DELIVERIES GO AROUND THE SIDE

Someone had strung lanterns along the whole length of the drive.

Silver and black, the Lycan colors, forty of them at least, swinging in the rain. Two men on ladders were fixing banners to the gateposts. A woman I didn't know was hauling a rolled carpet up the front steps by herself, swearing under her breath. Nobody stopped when the car pulled in. Nobody looked up. The estate went on with its work the way a river goes on around a stone.

Ezra came around to open my door and I was already out. He took a step back, as if I were something he'd have to be careful with, and I noticed that too.

A young man with a clipboard hurried over. Neat collar, new boots. "Sorry, sir, deliveries go around the side. Kitchen's entrance is by the—"

He was looking at me.

"She's not a delivery," Ezra said. "She's my—"

And he stopped.

I stood in the rain and watched my brother look for the word. *Sister* was right there. It had been right there for fifteen years. I watched him not pick it up.

"She's family," he said finally, and it came out flat, like a line he'd read off a card. "Tell Marta to bring her things up to the east guest room."

"I don't have any things," I said.

Ezra's jaw moved. The young man with the clipboard went pink and said *of course, miss*, and fled.

---

The east guest room was on the third floor, the one with the water stain on the ceiling shaped like a boot. It was where Mama used to put the cousins she didn't like. Someone had made the bed with a folded towel at the foot and one small bar of soap on the pillow, the way you would for a stranger on a short stay.

"Your old room is—" Ezra stood in the doorway. He hadn't come in. "Celeste needed the closet space, so we moved some things. We'll sort it out after the King leaves."

"This is fine, Alpha."

"Stop calling me that."

"Is there something else I should call you?"

He didn't answer. I sat down on the edge of the bed, and it was so soft that my whole body rebelled. I could feel the mattress trying to take me, and I stood up again. He saw that too. I watched him see it and file it away with the wrist and the car.

"Come down to the hall," he said. "Mama will want to see you."

That was the first time all day I'd felt anything close to gladness. I hated how quickly it came.

---

The great hall was chaos. Staff carried chairs, crates, flower stands. Someone was measuring the distance between two long tables with a piece of string. In the middle of it all, at the foot of the staircase, stood a girl in a white knit dress with her hair hanging loose over her shoulders, holding a basket in both hands.

Celeste.

She'd filled out since the last time I'd seen her, her cheeks softer, her color better. She had Mama's chin and Papa's dark eyes, and it had taken me two years of Harrow Ridge to understand that the eyes were the reason nobody ever questioned anything she said. She looked like a girl in a locket painting. She looked like someone you would want to protect.

"Wren." Her voice broke on it. "Oh, *Wren.*"

She set the basket down on the nearest chair. I could see what was in it from where I stood. Lotions. A scarf. Chocolate, the kind I used to like. A little pot of lip balm. She had brought me everything, because she hadn't known what I'd want.

"I've thought about you every single day," she said. "Every day. I know I don't deserve—I just want you to know I—" And then she was coming toward me with her arms out and her face already crumpling.

I stepped back.

I didn't mean to. My shoulders hit the door frame behind me and my wrist smacked the wood, and I had both hands up in front of my chest before I knew it. Celeste stopped dead. Her arms hung there in the air.

"Oh," she said, in a very small voice. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have—"

"Wren." Ezra's voice came from behind me, low and sharp. "She's been sick with worry for two years."

I opened my mouth to say that I hadn't meant it that way.

Then I closed it again. I could see where the sentence would go. I'd say *I didn't mean*, and he'd say *then what did you mean*, and I'd have to explain the wrist, and the car, and the laundry, and every explanation would come out sounding like a lie because it was so much bigger than anything they were ready to hear. I had learned that explaining had never once worked.

So I stood there and let it look like what it looked like.

Ezra's jaw set. Celeste wiped one eye with her sleeve and gave me a trembling, brave little smile, and somewhere behind us a lantern crashed and someone shouted.

Then I heard the cane.

I knew that walk before I saw her. I'd know it in a crowd of a thousand, the way you know your own handwriting: the tap of wood, a pause, the slower drag of a foot that had never healed right after the winter fever. Mama came around the corner on the arm of a nurse, wrapped in the blue shawl I'd knitted her when I was twelve. She was thinner. There was silver in her hair that hadn't been there.

"Mama."

It came out of me small, like I was eight. It was the first thing I'd said since the gate that I hadn't rehearsed.

Her eyes lit on me. Then they slid off me, past my shoulder, to the girl in the white dress.

"Cece, sweetheart. You haven't eaten anything, have you? The King's party arrives at six and you haven't sat down all day. Ezra, make her have something. And you've barely had any sleep." She touched Celeste's cheek. "Are you tired, darling?"

"I'm fine, Mama."

"You're not. You're pale."

Then, at last, Mama turned to me.

"Wren." She smiled. It was a kind smile. It was the smile you'd give the neighbor's child who'd wandered into the wrong garden. "It's good you're back."

That was all.

No arms. No hand on my face. She looked at my split lip and then looked quickly away, the way you look away from something rude. She didn't ask what happened in there. She didn't ask if I was hungry. I stood in front of my mother, and there was nothing behind her eyes that wanted to know.

*You've gotten used to disappointment*, I told myself. *This is what that's for.*

"Tonight," Mama said, and her fingers found the ring on her left hand and began turning it. "The dinner is very formal, dear. The Council will be there, and the King's people, and everyone will be looking at us. I was thinking it might be easier for you if you—"

"I'll stay upstairs," I said.

She blinked.

"I won't disturb the dinner."

The relief on her face was quick and genuine and it went through me like a nail. "Thank you, my sweet girl. I knew you'd understand."

She hadn't called me that in two years. She said it now for the wrong reason.

Ezra was watching me. I could feel his eyes on the side of my face. The old Wren would have planted her feet and demanded to know why. She'd have said, *I live here, Mama*, in a voice that carried across the hall. He was waiting for it, I realized. Part of him wanted it. It would have been easier for him to fight that girl than to look at this one.

I didn't give it to him.

I turned around and went up the stairs.

Behind me the house closed over the hole where I'd been. Somebody laughed. Somebody called for more chairs. Celeste's voice said *no, Mama, sit, I'll get it,* and the household went on setting a table for a king.

Nobody called me back. I hadn't expected anyone to.

What I hadn't expected was that I'd stop halfway up, and turn around anyway, just to check.