Chapter 24: Sea Thrift

We came into Highmark on Thursday under a low, white sky.

I had sat through the whole crossing with Biscuit on my lap and my hands in his fur.

I did not ask what the courtyard held.

Alaric did not offer.

He walked beside me through the castle gate, nervous, and kept his hands in his pockets.

The guards at the gate saluted me.

They saluted me as the Alpha of Willowmere, with the sash, and not as anything else.

I noticed that they had been told.

We crossed the great court and turned along the east wall.

I stopped.

The lavender bed was gone.

In its place ran a long bed of dark, turned earth, edged with grey beach stones.

Rows of small green rosettes pushed up out of it, hardy and flat to the ground, with the frost still white on their leaves.

I knew them at once.

It was sea thrift.

It grew on every cliff on Willowmere.

It was the first flower I had ever picked.

"Where did you get it?" I said.

"The gardener found the seed in the stores," Alaric said. "In a paper packet with a label."

He took the packet from his pocket and gave it to me.

The writing on the paper was small, upright and silver-black.

It said, For L. Plant by the east wall. She will say it is pretty. It is only salt and wind and she will mean it.

I read it twice.

"Your mother," I said.

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