Alle Kapitel von The Phoenix Wolf's Awakening : Kapitel 131 – Kapitel 138

Mona's POVThe cough came back on a Tuesday, and I have never trusted a Tuesday since.I was sitting on the low wall of the school yard watching little Mona practice her candle-flame — she was twelve now, and her palm-fires were the size of a walnut and steady enough to hold for a count of sixty — when the runner came for me. He was one of ours. He was not out of breath, which is how I knew it was serious. Runners who are out of breath carry small emergencies. Runners who are calm carry big ones. He walked up to me, quiet, and he said, "My Queen. Alpha Cassian sent me. Your husband was in his study and started coughing and did not stop. He is in your bedroom now. The healer is with him." I stood up. My knees complained. I did not feel them. I looked at little Mona across the yard. She had felt something in me. She was already coming toward me. I said to her, gently as I could, "Little bird. I have to go home to Grandda. He is not feeling well." She said, "Should I come?" I said, "Not

Mona's POVThe morning after the funeral, I woke up and I reached for him before I remembered, and that was how the first year began.My hand crossed the sheet on his side of the bed. My hand met linen and nothing else. I lay very still for a long time with my palm pressed to the cool empty place where his shoulder used to be. The sun was already up. The sun should have known. The birds outside the window should have known. Nothing outside had noticed. That was the cruelest thing about that first morning — the world had not adjusted itself to match the size of what was missing. I sat up slowly. I did not weep. My eyes had been dry since I had cried into Rose's shoulder at the graveside. I got out of bed. I dressed myself. I combed my hair with the wooden comb — his comb, still on the washstand — and then I sat with it in my hand for a moment, holding the small chip Cassian had put in it as a toddler, and I did not put it down. I carried it into the sitting room. I set it on the small

Mona's POVVesna's letter came in early spring, and it was the first thing that had made me set down my tea in months.The paper was plain. Her handwriting had settled into the small careful shape it had taken on years ago. Mona. Would you allow me to come and see you? Not for school business. Not for the councillor. Only for tea. It has been a long time. I understand if you say no. — V. I read it twice. Sophie was sitting across from me at my kitchen table, buttering bread. She saw my face. She said, "Who is it from?" I said, "Vesna." Sophie set the knife down. She said, "What does she want?" I said, "Tea." Sophie was quiet a moment. Then she said, small, "You should say yes." I said, "I know I should." She said, "Are you going to?" I said, "Yes." I did not need to think about it long. I owed Vesna a cup of tea. Not because she deserved it — deserving was not the shape of what was between us. Because we had built something over the years, quietly, letter by letter, small step by smal

Mona's POVI got out of bed at first light the morning after we buried Sophie, and I did not tell anyone I was going out.I dressed slowly. My hands were stiff from the cold. I pulled on the long grey walking cloak Derek had given me on my sixtieth birthday — heavy wool, deep pockets, a hood that fell all the way to my eyebrows if I wanted it to. I did not want the hood. I put my hair back with a plain leather cord. I laced my boots. I stood in front of the small mirror on my washstand for a moment and I looked at the old woman looking back at me. Seventy. My hair was the color of ash now. There were lines at my mouth I had not earned in a single year. My eyes were the same eyes I had had at seventeen in a Silver Moon kitchen, and I could not decide whether that was a kindness or a cruelty. I turned away from the mirror. I picked up Derek's wooden comb from the small table by the fireplace where it had lived for years. I put it in the deep pocket of my cloak. I do not know why. I only