The Green Dress

POV: Elva

I sat in my car on level two with the engine off and my hands locked on the wheel. Nyra's strawberry ice cream was in a paper bag on the passenger seat, going soft.

Ilse picked up on the fourth ring. "Tell me he didn't see you."

"He saw me."

"Elva."

"He held the lift doors open with one finger." My voice came out thin. "He said my name like he'd been practicing it."

"Breathe. Then tell me exactly what he said. Word for word."

"I'm not doing this twice."

"Then do it once, here, and do it right."

I told her. When I finished, the line went quiet, and I heard a kettle whistling somewhere on her end.

"Harbor Table," she said. "Across the road from the hospital. Ten minutes. Eat something before you go back up there, or you'll be no use to that child."

"The night nurse only started yesterday."

"Then the nurse can live with you being late. Go."

The Harbor Table smelled of fried onions and salt air. Ilse had taken the booth by the window, back to the wall and eyes on the door, the way she used to sit in the servants' corner of the Alpha House. She slid a cup of tea across before I'd even sat down.

"I cook here now," she said. "Three years. The owner thinks I'm a widow with a temper, which is close enough."

"Ilse, I don't have time for the widow story."

"Then drink your tea. What's he going to do?"

"I don't know." I wrapped my hands around the cup. The wallet was in my coat pocket, and I could feel its edges against my hip. "He asked if I was Elva. He didn't look at my face while he asked. He looked at my hands."

"Your hands are still shaking."

"Because I'm angry with myself."

"Is that all?"

"No."

Ilse waited. She had always known how to wait longer than I could.

"Are you ready to see him again?" she asked.

"No."

"Then why did you come here instead of driving home?"

"Because he'd have followed me to the house." I glanced at the window, then back at her. "Ilse, does the photograph in my wallet mean anything to you?"

"It means you're carrying a picture of the child you won't tell anyone about."

"I'm not carrying it for anyone else."

"Does he know about Nyra?"

"No one in Blackthorn knows about Nyra." I pressed my palm flat on the table. "Only you, the doctors, and the nurse who's paid to keep her name out of other people's mouths."

Ilse looked past my shoulder toward the street and went still. "There's a grey van at the curb, Elva. It pulled in after you. Different plate. Different man in the driver's seat. He's not even pretending to read."

"I didn't see a van in the garage."

"Then somebody else has been watching you."

The bell over the entrance chimed.

Eriq came in first. He didn't scan the room the way I expected. He looked straight at our booth, and my breath caught. He wore the same black coat as in the elevator, and his face was the face from the gate, hard and certain, except his eyes looked tired.

Saskia came in after him with one hand on his arm. Then I saw the dress.

It was silk, cut close at the waist, the shade of river reeds in early spring. I had left that dress on the hook behind our bedroom door the morning I ran. I had folded it so carefully I nearly cried over the sleeves. Now she smoothed it over her hip with one wine-red fingernail and smiled at the room as if someone had cut it for her.

"Don't," Ilse said quietly.

"She's wearing my dress."

"She's wearing a dress. Look at your plate."

I didn't look at the plate. Kieran came next, walking carefully, his bandaged hand held against his chest. Behind him, a small boy with dark hair held his good hand. The boy turned toward the window, and the light from the street caught his eyes.

They were gold.

Not hazel, not brown. The same gold that flashed through Eriq's eyes when he was angry or frightened or lying. I had spent five years pretending I didn't love that color.

I stared at the tablecloth until the stitching blurred.

Eriq's mother came in behind them, silver pins in her hair. She said something sharp about the seating. Then Saskia spotted our booth and drifted toward it, slow as a cat.

Eriq caught her wrist before she got two steps.

"Don't start," he said.

She slipped free. "I'm only saying hello."

"Then say it from over there."

"Elva." Saskia tilted her head and smiled at me. "You look thinner. Or is it the human air that suits you? Eriq, isn't this the woman behind Lark Meridian? The one who's ignored every letter you've sent?"

"How would you know that?" Eriq asked.

"Darling, the whole market knows whose name is on the letterhead." Her smile wavered for half a breath. "Everyone said you'd be dead by now, you know. It's not as though anyone was waiting for you to come back."

"Sit down, Saskia," Eriq said.

The door chimed once more, and Lucan walked in with a leather folio under one arm and his spectacles in his hand. He went straight to Eriq and bent to speak low into his ear. I caught only the end.

"The midwife's ledger in human territory, Alpha. Two days west. A room above a fishmonger's, paid by the month in cash. Spring of the year she left. The mother signed with a seal."

"Which seal?" Eriq asked.

"The Blackthorn grain seal."

"Clean or blotted?"

"Clean. Pressed in ink, neat as anything."

"Then who witnessed it?"

"The clerk's name is smudged."

"Who had access to the original?"

"Three keys, Alpha. The steward, the grain master, and yours."

"I've never used mine."

"I know. But the key log doesn't record intentions. It records access." Lucan set the folio on the table, careful not to bump the spilled tea. "I'm telling you because the log bears three names. I won't pretend otherwise."

"Then find out which of the three was away from the manifest office that spring." Eriq's jaw tightened. "And who had a reason to help her."

"And if I find that one of them was your friend?"

"Then I'll be sorry for it after I've had the truth."

Lucan took off his spectacles and looked at them for a long moment. "You're accusing a man who has served this pack for thirty years, Alpha, with a smudged name and a clean seal."

"I'm accusing nobody yet. I'm asking." Eriq's voice dropped. "Clean seals don't copy themselves, Lucan. Somebody lied to me. I've only started to wonder who was sitting at my own table when they did it."

My fingers went numb. I had signed that ledger in my own hand, but I had never shown the midwife a seal. I had carried only a paper impression out of the house, folded in my sleeve, and I had never pressed it on anything. The original had stayed locked in the manifest office. A ledger like that needed the real seal set down in front of a clerk. Somebody with the real seal had made that mark for me, and I had never been told who.

Someone inside Blackthorn had opened a second door for me. And I had walked through it thinking I'd done it alone.

My elbow caught the cup. The cup hit the plate. The plate hit the floor and cracked, and the whole room turned toward the sound.

Ilse grabbed my wrist. "Sit."

"He heard it."

"He heard a plate."

But Eriq wasn't looking at the broken china. His head had turned, and then his eyes found mine across the room. Whatever he had been saying to Lucan disappeared from his face.

I stood. My chair scraped. My coat fell open. The wallet slipped from its pocket, struck the edge of the table and landed beside the spilled tea. It fell open, and the photograph lay face up: me at twenty, thin and pale, holding a newborn against my chest. I barely recognized the younger woman staring back at me.

Eriq came toward us. One step, then another. He didn't hurry.

"Is it true you run Lark Meridian?" he asked, stopping at the edge of the table.

His voice was steady. It was the steadiness that frightened me.

"Is that what the letters said?"

"You could have answered one of them."

"I had my reasons."

His eyes dropped to the photograph and stayed there. I wanted to snatch it off the table and tell him it meant nothing. Instead I stood still and watched the man I had trusted with everything search for a question he couldn't find. His fingers closed around the edge of the table, hard enough that the wood creaked. For the first time since I'd seen him again, Eriq looked completely lost.

He didn't speak. Neither did I. The silence stretched until I heard the kettle in the kitchen click off.

"Whose child is that?" he asked, barely loud enough to hear.

Behind him, Saskia's smile went thin and white at the edges.