Chapter 12: Her Name Is Wynne

Hadrian found me in the east gallery an hour after the feast broke up.

The court had scattered in a storm of whispers.

Torin was at the other end of the corridor, arguing with two of the Regent's guards.

They were telling him a Warden could not stand outside his own wife's door.

Wynne slept in the bed beside me, one fist tucked under her chin.

I had not left her side since I carried her out.

Hadrian came in and shut the door behind him.

He did not touch his sword.

He stood at the foot of the bed and looked at his daughter, and I watched five years of his face come apart.

"Say it," I said.

"She's yours."

I had known it for hours, and the words still went through me.

"She's ours," he said. "Her name is Wynne. Wynne Kell. She was born at the second bell of the night you ran."

"She was born dead."

"No."

"The midwife did what I told her to do."

I rose from the chair without knowing I had.

"You paid a woman to tell me my baby was dead."

"I had her wrap a dead lamb in a sheet and put it in your arms."

I heard myself make a sound.

"You were half out of your mind with labor," he said. "You never unwrapped the sheet."

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