Claiming the Spare Twin novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: The Bowl

On the seventh night, both packs gathered in the long field behind the Moot Hall to watch me call my father.

Lanterns hung from poles around a ring of trampled grass.

Cold Creek stood outside it on the left, and Ironwood on the right.

Dorran stood at the front of the Ironwood side with his arms folded.

Hester had ruled that nobody but the two in the ring could cross the rope.

I could feel where he was without looking.

My father walked into the ring in his good wool coat and nodded to the pack.

I walked in from the other side in jeans and a plain shirt.

"Tilda Marrow calls Osmund Marrow for the seat," Hester said. "Before the ring, the challenger takes the water of the founding."

She stepped aside.

Across the grass, a woman in white came forward with a stone bowl held in both hands.

It was Rosalie.

The regent's daughter always carried the bowl. It was the oldest custom in the pack, and I had forgotten it.

She walked the length of the ring with her eyes on the water and her mouth set.

I watched her come.

My father watched too, with a small, fond smile.

She stopped in front of me and held out the bowl.

The water in it was clear and still.

I leaned over it, and I smelled it.

Earth, and bitterness, and the dark green stink I had breathed every morning for fourteen years, boiled down to nothing and hidden in a stone bowl.

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