Chapter 10: The Ormond Elders

I carried the dish to the Hall myself.

I had not slept.

I walked into the great room at nine in the morning with the dish in one hand and a grey scarf over my arm.

The council was in session on a matter of boundary stones, and the doors were open to students.

I waited at the back until the thin elder with the cane saw me and nodded.

Then I walked down the aisle and put the dish on the table in front of her.

The room went quiet.

"Elder," I said. "Someone left this on my desk last night while I was out."

She looked at the ashes and the lace bow.

"A funeral doll," she said slowly.

"Burned, in my room, with a scarf beside it. It's what we do when we want someone dead."

A murmur ran along the benches.

Niles stood up from the Ormond side of the room.

He was in his good coat, and his elders sat on either side of him in their silver.

"Elder," he said, "this is a misunderstanding. Seren is overwrought. She has had a hard week."

"I'm not overwrought," I said. "I'm asking who burned a doll in my dorm."

"I haven't been near your dorm."

"The scarf is yours."

"Half the lab owns a grey scarf."

"Not with your family's stitch in the hem."

I turned the scarf over and held up the hem, where a tiny silver wolf-head was sewn into the wool.

I had seen that stitch a thousand times on my own neck.

Niles's eyes went to it and did not leave.

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