From Ashes to Their Luna novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: Lamp Oil

The healer spoke so quietly that sixty people leaned in to hear her.

"It was the night of the east wing fire," she said. "I couldn't sleep, so I walked the yard."

"Go on," I said.

"I saw a girl at the east door with a can of lamp oil. She was thirteen and her sleeves were black to the elbow."

Nobody moved in the meadow.

"She poured it under your mother's window. She struck a match and stepped back."

"Who was she?" I said.

The healer did not look at the Aldercotts. She looked at me.

"Margot."

The wind in the pines was the only sound.

"Liar," Margot said.

She had stopped three paces from me, in the long coat, and her face had gone white.

"She's an old woman who fed you poison for fourteen years," she said. "She'll say anything to save her skin."

"She'll say it again in front of the Council," the elder said from her stool. "She already did, in my hall."

"I was a child."

"You were thirteen. She said that too."

Margot turned to the crowd.

Her eyes filled with tears, quick and bright.

"You know me," she said. "I raised her. I did everything for her after her mother died."

"You hit her," a woman said.

It was the laundress.

She stood in the second row with her arms wrapped round herself, and she was shaking.

"You hit her in front of me every morning," the laundress said. "I looked away, and I'm sorry. I'm done looking away."

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