THE SISTER I NEVER KNEW

I stepped out from behind the curtain before I could talk myself out of it.

"Hello, Naomi."

She jumped to her feet so fast that the bed creaked, and her hand flew to the pocket where she had hidden the vial. For one second her face was completely empty, as if someone had wiped away every thought she had, and I enjoyed that second more than I would like to admit.

"Liora," she breathed, and then the sweet smile slid back into place like a mask she had worn for years. "You scared me. I only came to check on you after the ceremony. I was so worried."

"At midnight, with a key, and without knocking?"

"I did not want to wake you."

"You said welcome back, sister." I walked slowly into the lamplight and sat down in the chair across from her, folding my hands in my lap the way a calm woman would. "I heard every word, Naomi. You can stop pretending."

For a long time she only looked at me, and I watched the sweetness drain out of her face one piece at a time until what remained was something sharp and cold that I did not recognize. It was strange to realize that I had raised this girl for eleven years and had never once met the person standing in front of me.

"Well," she said at last, and her voice was lower and flatter than I had ever heard it. "I suppose it was too much to hope that you would stay stupid."

I felt the words land, but I did not let my face show it. "So you remember the rope too."

"I remember everything." She began to walk slowly around my small room, touching the jars on my shelves as if she were visiting a museum. "I woke up this morning in my own bed, and for a few minutes I thought I had lost my mind. Then I saw you at breakfast looking so quiet and thoughtful, and I knew. You were never a good liar, Liora. You look at people like you are counting how many days they have left."

"Why did you do it?" I asked. "I gave you everything. I worked until my hands bled so you could have shoes and warm food and a roof over your head. I would have given you my life, and you hung me for it."

Naomi stopped and turned around, and for the first time something real flashed in her eyes. It looked like anger, but it was a very old anger, the kind that has been kept in the dark for so long that it has gone sour.

"You gave me everything?" she said softly. "You gave me hand me down dresses and a seat at the back of the temple. You gave me a place beside you, always beside you, in your shadow. Every person in this pack looked at the healer's kind daughter and said how lucky I was to have such a sister. Do you know what it is like to be loved only because of someone else?"

"I never asked you to stand in my shadow."

"You never asked me to leave it either." She smiled, and it made me shiver. "But I will not be there again. I have been given the chance to start over, and this time I know exactly how it ends. I will be Luna of Silverfang, Darian will be mine, and you will be nothing but a story the pack tells to frighten children."

"Then you will have to get past me first."

"Oh, sister." She pulled the black vial out of her pocket and held it up between two fingers. "I already have."

I did not move. "Go ahead and show it to the Elders, then. Take it to the pack house tonight and tell them where you found it."

Her smile flickered, just slightly. She pulled the stopper out and lifted the vial to her nose, and I saw the exact moment she understood. Her whole body went rigid, and her eyes shot up to meet mine.

"Sleep herbs and river water," I said quietly. "Moonroot burns very nicely, by the way."

The vial hit the floor and shattered, and the harmless liquid spread across the boards in a small, pale puddle. Naomi stood very still, breathing hard, and I realized with a thrill that I had finally frightened her.

Then, very slowly, she began to laugh.

"That was clever," she said. "Truly, it was. But you have made one small mistake, sister. You think that vial was the plan."

Something cold crawled up my spine.

"I put the first dose into Alpha Roderick's evening wine three weeks ago," she went on lightly, "and I have been adding a little more every night since then. Tonight is the strongest dose of all. By morning he will be gone, and it will not matter at all where that silly vial is, because there are other ways to blame an omega who rejected the Alpha in front of the whole pack."

I was on my feet before I knew I had moved.

"You would not."

"I already have." She smoothed her white cloak and walked past me toward the door, and she paused with one hand on the handle. "You had better run, Liora. He does not have much time left, and I would hate for you to miss the end."

I did not wait for her to finish. I grabbed my healer's satchel from the hook, stuffed it with every antidote I could reach, and ran out into the night with my hair tearing loose behind me. The pack house stood at the top of the hill, glowing with lamps, and my lungs were burning by the time I reached its doors.

The guards tried to stop me, but one look at the satchel and the panic on my face made them step aside. I took the stairs two at a time and burst through the door of the Alpha's bedchamber without knocking.

Old Roderick lay in the great carved bed, pale as paper, with his chest rising and falling in shallow, rattling breaths. A cup of dark wine sat half finished on the table beside him. There was no one else in the room.

I dropped to my knees beside him, grabbed the cup, and smelled it, and the bitter almond scent hit me so hard that I nearly gagged. Naomi had told me the truth. I tore open the satchel, pulled out the strongest antidote I had, and tipped it between his dry lips with a shaking hand.

"Please," I whispered. "Please, please stay with me."

His eyelids fluttered. A few terrible seconds passed, and then his weak fingers closed around my wrist with a strength I did not expect, and his cloudy eyes found my face.

"Elise's girl," he rasped.

My heart stopped. Elise was my mother's name, and no one in Silverfang had spoken it to me in years.

"Do not talk," I said. "Save your strength."

"Listen to me." His grip tightened until it hurt, and his voice dropped into a desperate whisper. "Your mother did not die of a fever, child. She was silenced for what she saw in the moon temple, and the one who did it has been standing at my shoulder for twenty years."

The candles flickered. Somewhere in the hall behind me, I heard the soft sound of footsteps coming closer.

"Who?" I breathed. "Alpha, who killed her?"

His lips moved, and he began to say a name.

Then the door crashed open behind me.