Chapter 7: Her Mother's Necklace

Demelza went back down to Brocklehurst Hall at noon the next day, in her own boots, with Nan beside her and an empty trunk on a handcart.

She had not planned to go.

But her mother's things were in the Hall, in the room Demelza had slept in for six years.

Nobody was going to carry them out for her.

The great doors stood open.

Inside, the lanterns had been lit in broad daylight.

Sixty wolves stood about in clusters with their voices lowered.

The soup tureen had been moved to the sideboard.

Nobody mentioned it.

Demelza stopped inside the doors, and the room went quiet in a ripple.

Daphne stood at the foot of the stairs in a cream dress and a pair of earrings Demelza had never seen.

She was holding court.

Around her throat, on a thin silver chain, hung a round moonstone the size of a thumbprint.

Demelza stopped breathing for a moment.

The stone glowed faintly blue in the lantern light, the way it always had when her mother wore it to the Harvest Moon.

"Daphne," she said.

Daphne turned, and her face opened into the old gentle smile.

"Mel! You came. Oh, I'm so glad."

"Hoyt's resting, but I told him you'd come around."

"That's my mother's necklace."

Daphne's hand rose to the stone.

"It was in the Hall's vault," she said. "Hoyt said it belongs to the Luna. He wanted me to have it."

"It belongs to the woman it was given to. She's been dead six years."

"Well, then it belongs to the Luna of the pack, and..."

"I'm not asking, Daphne."

The Hall had gone so quiet that Demelza could hear a lantern wick hiss.

She walked across the same boards she had crossed on her way out two nights ago.

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