Chapter 9: The Exchange

The hall was full again by the time we came down, and the shirt Torin wore had been buttoned wrong.

I saw three envoys notice it.

I saw Kjell put a hand over his mouth.

Gudrun stood in the middle of the floor with Vigdis beside her, and Brage a respectful step behind.

She had changed into black, with a veil pushed back from her face, the look of a woman about to weep for a good cause.

"My Alpha," she said. "Honored envoys. I beg your patience."

Torin took his black chair.

I took the oak one at his right, and I laid my hands in my lap, and I kept them still.

"I have come a long way for a hard duty," Gudrun said.

"Under the old law of Northreach, a bride's family may withdraw her in her first moon, if she has not been marked."

The envoys murmured.

"This is the first-moon exchange," Gudrun said.

"If the bride is unmarked and unfit, her family may send another daughter in her place."

"Unfit," Kjell growled.

"Please, let her finish, Kjell," Torin said.

"Ylva was always frail," Gudrun said sorrowfully. "We kept it quiet to spare her. She faints. She wanders at night."

That was a lie, and an old one.

She had told the same lie to every doctor who ever asked why I was so often seen in the stables at midnight, counting oats.

"She is also, I am afraid, a thief."

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