Chapter 16: Backstitch

My old room was at the end of the upstairs hall, under the eaves.

The bed was made, and it was made too neatly.

Someone had smoothed the quilt flat and squared the corners.

I had never once made that bed so well in my life.

"Nobody's slept here since I left," I said.

"Someone has been in it," said Jasper, very quietly.

I felt him smell the room through the bond.

The elder stood in the doorway with her staff, and the clerk, and six wolves of the Council guard.

Behind them in the hall my father leaned against the wall.

My mother stood with her hands folded, and Margot was white to the lips.

"Begin," said the elder.

The guard went through the wardrobe and the desk and the boots under the bed.

They found my old school notebooks, a tin of buttons, and a pressed leaf from the summer I was eleven.

They found nothing else.

Then the elder walked to the bed and laid her palm flat on the quilt.

It was the patchwork one my grandmother had made, blue and cream, with a border of small stars.

She pressed her hand down along the edge, slowly, and then she stopped.

"Here," she said. "And here. Something hard in the lining."

"That's batting," said Margot quickly. "That's only old batting."

"Batting is soft."

"It's Clara's quilt! She must have put something in it."

The elder looked at me.

"Miss Winslow, I will not cut your grandmother's quilt without your leave."

"I'll do it," I said. "May I use my own hands?"

"You may."

Cecily gave me the small scissors from her sewing case.

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Gown Had No Gems, So I Walked Out of My Own Bonding Ceremony from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.