Chapter 16: The Vote

Sorrel's POV

The midwife cut the silver out of him on the kitchen table, because it was the only table big enough.

The cook held the lamp. Anselm held Matvei's arms. I held his face.

"Look at me," I said. "Matvei. Look at me."

His eyes were open and glassy, and the green had gone dull.

"It's in the bone," the midwife said. "This will hurt more than the shot."

"Do it," I said.

She did.

He didn't scream, but his whole body arched off the wood, and I felt the sound in his chest through my palms.

The barb came out in a rope of black blood, and the midwife dropped it into a bowl with a clang.

"Silver stays in the blood," she said. "I've packed it with salt and moss. He'll burn for two days. After that, he lives or he doesn't."

"He lives," I said.

"Girl." The cook put the lamp down. "Sit before you fall."

I didn't sit.

I stripped his torn shirt off him, and something fell out of it onto the flagstones.

It was a grey wool blanket with a green T in the corner.

I picked it up.

It smelled of lavender and soap.

Delphine had worn lavender in her hair.

I put my face in the wool and stood there in the middle of the kitchen, and nobody said a word.

They carried him up to his own bed, and I took the chair beside it.

I sponged him down with cold water through the first night and the second. He talked in the fever.

He said "Midsummer" and "the rain" and, once, "I'm coming, I'm late."

He murmured Tobin's name, and then mine, over and over.

On the morning of the third day his skin cooled under my hand.

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