Chapter 7: The Night Before

Lenora lived through the night.

Hester Quill came up to the Wolf Tower at midnight to tell me so.

Her spectacles were pushed up into her grey hair and her shawl was on crooked.

"The physicians gave her the old poppy draught," she said. "It eases the pain and nothing else."

She took a breath.

"Lucian asked for you three times. I told him you were asleep."

"Was he angry?"

"He looked like a boy who has dropped something from a high window."

She patted my arm and went down the stair, and I bolted the door behind her.

Ronan sat on the floor by the hearth, with his back against the bed and his long legs crossed at the ankle.

"You should have said yes to the bowl," he said.

I stared at him.

"Not to him. For her."

He shrugged one shoulder.

"That was a dying woman," he said. "I don't like what she's part of, but I know what the end looks like."

"If I give her a bowl, he'll bleed me every night until the moon."

"I wasn't saying do it. I was saying you're allowed to hate it."

I sat down across from him, closer than I meant to, and drew my mother's letter from my sleeve.

"It's the night before the moon," I said.

"So it is."

The wax was red, a little cracked.

My thumb shook as I broke it.

My mother's handwriting ran across the page in a long slant.

I read it out loud so that my voice would stop my hands from shaking.

My dear Isobel.

If you are reading this, the seals are almost done, and you are not the child I left behind.

I took your power away so they would not hunt you the way they hunted me.

I did it knowing it would cost you. Forgive me, if you can.

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