Chapter 9: Snow and a Black Coat

I went out to the gate myself.

Corwin walked a half step behind me, and he did not say a word about waiting inside.

The scouts were packed against the iron bars in the dark, and they all held up phones.

"Miss Hallam! Silvermoon will triple whatever Blackthorn is paying!"

"Ironfang offers you a house in the capital and a guaranteed Beta seat!"

"A Council envoy to see you, miss!"

I let them shout.

Then I lifted my hand, and the gate went quiet in a way I had never seen a crowd do for me.

"I'm a Blackthorn intern," I said. "My term runs two years, and I'm staying for all of it."

A man in a green coat pushed to the front.

"Miss, there's talk you're unwell. Your father says..."

"My father says a lot of things."

I looked straight into the nearest phone.

"My rank is Sovereign, and my fur is white. The Moon Elder wrote both on my card the night I awakened."

"Then why did the registry say brown?" the man in green called.

"Ask my mother," I said. "She filed it."

The gate exploded in noise.

Corwin's hand twitched at his side.

I thought he might lay it on my back, and God help me, I wanted him to.

He kept it at his side.

"That's enough," he told the guards, and they closed the gate.

Inside the courtyard, the grey-haired woman pressed a cup of hot cider into my hand.

"Child," she said, "that was the bravest thing I've seen in twenty years."

I drank the cider and did not feel brave.

I felt stretched too thin to sleep.

I could not sleep.

At midnight I gave up.

I put on boots and a coat over my pajamas and went out the back door onto the training field.

There was snow now.

It had started falling after dinner, and it lay thick and blue under the moon.

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