Chapter 8: The Nursery

I did not wait nine nights.

On the third night, after Linnet had gone down and the Greywater women had taken her cradle into their own room, I crossed the river in the dark.

Torin walked me to the shallows and did not argue. He had stopped arguing the day he saw my face in the mirror.

"One hour," he said. "If you're not back, I come over with sixty wolves, and I will enjoy it."

"One hour."

I knew the east wing of Duskmoor by heart.

I had scrubbed every stone of it. I knew which floorboard sang and which window had never latched.

I went up the back trellis past the kitchen and slid the third window open.

Rowan's room was at the end of the corridor, behind the Luna's. I had been allowed to wash it. I had never been allowed to sleep in it.

He lay on his side with one fist under his chin and the blanket kicked to the floor.

I stood in the doorway for a long time.

Then I sat on the floor by his bed so that if he woke he would see me at his height.

I hummed the lullaby I had hummed through the wall every night of his life.

It had no words. I had made it up when he was a week old.

His fist opened.

"Mori," he said, asleep, and smiled.

I put my forehead against the edge of the mattress and held very still, so that I would not make a sound.

"I knew you'd come."

I turned.

Aldric was sitting in the dark chair in the corner.

Keep reading free with an account. Start I Bore His Heirs, Then I Vanished from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.