Chapter 21: The Edge of the Headland

I shifted in the corridor.

I had not planned to.

My dress tore along the seams and fell away, and the white wolf came up through me, glad and furious.

Edith stepped back with her shoes in her hand.

"Go," she said.

I was down the stairs before she had finished the word.

The scent was easy to find.

It was lavender, thick and sweet, laid along the stones.

Verity had poured it on herself, on the carrier, on every door she had touched.

She wanted to be followed.

I ran out through the kitchens and across the back court, past the bare strip where the lavender bed had been.

The trail climbed the stair behind the stables and went out onto the headland.

Behind me, I heard the nephew's boots, and the old elders running in their wolf forms, grey and brown.

Beside me came a heavy dark shape, silent and fast.

Alaric ran at my shoulder, in the brown wolf's body, with his eyes on the path.

We broke out together onto the cliff.

The sea boomed against the rock three hundred feet below.

The moon was up, and the festival lanterns were small and yellow in the court behind us.

Verity stood at the very edge.

Her hair had come down.

In her arms, with the broken catch hanging, she held the carrier.

I heard Biscuit's thin, furious yowl.

I changed back where I stood, in the grass, and the nephew threw his coat over my shoulders without looking.

Alaric changed beside me and stood with his hands open.

"Verity," he said.

"Don't come closer."

"Give her the cat."

"It's not a cat, Alaric," she said, and her voice was hoarse. "It's the whole eleven years."

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