Chapter 2

Wren's POV

No one moved to stop me, so I went on.

"Nightbell is a small white flower," I said. "A pinch of the dried root in warm milk will settle a pup who's cutting teeth. Given every day, it slows a little heart until it stops. The lips turn blue at the end."

Sera's hand had come down from her mouth. It lay in her lap, perfectly still.

"You wrote to our stillroom for it, Sera. Three winters running. For the nursery, you said, to settle a fretful pup. And when you came home for the harvest feasts, you went up and signed for it in the daybook yourself."

I said it the way I would read a dose back to Brannoch, slowly, so there could be no mistake. "I still have every one of those letters. I have the pages too."

"You keep the daybook?" Her voice came out thin. She stared at me as if the mortar had started talking back to the pestle. "Brannoch keeps the daybook."

"Brannoch's eyes failed two winters ago. I've kept it since."

The Luna set down her cup. She came down the two steps from her chair and bent over me, close enough that I could see the powder settled in the lines beside her mouth.

"Letters," she said. "Pages. You're kneeling in my hall with another wolf's pup in you, girl. The dead don't carry anything out of this house."

"It isn't in this house." I looked straight back at her. "Three days ago I gave it all to Nessa to carry to Mother Orla at the temple. If I don't see morning, one bundle goes to the King's magistrate, and the other goes to Luna Margery at Hollowbrook. I thought she might like to know how her grandpups died."

The Luna laughed. It was a soft, pitying sound, and it frightened me more than her threats had.

"Oh, my dear." She tipped my chin up with two cool fingers, gently, as if she wanted a better look at me. "Three years in this house, and you still trust a maid. Pell, bring her in."

Nessa came in with her eyes swollen and knelt beside me without looking at me. Her slippers were new, soft kid with a stitched toe, finer than anything I had ever been able to give her.

"Tell your lady what you told me," the Luna said.

"My lady didn't mean any harm, my Luna." Nessa was crying again. "Her mate's been gone so long, and she was lonely, and Tobin was always there at the stables. I begged her to stop."

"Nessa." I could barely see her through the blur. "In all the years since the barracks, when did I ever treat you badly?"

"I'm only telling the truth, my lady. It was always going to come out."

"And the parcel your lady gave you?" the Luna asked.

Nessa wiped her face with her wrist. "I took it straight to Mistress Pell."

Pell held out a bundle in oilcloth, tied with stillroom twine. Sera was off her chair before Pell's arm finished moving, and she pulled the bundle against her chest with both hands.

I looked at Nessa's slippers again.

"She promised you Adrian," I said. "A place in his rooms when he came home. And you believed that once I was dead for lying with a stable hand, the Luna would keep the one maid who knew better."

Nessa's eyes went to the Luna, not to me.

"Mother, it has to be tonight," Sera said, already picking at the knot. "She took a chill nursing at Hollowbrook, half my household saw her. A fever in the night, and Adrian rides home to a pyre instead of a scandal."

"Of course." The Luna smoothed her sleeve, watching my face for the moment it would break. "I thought you clever enough to take the road I offered you. Instead you thought you could bargain with Duskmere."

The twine gave. Papers slid across Sera's silk, and she went still.

"Mother." Her voice split down the middle. "These aren't mine."

They were last winter's laundry tallies, lye and tallow and goose grease, in my own hand.

Nessa threw herself flat. "That's the parcel she gave me, my Luna, I swear on the Moon I never opened it."

"It looked like old accounts," Pell said quickly. "I didn't think to—"

Sera came at me. She caught a fistful of my hair and struck me across the face, hard enough to snap my head sideways.

"Where are they? Tell me, you wolfless whore, or I'll have Mother cut that bastard out of you in front of this whole hall."

My knees had gone numb on the stone an hour ago, and they gave. I went down on my side with my cheek against the flags and copper filling my mouth. I put both palms flat on the floor and pushed myself up slowly, so they would all see me do it.

"You poisoned your husband's pups, Sera," I said, loud enough for the walls. "And you put me in that bed. If anyone here belongs in the Ashlands, it's you."

"Pell!" Sera's face had gone blotched under the powder. "Strike her mouth!"

"Seraphine. Sit down." The Luna hadn't moved. "You are a daughter of this house. You don't brawl on the floor with a wolfless girl. They're only letters. If you say they're forged, whom will the magistrate believe?"

Sera's eyes brightened. She went back to her chair, breathing hard.

I wiped my lip with the back of my hand. "The letters aren't all I have, Luna. I've worked in this house's stillroom for three years. I know what went out of it, and to whom. The King would find some of it very interesting."

The Luna went still. "What things?"

"Believe me or don't. You want Adrian free before he reaches the river, and you don't need me dead for that. Give me a Rejection, and I'll walk out of Duskmere with nothing."

"Walk out?" Sera laughed, high and ragged. "With that in your belly? And with nothing, she says. You came to us with a trunk of old bandages."

The Luna lifted a hand, and Sera stopped. "How did you get them out?"

"Nessa's parcel was to learn who Nessa belonged to." I didn't look at the girl on the floor beside me. "The real ones left days ago, with someone I trust. Turn out my room if you like. Turn out this hall."

I held the Luna's eyes. "And my father's field book. He drew every ford and pass in the Ashlands in it. You wanted it for Adrian's command the day you agreed to bind him to a wolfless orphan."

Sera drew a sharp breath. I kept my eyes on her mother.

"Give me the Rejection, and I'll leave Silverkeep for good. Whatever happens to me after that, Duskmere's hands are clean."

The Luna's gaze dropped to my belly. "And that? You mean to bear it?"

"How could I?" I put my hand over it. "Once I'm gone, I'll find someone to see to it."

It came out so easily that for a moment I believed it myself.

The Luna was quiet a long while. "And when the Pack hears that Adrian's mate packed her bags while he bled in the Ashlands? They'll say Duskmere drove her out. A soldier's faithful mate, three years waiting."

She looked at her daughter as she said it, and there was nothing warm in the look. Sera's fingers closed on the loose twine.

"No," the Luna said. "Duskmere will not carry that."

I sat back on my heels.

"Then the only way this comes out even for Duskmere," I said, "is if I die of a fever?"