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Severed Ties: Rise of the Silver Wolf novel · Chapter 29 of 48

Chapter 29: The Other End

I caught Daphne behind the Moot Hall, in the alley where I had once kissed Ewan against the brick.

She had gone out to empty a bucket and she was still holding it.

"Say it," I said. "What you meant."

"Not here."

"Here."

She put the bucket down.

She looked small in the wet apron, with her hair tied up in a rag.

It had been five months, and I had never asked her about the other end.

"It was cold," Daphne said. "And sweet. Every time I ran the north ridge, something came up into my legs from somewhere far away."

"From me."

"I didn't know that. I thought it was me."

"You never wondered."

"I wondered," she said. "Once or twice. Then Mom would say I was blessed, and the Elder would clap, and I stopped."

My hands had gone cold.

"I slept in the grass at the bottom of that ridge," I said. "Every day. I woke up and you were dancing around me in the sun."

"Thea."

"You waved at me. Every time. You waved."

"I waved because I was happy."

"I know you were." I heard my voice crack and let it. "That's the part I can't get past. You were happy, and I was dizzy, and you never once asked why."

Her face crumpled.

I did not go to her.

"You never asked," I said.

"I know," said Daphne.

She did not defend herself. She did not say she was eight, or twelve, or that she hadn't known.

She stood there and let it land.

After a while she wiped her face on her wet sleeve.

"I'm not asking you to say it's okay."

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