Chapter 7: Frost

I did not hear him come, which is a strange thing to say about a man his size.

One moment I was kneeling in the frost with stone dust on my fingers.

The next, a coat the weight of a small bear settled over my shoulders.

It smelled of pine smoke and wolf.

"You should have told me you were going out," said Osian.

"You're the King. I didn't know I had to file a report."

"You don't."

He crouched beside me on his heels, which still left him taller than I was kneeling, and looked at the smooth stone.

His jaw went hard.

"Someone did that tonight," I said.

"I can smell the chisel." He touched the stone with two fingers. "And her."

"The tall one."

"Yes."

"Her name was Rosamund," I said, and it came out like something I'd carried in my mouth for hours.

"Rosamund Wrenfield. I don't remember her face. I don't remember anything."

"But I wake with my fists clenched, every night, ready to fight someone."

I had not meant to tell him.

He didn't say he was sorry, which I was grateful for.

He sat down on the frozen ground in the dark, in his shirtsleeves, and said, "I dream of a wrist."

"What?"

"Five years. Every night. A wrist with a cut across it, held to my mouth."

He turned his head and looked at me.

"I stopped being able to sleep without it."

My breath went out of me.

I held out my left arm without deciding to, and he took it in both hands.

His thumbs moved over the pale line, back and forth, as slowly as a man reading braille.

"You owe me a name," I said unsteadily. "That's what the law says. That's the price."

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