Chapter Fifteen
I turn to Nora.
The room is loud around us. Council members calling for order. Aldric's representative at the front with that document in his hand and the particular smugness of a man who has been sitting on something and has finally set it down where everyone can see it.
I do not look at any of them.
I look at my grandmother.
Her face has gone the color of old paper. Her hand in mine under the table has not loosened but it has stopped being warm. She is staring straight ahead at nothing and that sound she made, that small terrible sound of recognition, is still sitting in my ears.
"Nora," I say. Low. Under the noise.
She closes her eyes.
"It is true," she says. Barely audible. "Not the way he is framing it. But the core of it. It is true."
The room keeps being lou
