Chapter 18: Say Your Name

My mother walked up the aisle with her chin high and her kerchief tied tight.

Thirteen women walked behind her, in coats and work boots, and none of them looked at the floor.

I could not breathe for looking at her.

The Ridgeline Alpha's smile slipped.

"The Hollow is sealed," he said. "Who let them out?"

"Nobody," my mother said. "We opened our own gate."

She stopped below the dais and addressed the envoy, not the King.

"I understand there is a book of names," she said. "I understand we are being argued over in it."

"A ledger is kept of every offering," the envoy said carefully.

"Then I'd like to be entered in it properly."

"Madam?"

"In my own voice," my mother said.

"I have not said my name aloud in eleven years.

"I would like to say it where it can be written down."

Nobody in the great hall made a sound.

I gripped Garrick's sleeve and held on.

She said her name.

I had not heard it from her mouth since I was thirteen.

It went through me, plain and ordinary and entirely hers.

The envoy took up a pen.

"Next," my mother said.

A woman stepped forward from the line, very thin, with a long silver braid.

She said her name, and then the name of the pack that had sent her, and the year.

The next woman did the same.

By the fourth, the Ridgeline Alpha had stopped looking at the room and was looking at his cane.

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