Chapter 18: Her Father Breaks

I dressed and went out to him alone.

Lucan stood in the inner door with his shirt open and said nothing.

He did not tell me to be careful.

I think he had learned that.

My father was sitting on the top step of the east stair with his heavy hands hanging between his knees.

He looked old.

He looked like the man who had once carried me on his shoulders to see the harvest fires.

"Linnet," he said.

"Alpha."

He flinched.

"I've come to say something," he said.

"I have said it to the wall for a month. I would like to say it to you."

"Then say it."

"I wrote that line in the book."

"I know. I read it."

"You have it?" His head came up.

"The king has it."

He nodded slowly.

"Of course," he said. "Of course he has."

I waited.

"Your stepmother," he said, and stopped.

"Odessa's mother."

"She was sick, the winter before. She died in my arms, all yellow, and nobody could say of what."

His voice dropped.

"Odessa nursed her to the last. I told myself that was devotion."

"Are you telling me you think she killed her own mother?"

"I am telling you I have been afraid of my own daughter for a year."

The words hung on the stair.

"When the king lay sick in the east room," he said, "I saw how he looked at you in the fever."

"I saw you could hold him. And I saw Odessa see it."

"So you gave her the morning."

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