Chapter 22: What the Cure Cost

"Say it again," I said.

Mother stayed on her knees on the stone.

"Settled," she repeated. "Between your father and the Alpha."

"What was?"

"You."

Corwin had not moved from the chair by the bed.

He did not speak, and he did not take his eyes off her.

"Start with the night I turned twenty-one," I said.

Mother twisted her gloves.

"Bridie was nineteen. She had been losing weight since the spring, and we told her it was growing."

"The wasting had begun. Your father took her to every physician in the capital."

"Each one told us the same thing."

"Only the Southbay house had a cure, and the Alpha would not sell it for money."

On the bed, Bridie's eyelids moved.

I saw it and said nothing.

"He sits on the Registry board," Mother said.

"He had seen the Rite roll before the letter went out. He knew who the King's match was."

"He told your father the match was worth more to him than all we owned."

"The Crown's mate, bound to the Southbay house. No King would sit easy beside that."

"So the decline," I said.

"It went to the Registry by morning. Your father let me read it once, and I did not argue."

She said it without shame, and the lack of shame was the hardest part.

"And Garrick?"

"The engagement was your father's design. A betrothed girl waits."

"She doesn't look for other husbands, and no one asks why she has never been taken."

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