Chapter 14: The Garden Gate

I took my hand off my sister's back.

"Yvaine, no," Melisande said, and her breath caught.

I stood up.

The coughing started again behind me, and I made myself walk across the room.

"Yvaine." My mother stepped into the doorway and blocked it. "Where do you think you are going?"

"Out."

"You can't. Look at her."

"I am looking at her."

"She is your sister!"

"She is," I said. "And you are my mother, and you both looked at me for twenty-two years and saw a hand."

My mother's face crumpled.

"It was not like that."

"Then what was it like?"

"We loved you." She was crying openly now, with her candle tipping wax onto her knuckles. "We love you. We only needed you to stay."

"You needed me to stay and not ask why."

"Yes," my father said quietly behind her. "That too."

I looked at him.

He did not look away this time, and I almost wished he had.

"I was five when you agreed to give me to the Reinhards," I said. "Was I at least asleep?"

"You were in the garden."

"What did you do, Father? Shake the Alpha's hand over my head?"

"Yvaine."

"I want to know."

He closed his eyes.

"Yes," he said. "Over your head."

The air in the room was very thin.

On the bed Melisande was crying and coughing at once, and every cough sounded worse than the last.

"Yvaine, please," she said. "I'll do anything. Please."

I did not turn around.

If I had, I would have gone back to her.

I knew that about myself the way I knew my own name.

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