Chapter 15: Garrick Kneels

Garrick came to the lodge at moonrise, and he came on foot.

He left his boots at the door.

He had walked the whole road in bandaged feet, and the white wraps were stained at the toes.

Sinead opened the door to him and didn't say a word.

She pointed at the chair by the kitchen fire.

He sat.

I stood across the room with Ewan in my arms, and Bram leaned against the dresser, and Hester sat in the corner pretending to mend a sock.

"One hour," I said. "Sinead stays in the room. Bram stays in the room."

"Yes."

"You don't touch me."

"No."

"You don't call me your mate, your wife or your Luna. Not once."

"No."

"And in three days, when the Moon Court sits, you stand up and say what you did."

"All of it," Garrick said.

"All of it, Garrick. Not the part that makes you look sorry."

His jaw moved.

"All of it."

I crossed the kitchen and held out my son.

His hands came up under the baby the way they had come up under him at the naming, careful and wrong, and I saw the exact moment he knew it.

Ewan's grey eyes opened and met his father's.

His fist closed around Garrick's finger.

Garrick made a sound I'd never heard from him.

It was not a word.

It was a sob he had been holding for a week.

"There you are," he said, very low. "There you are."

Sinead turned her back and pretended to stir a pot.

I let him have five minutes.

Then I said it, because I had carried it for too long.

"You stood at the slit window."