Chapter 25: Silver in the Library

I did not touch the pen.

"Show me her dose first," I said. "The one for tomorrow. If I'm signing for it, I want to see it."

The Alpha smiled.

He took a flat leather case from the desk drawer and opened it on the table.

Eight glass vials lay in the velvet, each one sealed with green wax.

"A season's worth, Miss Ashworth. Then another season, and another, for as long as your sister lives."

"And the cure?"

"There is no cure. There is a household that never lets her run out."

He said it so gently that I almost missed what he had said.

Behind me, a Southbay wolf took my elbow.

Then the second one took the other, and they stood close, not roughly, and waited.

"Linnet," Father said from the window. His voice was thin. "Your mother and I did what we had to do."

"You did what you wanted."

"Sign it. For Bridie."

"You said that on the night I turned twenty-one," I said. "I didn't hear you then either."

The Alpha uncapped the inkwell and held the pen out to me.

My hands were warm.

They had been warm since the infirmary, and they were hot now, hot enough that the letter in my glove felt cool against my pulse.

I had come to Southbay with a clerk and twelve Guards and a plan.

The clerk's pencil was snapped in two, and the Guards were in a ditch.

That left the part of the plan I had never said aloud to anyone.

"Let go of me," I said to the wolves.

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