Chapter 19: Sentence

I went to the parlor alone, and I did not sit.

Adelaide was by the window with the curtain pulled back.

She was watching the guards march the old Beta across the yard in chains.

"He talked," she said.

"He did."

"I thought he might. He never had the stomach for it."

"Tell me what my mother said."

Adelaide let the curtain fall.

For the first time since the Stone, she looked at me without any arrangement of her face at all.

"I won't trade it," she said. "You can have it for nothing. It's all I have left that's worth giving."

She drew a breath.

"She was bleeding by the trees. You were eight, and you would not let go of her sleeve."

"She pushed you into my arms and she said, 'Keep her safe, Addie. Promise me.'"

"I promised."

"You did."

"I kept you alive. I did. I want you to put that in the account, with everything else."

"I'll put it in," I said. "Right under the part where you broke it."

She flinched. It was the only time I ever saw her do it.

The pack gathered in the hall at noon.

The tables were pushed back, and people stood along the walls, quiet as a church.

I took the council chair, and Conall stood at my shoulder in his red scarf.

They brought Adelaide in alone. She had taken off the pearls herself.

"Adelaide Draycott," I said. "By the old law, a wolf who poisons her own pack's Luna forfeits the pack."

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