Chapter 8: The Lending

The archive was a stone cellar under the council hall, and it smelled like wet paper and mouse.

Dunne held the lantern.

Hester sat on an upturned crate with her bag on her knees, because she had refused to be left behind.

"Where's the black book?" I asked.

"Third shelf, left wall," Dunne said. "Under the maps."

It was a ledger the size of a tombstone, bound in black cloth gone green at the corners.

I laid it on the table and opened it.

The pages were brittle and dense with copperplate handwriting.

Every Rite since the first Alpha had its own heading, with the date, the name of the keeper and a list of witnesses.

Births, Wakings, Banishments, Matings.

I turned the pages with my fingertips.

My wolf pushed at the inside of my skull, restless, and I murmured, Not yet.

"Look for your wedding," Hester said.

I found the date.

Two years and eight months back, in a keeper's neat blue ink.

*Marriage of Torin Stannard, Alpha, to Linnea Ashdown, daughter of Osmund Ashdown of the Creek. Contract witnessed. Blessing given.*

Under it, another line, in the same hand, smaller.

*Rite of Lending performed in the chapel annex after the vows.*

I read it twice.

"What's a Lending?" I said.

Nobody answered.

Hester had gone very still on her crate.

"Hester."

"Keep reading," she said softly.

The next paragraph was three lines long.

*Lender: Linnea Ashdown, a sleeper, her wolf unwaked.

Borrower: Torin Stannard, Alpha, afflicted.

The sleeping wolf is drawn from its host and set in the Alpha as a second heart.

Consent of the lender's Alpha, in lieu of her own, given and signed.

Keeper: C.

Rooke.*

The signature below was a blocky, familiar scrawl.

I'd seen it at the bottom of every lease and birthday card of my life.

*Osmund Ashdown.*

A cold wind seemed to blow straight through the cellar.

"My father," I said.

"Linnea," Dunne said.

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