Chapter 20: The Real Scroll

Orla's POV

I woke at ten in the morning with my left arm bound to my chest.

A black line ran from my wrist to my elbow.

Torin was sitting on the floor beside the bed with his back against the wall.

He hadn't slept. I could tell by his eyes.

He told me the rest on the drive to the tower, with one hand on the wheel and one on my knee.

"What did Camille say?" I asked.

"That she'd found it in my mother's rooms and was bringing it to me."

"Do you believe her?"

"No," Torin said. "I locked her in her suite. Two Lowell men have the door."

"Good," I said.

My voice broke on it.

I had hugged her. I had cried on her shoulder, and she had known the whole time.

"Is it true?" I asked. "What the vellum says?"

"The Giver does not survive the drawing."

"I'm the Giver."

"Yes."

I looked out of the window at my mother's pasture.

The grass was still bent where we had run.

"Then we show them," I said.

The Great Hall was fuller than I'd ever seen it.

People stood in the aisles and on the stairs.

They lined the walls, and the doors were open to the lobby, where another hundred crowded.

Word had run ahead of us. It always did.

The Elder sat in the high chair, with Winifred standing below it with her hands folded and her head high.

Camille stood at the foot of the dais between the two Lowell men, in a white dress, as pale as her hair.

She would not look at me.

Torin walked up the aisle in front of me with the cedar box in his arms.

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