Chapter 19: The Girl in My Name

I found her in the empty rink two hours later, on the visitors' bench, in a gray hoodie.

She had taken the pins out of her hair.

It lay down her back, long and white-blond, my color.

For a moment I could not breathe.

Cade stopped at the gate.

"I'll stay here," he said.

"You can come."

"She'll talk easier to you."

He leaned on the boards with his arms folded and watched the door.

I went down the aisle alone.

The girl heard me coming from a long way off.

She did not run.

"You're taller than they told me," she said.

Her voice was thin and tired.

She looked about nineteen.

"Who told you?" I asked.

"Anson. He said you were a spoiled thief who robbed your own father."

"Did you believe him?"

"For a while."

She held something out to me with a shaking hand.

It was my steel pen.

I stared at it.

"He kept it in his coat," she said.

"Last night, in the chapel, he held my wrist while the elder cut my palm. I took the pen when he leaned over me."

"Why?"

"Because it's yours. He said it was the only thing the stone would let him use to get you."

I closed my fingers around the barrel.

It was warm from her hand.

"I'm sorry about the dress," she said. "And your hair. And your name."

"You didn't choose it."

"I did, at the start. I thought I was going to be somebody else for one winter."

"Our father is a hard man, and Anson said I'd never have to go home to him again."

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