The Bonemender by Holly Bennett

that first time I looked at you, or maybe it grew in me day by day. I didn’t want you raised as an orphaned kitchen girl. I wanted you to be mine. And somehow, I persuaded your father. We returned to Chênier a few weeks later with a baby. After eighteen months away, nobody thought it strange. Dominic had known a baby was coming, so your appearance made perfect sense to him. And we didn’t visit the coast again for two years.
    “To this day I don’t know how it worked out. The first time someone asked me your birthday, and I made it up, my heart pounded so hard that I thought I would faint. But no one ever questioned my word. Hardly anyone knew, you see, how we had found you.”
    “Who was the maid?” asked Gabrielle. But she knew.
    “Your nurse, Ella,” confirmed Solange. And then her lip trembled, and she was crying. “Oh, Gabrielle, if I did wrong not to tell you, I’m sorry. When you were little, there seemed no way to explain so you would understand. And then, when you were older, it seemed too late. And, if I am honest, I was afraid to tell you. I just wanted to be your real mother.”
    “You are my real mother!” Gabrielle spoke hotly as if defending her mother against unknown accusers. “You saved my life. You loved me. You raised me as a daughter of House DesChênes. I don’t care if I was born on the moon,
you
are my mother!”
    It was the only thing she was sure of. The rest was in turmoil. Solange was weeping now with relief, and as Gabrielle went over to hold her, she didn’t know if her mother’s story changed everything, or nothing. She would have to go over it in her heart many times before she understood.

CHAPTER 14
    F ÉOLAN sat outside his barracks, polishing his armor. He loathed it. It made him feel trapped, not protected, and the thought of doing battle in such a lumbering getup filled him with panic. Every strength and skill he relied on when fighting—speed, agility, precision, his keen eyesight and hearing—was hampered by the awkward weight of the metal casing.
    Well. He wouldn’t be enduring it much longer.
    Féolan reviewed in his mind all he had learned. He was relieved that the information he had gathered from the Stonewater Elves who had fought the
Gref Orisé
in the last war and passed on to the Verdeau Council was accurate. As far as he could tell, there were still no archers among the
Gref Orisé
. Their armor seemed little changed from the descriptions he had heard, and from his work at the smithy he guessed that, as before, it could be pierced by arrows but only from a heavy bow at close range. And the armor plates were still, for the most part, attached by leather, which could, potentially, be broken with a skilled or lucky thrust.
    He knew more now. He knew there would be relatively few horsemen due to the difficulties of traversing the mountain passes. Nor would the
Gref Orisé
travel in armor, unless they anticipated attack. (And now he knew why!) When they cameover the mountains, the conscripts would be carrying the heavy armor, saving the regular soldiers’ strength for fighting.
    The business of the conscripts was new too, and Féolan wondered what use could be made of this information. The defending army, ideally, should concentrate its efforts on the trained soldiers who came in the second wave. But how could the front ranks safely be ignored or avoided? He felt pity for these men, who had been pouring into the camp over the last week and were kept in a guarded compound. Their fate was to be a Human shield, killed brutally for a cause that availed them nothing.
    And he had learned, finally, what he had come here to discover. He’d been working at the forge when Commander Col himself strode past. One of his officers was having a breastplate made, and seeing him there Col stopped. “Oh, Ryvent. Be at my tent at four bells, strategy meeting. The last troops are arriving next week.”
    “The other passes will still keep sentry forces as we discussed, though,