Chapter 13: The Empty Cradle

My son was screaming when I reached the nursery.

I took him out of the cradle and held him against my shoulder.

My wolf pushed up under my ribs so hard that my teeth ached.

The second cradle stood empty, with its blanket thrown back.

Two guards sat against the wall, and the healer was pressing a cloth to the head of the younger one.

"He's breathing," she said. "They were struck from behind."

"Who was on the door tonight?" the king asked from the threshold.

"Both of them, Majesty," the older guard said thickly. "And the night nurse, from the village."

"Where is she?"

"I don't know."

Nobody had thought to count her.

She was a quiet woman with rough hands who had sat by the cradles every night since we came.

Twice she had asked me whether I wanted the window shut.

I had liked her.

Dalton stood in the doorway behind the king.

He had run the whole way with me, and I had not told him to stop.

He didn't come in.

"Miriam," he said. "Let me help."

"Stay at the door," I said.

I handed my son to the healer, and I shut my eyes, and I let her come.

It was easier than it had been the night before.

The bones in my back lengthened, and the nursery rushed at me in smell.

Milk, and warm blankets.

My own scent, the boy's, and under them my daughter's, small and sweet and precisely where the cradle was.

Then the others.

Pine soap, a smell I had known since I was a child, and it belonged to a thin old man with folded hands.

Under it came wet wool, and lye, and the nurse.

I followed them out of the nursery on four feet.

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