Annis came in past him without asking leave. She knelt by Celine, looked at the wing, unwound the ribbon and the kindling, felt along the small bones with fingers that knew what they were doing, and the Wilkin let her. It let her. Celine stared.
"It knows you," she said.
"It ought to. I sang it over." Annis glanced up, sharp. "Your sister didn't tell you how?"
"She didn't tell me anything."
"Then I will, in time, and I'll teach you the song, if you've the patience for it. It's long." She retied the splint with a strip of clean linen from her bag. "The wing'll mend crooked. He'll fly, but not far. That's no great loss for a kept one."
Celine looked up at Mattias, who had come to stand by the cradle. She looked at her father in the doorway. She understood that they had been somewhere together that she had not, and come back with something, and that neither of them was going to be able to give it to her whole.
"Tell me," she said.
They told her. It took a long time. Annis told most of it; Mattias some; the king nothing at all, though he stayed in the doorway and heard every word a second time. When it was done, Celine sat for a while with the Wilkin breathing against her stomach, and she found that she was not weeping, and that this frightened her more than weeping would have.
"An hour," she said finally. "She sang for an hour, bleeding."
"Most of one," said Annis.
"She could have lived."
"Maybe. Maybe not. She'd been bleeding since midsummer." Annis's voice was not soft, but it was not hard either. "She chose. I won't tell you she didn't."
Celine looked at her father.