Chapter 21: The Sentence

The wolf did not move.

Her paws stood in the stone bowl, and every wolf in the hall stared at her.

I was inside her, and she was me.

For the first time in my life my ears were not too sharp and my nose was not too much.

They were mine.

I stepped down from the stone and walked toward my father's chair.

Wolves moved out of my way.

Nobody told them to.

At the foot of the dais I thought, human, and the silver light folded back into me.

Hedda was beside me before I fell, with her nurse's coat held out wide.

I stood in it, barefoot on the flagstones, shaking, and said in my own voice: "I am the heir."

The eldest elder bowed his gray head.

"A Silver," he said hoarsely. "The first in two hundred years."

A sound went through the pack, half gasp and half sob.

My father had not sat down again.

"This is a trick," he said. "Some Greaves work."

"You told me it was a draft," I said. "Last time every candle in this hall went out."

My mother stood up in the front row.

She was shaking, and she was gray in the face.

"Gunnar gave me the cup," she said.

The hall went still.

"I ordered the servant to carry it down to her."

"He told me it was a tonic to calm her before the stone. I knew it was not."

Her voice cracked.

"I did it anyway."

"Sit down, woman," my father said.

"I held her coat while they whipped her," my mother said, louder. "I will not sit down."

She walked up the aisle in front of the whole pack.

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