Chapter 15: Drink It

The Beta came for me at sundown.

He was a big, quiet man with a scar through one eyebrow, and he stood at Ewan's gate with his cap in his hands.

"The Alpha asks you to come to the kitchen," he said. "He says you should see it."

Ewan stepped in front of me.

"She doesn't cross alone."

"He said you could come," the Beta said. "And Nan Birch."

Nan was already getting her shawl.

Jory was asleep in Ewan's bed with the fox under his chin, so I stayed a long minute to tuck the blanket higher.

Then I went back over the creek with the two people I trusted.

Ironwood's kitchen was a long stone room with copper pots on hooks and a table big enough for thirty.

Garrick stood at the head of it in his shirtsleeves.

The Elder sat at one side with his staff across his knees.

Lorna sat at the other, in her apron, with her hands folded.

She did not look afraid.

She looked patient.

The sealed tin sat in the middle of the table, and beside it sat a second tin, grey with age, labeled in the same neat hand.

"I took that from the shelf in her room an hour ago," Garrick said. "The Beta watched me do it."

"It's my stock," Lorna said. "Of course it matches. I've told you, the labels are mine."

Garrick said nothing.

He broke the Elder's wax with his thumbnail.

He tipped the dry tea out of both tins onto two white plates.

I leaned in, and Nan leaned in beside me.

The same tiny leaves lay in both piles, dark and heart-shaped, and a grey underside showed on every one.

"Grey nightshade," Nan said flatly.

"Anyone can put anything in a tin," Lorna said.

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