Chapter 21: Silver

By midnight we had carried Bridie to the palace infirmary.

I had not let go of her hand in ten hours.

The Crown's physician stood on the other side of the narrow bed with two fingers on her throat.

"Your warmth is a candle, Miss Ashworth," he said quietly. "She needs a furnace."

"I don't know how to make one."

"No. I don't think anyone does."

Corwin stood at the foot of the bed with his arms folded.

He had not left the room, and he had not sat down.

At two in the morning, Bridie's pulse stumbled.

I felt it through her wrist, one beat, and then a gap, and then another, too slow.

"Linnet," the physician said.

"I know."

My wolf rose.

I had not called her.

She came up through my ribs on her own, hot and certain, and my bones began to ache.

"Corwin."

"I'm here."

"I think she's coming."

He turned his back at once and faced the door, and I loved him for it.

It hurt.

My spine bent and my hands left my sister's, and the borrowed gown tore at the shoulder.

I dropped to the floor on four legs that were no longer mine.

Then it did not hurt at all.

The room was suddenly very clear.

I could smell every medicine in the cabinet and the physician's tobacco.

I could smell Corwin's pine and iron across the room, and Bridie's thin, sweet, failing scent in the bed.

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