rel

with a lock on the

I'd slept in my life: a real bed, a fire already lit, a window of actual glass looking down the black throat of the mountain. But the bolt wa

even seen me

e King had gone from the man who'd told me he'd never give me back to a crown with somewhere else to be, all in the space of a breath. Stay with Mira, he'd said. Not to me. To the room. And then he was gone, and the bon

e thing," said a

ur-pale hands and a healer's apron and an expression so open

hing,"

. Working out the ways out." She set down a tray - bread, broth, somethin

py on

aid it lightly, but her eyes flicked to the door when she did. "Eat. You went grey as your

ece of the place, handed to me

was - everyone assumed she'd be Luna. There was practically a season built ar

on his

that surprised me, given she'd known me the length of a bowl of soup. "But

ng one. On

ws. "People listen to him. That's the dangerous part. He doesn't shout. He j

oss, the cousin who smiled - the way I'd once filed which of Garrick's moods meant

down when the door opened without

s stillness, and a face that had clearly decided about me before he'd crossed the threshold and was now

She went, with one backward look at

I looked back, and I did not stop chewing, because if this was the part where

served Kaelen Thorne since we were boys.

s two of u

g more careful. "He claimed you in front of a border pack on instinct," he said. "Do you un

's the one who reached out his hand." I set down the bread. "So whatever this costs him, Beta, he chose it with his

ed for. He went to the door. Stopped. "He didn't ride away," he said, quieter, "because he can't. Neither can you. The sooner you stop pretending that thread isn't there,

what I always do, which is exactly t

, and I stood at the stone rail looking down at the court of Ashmoor going about its

ented. Silver hair, a gown the colour of deep water, an

ravelled down my funeral grey and back up, unhurried. "He'll tire of you, you know. The bond is a fever. It breaks. And when his does, you won't even have the pack th

ach me. So I gave her my mother's smile - the one I'm told Liora u

re telling me I'm nothing." I tilted my head. "And nothing is the one thing I already survive

ure cracked - and it was worth t

ng I didn't understand. It went careful. Selene Hart, who fea

t, replaced by something colder and far more honest, "I'd wo

r eyes down i

ers looked, not with scorn or scandal or hunger. He was looking at me the way a butcher looks at a line of hanging meat. Assessing. Patient. Already certain. And as our eye

had spent twenty-two years trying to drown went still in my veins, the way pr

xactly wh

e to the King's h