Chapter 20: Fire in the Old Hearth

Briony's POV

I woke at five with the bed cold beside me.

Ewan was dressed and standing at the window with his back to me.

"You didn't sleep," I said.

"I did a little."

"Liar."

He turned around and smiled, and it was the wrong smile, too quick, with nothing behind it.

I saw it and let it go, because it was dawn, and in an hour we would find out if I still had a seat.

The great room of the Hartwell lodge had a fireplace you could stand in.

It was made of river stones, and the oldest one in the middle, flat and black, was worn smooth from eleven generations of hands.

Nobody had lit a fire in that hearth since my mother's funeral.

Now my cousins stacked cedar in it, and the five elders stood against the wall in their dark coats.

Corbin stood by the door with his arms crossed.

The envoy sat in a straight chair near the window, his notebook closed on his knee.

Alden came down the stairs in the arms of two of our wolves.

They set him in the big leather chair by the stones, and the nurse tucked the blanket around his legs and went to stand behind him with the tank.

He was very pale.

He looked at the room and at the people in it, and his eyes stopped on me.

"Light it," he said.

My cousin struck a match.

The cedar caught.

The room filled with the smell of resin and smoke, and the light moved up the walls.

"Doyle."

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