Chapter 18: Not Tonight

"Tobias," his father said. "Do it."

"I can't."

"Do it, boy."

"If I give up her mark, I have nothing!" Tobias's voice cracked. "I'm not going to stand here and be nothing in front of everyone."

He said it to the whole hall.

Nobody in the whole hall said anything back.

I folded my hands in front of me, one over the other, and tucked them under my cloak.

"Then I have my answer," I said.

"Yvaine." My mother reached one hand toward me from the litter. "Please. Your sister."

"I told you my terms, Mother."

"He won't, he can't, you know he can't..."

"Then you should have raised a better man for her," I said.

The words came out cold.

I felt Hamish's hand tighten on mine, and I felt the weight of four hundred stares.

I did not move.

Melisande made a small noise.

It started as a cough and became something worse, a long dragging gasp that rattled up out of her.

The Healer bent over her.

"Alpha," he said. "She is going."

"Yvaine!" my father shouted. "For God's sake!"

I stood there with my hands under my cloak, and I did not move them.

My palms were burning.

The heat in them beat against my skin, begging to go to her, and I held it back with everything I had.

It was the hardest thing I had ever done.

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