Chapter 5: The Cup I Did Not Drink

SERAPHINA

The cup shook in my hands, and the smell climbing out of it was rust and ash.

"Drink it, Seraphina," my mother whispered, her eyes darting up the dark stairwell. "Quickly, before the kitchen staff come through."

"Mom, where did you get these leaves?"

"From a healer, the same as always."

"Which healer?"

"It does not matter."

"It matters to me." I lifted the cup under her nose and held it there. "Last night Damon handed Alaric a goblet of wine, and it smelled exactly like this, and Alaric drank it, and after that he could not see, he could not smell, he could barely hold himself up against a wall."

The color went out of her face in one slow slide, like paint running down glass.

"Damon gave Alaric wine?"

"Yes."

"That is not the same thing."

"Then it is a very unlucky coincidence."

"Seraphina..."

"Say the name of the plant, Mom."

Her mouth opened and shut. She pressed her fingers to her lips, and for a moment she was not the Luna of Moonridge in a gold gown; she was a thin, frightened woman in a stairwell with a cup in her hands.

"Wolfsbane," she said at last. "A pinch only, ground fine, mixed with moon leaf so it will not burn your throat."

"Wolfsbane."

"It is not enough to hurt you."

"It is enough to put my wolf to sleep."

"Yes."

The word landed like a stone dropped in still water, and the rings kept spreading.

"Since I was seven," I said.

"Since you were seven."

"Every full moon."

"Every one."

"And you told me it was for my nerves."

"You had nerves." Her voice cracked. "You had terrible nerves, you cried in your sleep, you asked me why the other children could hear their wolves and you could not, and I had no answer that would not frighten you."

"So you gave me a lie with sugar in it."

"I gave you safety."

"Safety from what, Mom?"

"From waking up."

I looked down into the cup. The steam curled, and under the bitterness there was that other smell, cold and sharp and metal, the smell that had been in Alaric's goblet while Damon stood there smiling.

"Who told you to do it?"

"I cannot say."

"You can, you are only choosing not to."

"I made a promise." Her eyes filled. "I made it to somebody who is not here to release me from it, and I have kept it for fifteen years, and I will keep it until I am in the ground."

"A promise to a dead person is worth more than your living daughter?"

"Do not twist it like that."

"Then untwist it for me."

"Seraphina, please, just drink, and we will talk when the sun is properly up, and..."

I turned my wrist and let the tea pour out across the stone floor. It steamed and spread, and the bitter green smell filled the whole stairwell.

"No!" She grabbed my arm with both hands. "You do not know what you have done."

"I poured out a cup."

"You poured out fifteen years." Her nails bit into my skin. "Do you understand what happens to a sleeping wolf when the weight comes off her all at once? She stirs. She stretches. And every wolf under this roof will feel her stretching."

"Let them feel it."

"They will ask why." Her whisper went thin and fast. "They will ask what you are, and who hid it, and who helped, and the answers all walk through me."

"So this is about you."

"It is about both of us, it has always been about both of us."

"Seraphina!"

The voice rolled down the tower stairs, and cedarwood and cold rain came with it, so thick and so sudden that my knees nearly gave. My mother did not hesitate. She hooked her arm through mine and dragged me sideways into the linen closet under the stairs, pulled the door almost shut, and clapped her hand over my mouth.

We stood pressed between stacks of folded sheets, breathing the smell of starch and cedar blocks, her heart banging against my shoulder blade.

Boots struck the marble outside.

"Rhys, her bed has not been touched."

"Perhaps she rose early, Alpha heir."

"Her bed has not been touched since yesterday morning." Alaric's voice was raw, scraped down to the wood. "She was in my room, Rhys."

"Alpha heir..."

"She was in my room, and she ran, and I could not make my legs work, I could not make my eyes focus, I called her name and she was already in the corridor."

I pressed my own hand over my mother's, so I would not make a sound.

"Alpha heir, the Alpha sent word from the study. The Council has moved the border meeting forward by two days, the rogue packs are massing at the north ridge, and the car is at the steps."

"Then the car can wait at the steps."

"It cannot."

"Rhys."

"Your father was clear."

There was a silence, and in it I heard him breathing, slow and hard, the way a man breathes when he is holding something down with both hands.

"Something is wrong in this house," Alaric said.

"Alpha heir?"

"I cannot name it, I can only smell it. There is wolfsbane somewhere, there is fear all over the east wing, and my cousin was smiling at breakfast like a man who has already won something."

"Damon smiles a great deal."

"Not like that." A pause. "Why was my wine bitter?"

"Sir?"

"Never mind."

Then his boots moved closer, and stopped, and I knew he was standing directly outside the closet door. I felt my mother go rigid. My own skin went hot and then cold.

He breathed in.

"Rain," he said quietly. "Wildflowers."

"Alpha heir, we have ten minutes."

"She is close, Rhys."

"The whole house smells of her, she lives here."

"No." His voice dropped. "It is fresh."

I closed my eyes and begged my body to be silent, and I did not know whether I was begging it to hide me or to betray me.

"Alpha heir."

A long breath, out, slow.

"Find Seraphina," Alaric said. "Not in an hour, now. Tell her I am coming back. Tell her she is not to leave this house, she is not to leave the grounds, she is not to take a single bag out of that room until I am standing in front of her. Say it back to me."

"Wait for me, and do not leave."

"Exactly like that, word for word, in my voice."

"I will."

"And Rhys, if anyone troubles her while I am gone, anyone at all, you will stand between them and her and you will keep standing."

"Yes, Alpha heir."

The boots went away. A heavy door banged somewhere below, and an engine turned over on the gravel drive, and then the sound of it thinned and faded down the mountain road until the house was quiet again.

My mother let out a long breath against my hair.

"He is gone," she whispered. "Good, that is good, that is the best thing that could have happened this morning."

I pulled her hand down off my mouth.

"He told me to wait for him."

"He is confused, the wine was drugged, he does not know what he is saying."

"He said my name through a closed door."

"Seraphina..."

"He said my name, Mom, and you heard it as clearly as I did."

Through the crack of the door I could see a slice of the great hall, bright and golden with morning, dust turning slowly in the light. Then a long white gown crossed it.

Isadora. Still in last night's dress, her platinum hair loose and tangled, her blue eyes swollen to slits. She walked like a woman who had not been to bed at all.

Elder Orson's cane tapped out of the shadows to meet her.

"Miss Vance. You are awake early."

"Elder." Her voice wobbled, then hardened into something flat and careful. "I have to report a theft."

"A theft, in the Alpha's house?"

"The Luna's moonstone is gone."

My hand rose to my throat without my permission, and under my fingers, warm as a small sleeping animal, the stone was still there.