I Gave My Sister My Fiancé and Watched Them Fall novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Market Day

The pack shuns Yvaine, Melisande coughs in the square and everyone turns to Yvaine, who refuses; then Tobias cannot shift at the muster and the Alpha looks at her.

I did not sleep, and at dawn the lamp was still burning.

The dark shape on the ridge was gone.

I washed my face in the mill race, redid my braid without the thistle, and walked into Cedarvale market on the first bell.

Nobody said good morning.

The baker had called me "dear" every Saturday for ten years.

That morning she served two women behind me first, and when she reached me she set my loaf on the counter without looking up.

"Four coppers."

"It was three yesterday."

"Yesterday you were the Alpha's betrothed," she said. "Today it's four."

I paid.

Behind me a woman with a basket of onions said, loud enough for me to hear, "Threw away the heir for a sick girl's pity. Some people can't stand to be the second-prettiest daughter."

Her friend laughed.

I turned around and looked at her until she stopped.

"I stood in front of you all last night," I said. "I didn't hear one of you ask what I wanted."

The onion woman went red and found something to look at on her cart.

I ate half the loaf standing up, because I had not eaten since the day before and I was not going to be seen to be hungry.

Then I heard the cart wheels, and the market went quiet, because the Alpha's family was coming.

Tobias came across the square with my sister on his arm.

She wore a blue dress I had never seen, and a white glove on her left hand, and the glove had been pushed back to show her wrist.

The silver line on it was fresh.

"Yvaine," Melisande said, and her face lit up. "I'm so glad you came out. I wanted to thank you."

"You're welcome."

"I know it was hard. Tobias says you were so brave."

Tobias said nothing.

His coat was creased, and his mouth was set, and there were shadows under his eyes I had never seen on him.

"I hope you aren't too lonely at the mill," Melisande went on. "Mother says you can come back for supper any time. She says Father is only upset."

"I'll think about it."

"Please do. I don't sleep well when you're far away."

It was an ordinary thing to say, and I let it pass.

A moment later she coughed.

She put her glove to her mouth, and the cough came again and again, deep and wet, and she folded forward over Tobias's arm.

"Melisande?" he said sharply.

The cough rose into a wheeze.

Every head in the market turned.

Not toward the Healer's house, and not toward Tobias.

Toward me.

I felt it before I saw it: four hundred people deciding, all at once, that this was now my job.

My mother pushed through the crowd with a shawl in her hands. "Yvaine, don't stand there. Put your hand on her. Hurry."

My palm had already gone warm.

It was an ache in the middle of my hand, and it pulled toward her.

I closed my fingers into a fist.

"The Healer's house is two streets down," I said. "I'll hold the door."

"Yvaine!"

"You asked me to stay with her for the winter," I said to my mother, and my voice shook. "I'm not her nurse anymore. She has a betrothed, and he's holding her up."

My mother stared at me, and her mouth opened and closed.

Melisande was crying and coughing at the same time.

Tobias tried to lift her and could not seem to get his arms to take the weight.

A man in the crowd stepped up and carried her to the Healer's house in the end, and the market breathed again.

I stood with my fist closed and my heart going hard and picked up my loaf.

A horn sounded from the north gate.

The muster horn.

At the first bell on market day, the Alpha's heir led the patrol out along the border.

I had watched Tobias do it every week for two years.

He shifted at the gate, always, with a long rolling snarl, and the whole square cheered.

The patrol wolves lined up at the north gate in their coats.

Tobias walked to the head of them, still pale, and stripped off his jacket.

He bent forward.

Nothing happened.

He tried again, shoulders rolling, hands pressed to the dirt, and still no wolf came.

A low murmur began in the line behind him.

"Tobias," the Alpha said from the gate. His voice was very quiet.

"I'm only tired, Father."

"Shift."

Tobias strained until the veins stood out in his neck.

His wolf did not answer.

I saw the exact moment the Alpha understood that this was not tiredness.

Then his eyes moved off his son, across the square, and settled on me.

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