My Twin Was Meant to Die at Sixteen, So They Spent Me novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The One Cake
At the pack supper for her dying twin, Brynn is told to skip her own sixteenth birthday and give away her grandmother's ring. She walks out and drops her silver chain in the creek. Her hands are warm for the first time in years, and the pack begins to howl for Clara.
The cake in the middle of the Gathering Hall said Clara Sixteen in blue icing.
It was the only cake on the table.
Nine nights before our birthday, the whole Cold Spring pack stood around it with their glasses up.
My father tapped his ring against his cup until the hall went quiet.
"To my daughter Clara," he said. "Who has been braver than any wolf in this room."
The pack cheered.
Clara sat at the head of the table in a chair with a cushion, her cane hooked on the armrest.
She smiled at everyone and her face was grey.
I sat by the kitchen door, where the draft came in.
I had my gloves on, as I always did, and my hands were still cold.
My friend was across from me with her mouth full of bread.
She looked at the cake, then at me, and stopped chewing.
"Where's yours?" she whispered.
"They call it the Long Supper," I whispered back. "It isn't for me."
The Long Supper was what our pack did for a wolf who was not expected to see another full moon.
The Moon Goddess had said it the night Clara and I were born.
One of us would die on our sixteenth birthday.
Clara had Wolf Wasting, so nobody had ever wondered which one.
My mother stood up with her hand pressed flat against her cardigan.
"Before we cut it," she said, "Edwin and I have two small things to ask."
Her voice shook, and the hall leaned in to help her.
"On the night of the Moon Stone, we want Clara to have the whole ceremony. The whole night, no one else on the stone."
I looked up.
"That means Brynn's birthday can't be marked this year," she said. "It wouldn't be fair to Clara. We hope you understand, sweetheart."
She said it straight to me, in front of everyone, in a gentle voice.
Heads turned.
A woman near the door gave me a sympathetic little nod.
"And the second thing," my father said.
He came around the table and put his big hand on my shoulder.
It was a warm hand, and it felt heavy.
"Your grandmother's moonstone ring," he said. "Lenore would like Clara to wear it on the night. And if the worst happens, to be buried in it."
"Gran left that ring to me," I said.
"She did," my father said. "And you're the strong one, Brynn. You're always the one who understands. Give your sister this."
Somebody at the back said, "Good girl."
The room waited for me to say yes.
I looked at Clara.
She was staring at the cake with her eyes shut tight, and her fingers were white around her cane.
She had not asked for any of it.
I knew that.
I still could not make my mouth say it.
"My birthday is the same day as hers," I said.
"We know, sweetheart," my mother said.
"I'll be sixteen too. I'm the other one in the prophecy. What if it's me?"
Nobody laughed.
A few people looked at their shoes.
My mother's smile did not move.
"Oh, Brynn," she said. "You're not the one the Goddess is coming for."
Then Hester came up behind me with a small brown bottle, the way she did every night at this hour.
"Drink," the healer said. "It'll settle you."
I took it and drank it.
It tasted of cold tea and iron.
My father bent down, found the silver chain at my throat, and ran his thumb along the clasp.
"Still tight," he said, smiling. "Never take it off, Brynn. Swear it for me again."
I had sworn it every night since I was four.
Clara wore the same chain.
His hand drifted to her neck and tucked hers under her collar.
"Swear," he said to me.
I looked at the cake, and the ring on my father's finger, and my mother's smile that was already turned toward someone else.
"No," I said.
The hall made a small noise.
"I'm going to get some air."
"Brynn," my father said.
So I stepped out.
I walked through the back kitchen, past the cook's pots, and out into the cold.
Nobody followed me.
I went down the hill to the creek where the boundary stones stood.
Rowan would find me later, she always did.
The water was loud and black in the dark.
I stopped at the edge and put my fingers on the clasp.
I had never once gotten it off.
It opened on the first try.
I held the chain over the water, and my hand was already shaking.
Then I let go.
It made no sound when it went in.
For a moment there was only the creek.
Then heat ran up my arms and into my chest, so fast that I gasped.
I pulled my glove off and held up my bare hand.
It was warm.
I could not remember ever being warm.
Across the valley, from the packhouse, the whole pack began to howl.
It was not the howl for a birthday.
It was the one for someone going down.
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