Chapter 19: Father at the Door

The Council gave its judgment before the lamps were lit.

Margot's gown was taken from her by order, and every stone on it was counted aloud into the clerk's ledger.

She was confined to her rooms in the Lodge until the final sitting, with two of the Council guard at her door.

The ten stones from my quilt and the one from her hem were put into my hands in a velvet pouch.

Eleven.

I carried them back around the lake in my coat pocket, and they clicked together every time the truck hit a rut.

Jasper took the pouch from me in the hall at Ironwood and set it on the mantel.

"We'll have them cleaned and counted tomorrow," he said. "For tonight, just sit."

I sat in front of the fire in his kitchen with my boots off.

I felt tired in a way that went all the way down.

My mother had stood in front of four hundred wolves and given up my sister without a tremor in her voice.

I could not make that fit with anything I knew about her.

"She was too good," I said.

"Yes."

"Margot was crying, and my mother wasn't. And she knew about the lamp before the beta said it."

"She did." Jasper sat beside me. "I don't have anything to hang it on yet."

"Neither do I."

The beta put her head around the door.

"Alpha. There's a man at the north gate on foot. He crossed the ice with no lantern."

We went out together.

My father stood in the snow beyond the gate with his hat in his hands.

He was alone.

His good coat was dark with wet to the knees, and his beard had frozen in a white crust.

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