Chapter 23: The Lattice Holds

The lattice on the first pie did not break.

I stood at the kitchen table at dawn on my wedding day and looked at it for a long time.

Thirty strips of pastry, woven over and under, sat golden on a bed of blackberries.

Every one of them was whole.

"It's beautiful," said Sorcha, behind me. "Why are you glaring at it?"

"I'm waiting for it to snap."

"It's baked."

"It snapped the night Ronan walked in," I said. "That's how this whole thing started."

"Then it's got a lot to answer for." She put a flour-dusted arm around my shoulders. "And it's holding."

Garth banged through the back door with a crate of onions on each shoulder.

"I put forty gold marks on you burning the hall down," he said. "I'd like you to know that I've reconsidered."

"Reconsidered how?"

"I'm doubling it. Out of respect."

I threw a dishcloth at him.

He ducked it, grinning, and dropped the crates at my feet.

By noon, the hall was full of tables.

The long benches of Blood Moon were laid end to end, and beyond them the long trestles Sorcha had borrowed from the Silver Dawn pack house.

There was a head table on the dais, white-clothed and set for six.

The Seer had claimed the place nearest the fire.

She was eating a roll she had stolen from the rack and daring anyone to say a word.

I put on a plain green dress that the Blood Moon seamstresses had sewn in a week, and Sorcha pinned flowers in my hair.

"You'll cook after you're married," she said.

"I'll cook during."

"Hazel."

"I have forty pies, Sorcha."

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