Chapter 22: The Vote

Dawn came up gray over the Stone, and the grass was white with frost.

I sat on the altar's edge with a blanket around me and the healer's stitches pulling in my side.

Felicity slept in the hall, under the healer's hand and a second blanket.

Mom sat beside her and didn't look up when I walked by.

The whole Garrick pack stood in the ring, and Northlake stood back at the tree line, watching.

They brought my father out between two men.

He had not slept either, and his jaw was gray with stubble.

"Harold Garrick," said the Moon-reader. "The pack has heard Felicity. Now it will hear you."

He looked at the frozen ground and said nothing.

"You sold the heir's bond for a loan, and you hid her from her own pack for five years."

"The pack will say what becomes of you."

She struck her cane once.

"Raise your hands."

It was quiet for a moment.

Then the stout old man in the green parka put up his hand.

The woman next to him put up hers.

They went up row by row, slowly.

Some of them cried while they did it.

One of the men who had pulled my father off the Moon-reader raised both hands.

I didn't count.

I didn't have to.

"It's done," the Moon-reader said. "Your name comes off the roll, Harold. Today, before witnesses."

He looked around the ring.

He looked for someone, and I watched him see that nobody had stepped toward him.

Then he turned his whole body toward me.

"Sigrid."

I stood up.

"Sigrid. Please. I'm your father."

"I kept your sister alive. Every day for twenty years I got up and kept her alive."

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