Chapter 20: Two Names on the Cake

The Gathering Hall had never looked like that.

Somebody had hung paper lanterns from the rafters, orange and blue, and wound ivy down every pillar.

The long table was set for the whole pack, two hundred people on benches, with the good plates out.

In the middle of it all, under a clean white cloth, sat the cake.

Rowan stood by it with her arms crossed.

"Nobody touches it," she said to the room. "Nobody breathes on it."

"Rowan," I said.

"I mean it, Brynn. People have been staring at it since noon."

The cook took the cloth by one corner.

She waited for Clara, who walked in on my mother's arm with her cane in her other hand.

She was in a green dress, and she had a flush in her cheeks that had nothing to do with fever.

"Ready?" the cook asked me.

"No," I said.

"Good. Nobody ever is."

She pulled the cloth away.

It was a tall yellow cake with chocolate frosting piped in thick ridges, and it leaned a little to the left.

Across the top, in dark blue letters, it said Brynn.

Beneath it, off to the side in letters the size of a thumbnail, it said and Clara.

The whole Hall went quiet.

I didn't say anything for a while.

Then Clara bumped my shoulder with hers.

"Is it smaller enough?" she said.

"It's an ant."

"I told you."

I began to laugh, and in the middle of laughing I realized that my face was wet.

My mother slipped something into my hand.

It was small and hard and warm from her pocket.

I opened my fingers and found Gran's moonstone ring.

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