Chapter 20: The Feast Again

Stonewater's great hall had been lit with four hundred candles, and the long table ran the length of it.

I sat at the head, in green, with my hair loose and my daughter asleep in a basket by my chair.

Dorian sat on my right, close enough that our sleeves touched.

Lucian and Mum sat on my left, and Emmett leaned back beside them with his boots stretched out.

The wolves of Redmoor filled the benches, in the clean clothes Nightwood had given them.

At the foot of the table, where I had sat for six years, I had put Garrick and Verity.

They sat side by side on one bench, a hand's width apart, and neither of them had touched the food.

A girl in a grey apron came up the hall with a tray.

She set a glass in front of me, a plain one, full to the brim.

I looked at it.

The hall went still, and I knew every wolf in it was remembering another night, another glass, and a floor that hissed.

I lifted the glass and smelled it.

Water.

Clean spring water, with nothing in it at all.

I drank it down to the bottom, looking along the table at Garrick.

He had gone grey in the face.

I put the glass down.

"Eat," I said to the hall. "It's all safe. My father has been through every kitchen."

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