Chapter 15: What Lavinia Knew

I went down to the field in my nightgown and Dashiell's coat.

I did not wake him, and I did not wake Fenn.

The grass was stiff with frost, and each blade crunched under my bare feet.

Lavinia heard me coming and did not turn around.

She had stopped kneeling.

She sat in the grass with her red coat spread around her and her knees drawn up, looking at the ridge.

"You can hear it, can't you," she said. "Now that the bottle's out of you."

"Hear what?"

"Mine. Nothing." She gave a short laugh.

"Everyone else's wolf hums under their skin. Mine is a quiet room."

I stopped three steps away from her.

"Why are you out here?"

"I come every new moon," she said. "Nine years.

"I ask it nicely, and then I ask it ugly, and then I sit here until I can't feel my hands."

She turned her head, and her face in the starlight was bare and swollen.

I had never seen her without lipstick.

"Sit," she said. "I have nothing to hurt you with. Look at my hands."

I sat, a good arm's length away.

For a while neither of us spoke.

"When did you know?" I said at last.

"That I was a fraud?" She wiped her nose with her wrist. "I was fourteen."

"Fourteen."

"It was my birthday, and I'd been told since I could walk that my wolf was shy."

Her mouth twisted.

"Mama sat me down in the study and said it was time I knew what I was holding."

"What were you holding?"

"A seat that belonged to someone else. A dead king's daughter, who might be alive somewhere."

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