The Hollow Oak

Chapter Seven: 

Selene's POV

The mist came up off the river in sheets, so thick I could taste it. 

“Help me, Goodness.”  I muttered, my head bowed and my breath low. 

They walked me to the border before dawn, Kael in front, Marcus a pace behind, and two silent warriors at my back. Nobody spoke. My boots slid on the wet leaves. I had a script in my head, five lines, and I recited them until I could say them in my sleep. Forty on the east wall. Rotation at midnight. The forge crew is thin from the winter sickness. The north gate barred from inside after dark. The Alpha seldom leaves his study.

Only I and Kael knew about this, and as for the others, it meant nothing because they all wanted me dead.  

Everything was a life… all I was going to say and the bond we were going to feign.  Kael has written them himself, in a fast, slanting hand, and watched me say each one aloud until my left hand stopped moving.

At the edge of the trees, a hundred paces from the old dead oak, the column halted.

"Here," Kael said.

Marcus's jaw worked. He was looking at me the way a man looks at a snake he has been told not to kill. 

"You are really going to let her walk out there alone?"

"The courier will not speak to her with a crowd."

"The courier is a Ravenmark soldier."

"Yes."

"You do not trust him."

"I do not trust anyone, Marcus." Kael's voice was level and low, and I heard every word because wolf ears do not need mist to carry sound. "No one trusts a man they have fought for twelve years. That is normal. It would be strange if we did. But I will tell you this. A treaty that arrives with a wedding carries a good deal of truth in it, and I mean to find out how much."

"You think Darius means it."

"I think he means something at least.. it would be rude not to give it a try.” 

I stared straight ahead. It was a beautiful lie, smooth as river stone. There was nothing in his face to give it away, no flicker, no twitch, not so much as a tightening at the corner of his eye. Even Marcus, who had known him since boyhood, let out a slow breath and nodded.

"And if he does not?"

"Then we will know." Kael turned to me. "Left hand."

I looked down. I was gripping my right wrist. I let go.

"Go."

I opened my mouth as if to speak, but my mind worked in silence.. I couldn't think of anything that would be relevant to the situation I was in. So I  went.

The dead oak rose out of the mist like a drowned giant, hollow and black, its split trunk wide enough to hide a cart. A horse stood under it, a roan with a white blaze on its nose, and beside it, in a Ravenmark grey cloak with the hood pushed back, a lean, sandy haired man with a face like weathered leather.

My heart did something strange and painful.

"Corvin."

"Sel." He opened his arms, and for one second, I nearly walked into them. He had taught me to throw a knife when I was nine. He had carried me home on his shoulders after I fell from the wall. He called me little hawk, because I used to stare at the sky, and nobody else ever had. "Moon Goddess, look at you. They said they struck you."

"It was nothing."

"They said they put you in a tower."

"It is a very nice tower."

He laughed, and then stopped, because I had not. "Sel. Your father is worried sick."

“Well, that's odd.” I said Swifty.  “I understand that he is, but he sent me here, you can pass on the message to him that I am indeed alive and well.  They have treated me very kindly ... .to my suprise.” I said, lying as though I was carved from the same stone as the Alpha Kael. it was seamless.. at least it seemed so. 

"He did. He is pleased, you know. Word came before dawn that the Alpha had accepted the treaty. A wedding at midwinter." Corvin lowered his voice. "Your father is going to be there. He says to tell you to be patient, be agreeable. He is proud of you."

Proud. The word hit like a slap. I swallowed it down.

"What do you need from me?"

"What the Alpha is doing. How many warriors. Where. Anything useful." He said in a hushed voice, his eyes searching through the woods to confirm we weren't being watched. 

"Forty on the east wall. They rotate at midnight."

"Forty." He glanced over my shoulder at the trees. "That is fewer than we thought."

"The winter sickness hurt them. The forge crew is thin. The north gate is barred from inside after dark." My voice shook a little, and I made it stop. "He seldom leaves his study. He trusts almost no one."

Corvin did not answer. He was looking at my hand.

My left hand. It was moving. The first two fingers were twitching against the seam of my cloak, a small, damning little tremor, just as Kael had said.

"Selene."

"What?"

"Your hand."

Something cold went down my spine. I could feel Kael's eyes on me from the tree line like a blade against the back of my neck.

"I am tired, Corvin," I said.

"That is not..."

"I am tired." And then, to my own horror, my eyes filled. "I sat in that tower for two days. They gave me silk sheets and flowers and a locked door. I keep seeing the ridge. I keep seeing Renn."

His face crumpled. "Sel."

"I watched him die, Corvin. I stood there. I could not move. And now I am meant to make peace with the men who did it." I was crying in earnest, and some terrible, practical part of me noted that this was working. "My father sent me alone. Nobody came."

"Little hawk." He pulled me into his arms, finally, and I let him, and the tears were half true, which made them better. "I am sorry. I should have been there. I should have at least asked your father to accompany you."

"It is all right."

"It is not." He held me at arm's length. "Be careful. Whatever you are feeling, whatever they are making you feel, be careful."

"I will."

He swung into the saddle. He took the reins, and the roan stamped, and for a moment I thought he would speak again. Then he nodded, once, and rode into the mist.

I made it six steps behind the oak before my knees gave out.

I vomited into the leaves. Everything I had eaten. Everything I was. I knelt there shaking, with the taste of ash in my mouth, and I thought, that was Corvin. Corvin. He taught me to throw a knife.

Boots on the damp earth. I did not look up.

"Good," Kael said.

I raised my head.

He stood over me, tall and dark against the mist, with the cold, flat expression I was beginning to hate. He did not offer a hand. He did not look sorry.

"You hesitated on the east wall," he said. "Your breath caught on the third sentence. You let him see your hand. But you recovered. Using real grief was clever. It was better than anything I would have told you."

"Do not," I said hoarsely.

"Do not what?"

"Do not call it good."

I had meant to stand up. I had meant to say it to his face. But he stepped closer, and closer, until he was right in front of me and I was on my feet and my back was against the oak, and his face was a hand's breadth from mine. His eyes were gold and furious and something else.

"Do you think I enjoyed that?" he said, very low.

My mouth had gone dry. "I do not think you enjoy anything."

"Then you do not look closely."

I tried to push away from the tree. My heel caught on a root. The world tilted, and I felt myself falling, and his hands closed around both my arms before I could hit the ground.

For a heartbeat, neither of us moved. His grip was hard, not cruel, and underneath it I could feel a tremor in his fingers.

"You are shaking," he said.

"I am cold."

"You are afraid."

"Yes."

"Of me?"

I could not lie to him. My hands would not let me. "Yes," I whispered.

His grip tightened for a heartbeat. 

Kael gave a short, hard laugh. It was the first I had ever heard from him, and it was not a kind one. "Do you know how many loopholes your father left in that treaty?” 

I stared at him.

“When sending a bride, there's usually gifts and a party to accompany her.. he didn't try to make it convincing.” 

“Maybe he did.” I said softly, trying to sound as confident as I could.  

“Maybe there are things he's put in place that you still haven't taken note of yet” 

He chuckled and then gave me the look.. his eyes wide with anger.  

I was treading in deep waters, but I was certain I wasn't going to sink. At least not yet.