CHAPTER 50:
ALESSIA
The accord with the Ward-Stone had barely settled into the bones of the valley before a different kind of tremor began to move through the pack house, quiet at first, the sort of silence that settles before a storm when everyone pretends not to hear the wind picking up in the distance. I had known for three days, had confirmed it in the quiet of the root cellar where the Stone’s steady pulse made it impossible to lie to myself, and I had kept it locked behind my teeth because saying it aloud meant shattering the fragile peace we had just clawed back.
I was pregnant, and I did not know which of them had put the child there, because for the past months it had been all three of them, and now the thought of that truth made my stomach turn in a way that had nothing to
