of wool and silk. I stood with them, my hand gripping the edge of the long oak table, my grandmother's silver comb pressed cold against my scalp. Beside me, Judith Marlowe rose with the easy, loose-limbed calm of a woman who had stood in rooms like this for thirty-seven years and had never once been impressed by them."Breathe," she murmured, without moving her lips."I am.""You're doing it very quietly. Do it a little more convincingly."I almost laughed. It was a small, helpful, unexpected thing, and I held onto it as the tribunal filed in, three figures in long gray robes, taking their seats on the high bench beneath a vast carved wolf. The Arbiter in the center was an old man with a face like a folded letter. He lowered himself into his chair, adjusted his spectacles, and surveyed the c
"State your full name for the record, please.""Ofiura Voss.""Louder.""*Ofiura Voss.*""No, no, no." Judith Marlowe lifted her glasses to her forehead with a weary hand. "You sound like a woman apologizing for a parking ticket. This is a *tribunal,* Miss Voss. Say it like you own the room.""I don't own the room.""Then say it like you're *renting* it at a very good price and intend to stay."Tessa, perched on a kitchen chair at the far end of my mother's table with a ladle in one hand as a gavel and a dish towel draped over her shoulders as judicial robes, made a noise like a cat being stepped on."That," she said, "was *brilliant.*""Thank you, Your Honor.""I'm not Your Honor. I'm Alpha Thornwood." She lowered her voice to a lofty rumble. "*Miss Voss. Is it not true that you have no pack, no seat, and no standing whatsoever?*""It is not true.""*Is it not true that you are an unmarried woman of dubious reputation?*""That's a leading question," I said."*Objection!*" Mrs. Alder,







