She Wore My Twin's Hide, So I Carried Her Mate's Heir novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Fertile

Rowena offers me a bargain: carry her betrothed's child and let her call it hers. I say yes. She names the father.

Rowena's rooms smelled of lilies and something sour underneath.

I knew that sour smell.

It was the shawl, a pelt that had never been cured properly, worn in a room too warm for fur.

She sat in a carved chair by the fire with her feet on a stool, and she didn't take the shawl off.

Her guard captain stood by the door with the claw ring on his thumb.

"Name," Rowena said.

"Bren, my lady."

It was the first half of mine, and the only lie I'd had time to pick.

"Bren." She said it like she was tasting spoiled milk. "Do you know why you're here?"

"No, my lady."

"The physician looked at your blood this morning."

"He did."

"He says you're the strongest he's seen in a servant in forty years." She tilted her head. "He used the word fertile three times. He was sweating."

I lowered my eyes and let her see my hands shaking a little.

They weren't shaking from fear.

I wanted to see how much she'd show me if she thought I was afraid.

"Do you want to be a servant all your life, Bren?"

"I don't mind work, my lady."

"That isn't what I asked."

I looked up.

"No," I said. "I'd like something better."

She smiled with all her teeth.

"Good. I have a proposal. You'll like it, because you'll be paid and because you'll have no say."

The captain shifted his weight.

"I am to be married at the next full moon after the Moon Rite," she said. "My father wants a grandchild born within the year, and I can't give him one."

She said can't, not won't.

I filed it.

"You can," she said, "and you'll do it quietly. You will carry a child for me. When it's born, it will be mine. Everyone will say so. The midwife will say so. You'll be paid enough to buy a farm in a distant valley and you will go to it, and you will never come back."

"And if I say no?"

"You'll say no for the length of time it takes my captain to show you the cellar."

The captain smiled.

I thought about Lena in that cellar, with the hide still on her.

I thought very carefully.

I had come into this castle with no plan except to be near the woman who killed my sister.

Here she was, inviting me into her family and into the one thing she needed to keep her crown.

She needed me alive for nine months, and she needed me comfortable and fed.

She'd never put a knife near anything she wanted that badly.

"I'll do it," I said.

Rowena's eyebrows went up.

"That was quick."

"A farm is a good price, my lady. And I'm not stupid enough to enjoy the cellar."

She laughed, a small bright sound with no warmth in it.

"Maud will put you in the east tower. Nobody will ask why. You'll say you're a seamstress. You'll stay out of sight, you'll eat what you're given, and if you speak of this, to anyone, to the cook, to the cat, I'll hang you from the gate."

She stroked the fur at her throat while she said it.

It was a thing she did with her thumb, a small circle.

I watched her thumb go round and round on my sister's blaze.

"I understand, my lady."

"One more thing."

She leaned forward, and the sour smell got stronger.

"Do you know what happened to the last wolf who was fool enough to try to be better than me?"

I looked at the shawl.

I said, "No, my lady."

"You're looking at her."

The captain laughed.

I kept my face exactly as still as I had in the hall.

I said, "I'll be careful."

"You will," Rowena said. "Because the father is a man I'm going to marry, and he doesn't know you yet. He's called Dane Ardent."

The name meant nothing to me.

Then she added, with that bright small smile, "He's the war-chief of my father's guard, and he is not going to like you at all."

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