Chapter 4

I decided, somewhere between the sunrise and the first bowl of porridge, that it was a trick.

It was the only explanation that let me keep breathing. The Blackmere were known for their dark arts. Every Frostmaw child had heard the stories. Wolves who could twist minds, plant whispers, turn a warrior against her own pack. Luca Knox was a king, a strategist, a man who had held the northern border for six years. Of course he knew how to use a weapon like this.

Mate. What a clever word. What a perfect lure for a wolf who had spent her whole life alone.

I said it to myself again as I chewed. And again as Posy sat down across from me with a plate stacked high with honey bread and began telling a long, ridiculous story about a sentry who had mistaken a badger for a scout. She did not mention the river. I did not mention the river. We laughed in all the right places.

Somewhere under the table, my knee would not stop bouncing.

A trick, I told myself. A trick, a trick, a trick.

The ache under my ribs did not care what I called it.

The war council met at midmorning in the long tent, and I walked in with my back straight and my face empty, the way the Blade always did.

Dorian sat at the head of the table with his hands folded and a map of the northern border spread out before him. Captain Harrow stood at his right, a broad, weathered man with a permanent scowl. A dozen officers crowded the benches, all of them talking at once about yesterday's victory, and the second Dorian saw me, he smiled.

"Our Blade," he said, warmly. "Sit. You look as though you haven't slept."

"I slept enough."

"You didn't." He said it gently. "But I won't press you."

I sat. A hand pushed a cup of water toward me. I drank it, mostly to keep my hands busy.

The council lasted an hour. They talked about supply lines and scouting routes, about how the Blackmere had never retreated mid-battle before, about what it might mean. Harrow thought it was a trap. Another officer thought their alpha had been wounded. Someone suggested, quietly, that perhaps the king was losing his nerve.

I said nothing. I stared at a knot in the wood.

Then Dorian cleared his throat, and the room went quiet.

"There is something else," he said, "and I want every one of you to hear it. The Blackmere do not fight only with claws."

My stomach turned over.

"I have heard reports," he continued. "From prisoners, from scouts, from the old records. They have a way of reaching into a wolf's mind. Whispering. Planting words in the skull that do not belong to us." He paused. "Poison, dressed up as kindness. Some of our warriors have been lost to it, turned against their own packs without ever knowing why."

Nobody spoke. A few of the officers glanced at one another uneasily.

"If any wolf in this camp hears a voice that is not their own," Dorian said, and his eyes moved slowly around the table, "you will come to me. At once. You will not hide it, and you will not be ashamed. There is no shame in being a victim. Only in staying silent."

His gaze came to rest on me.

It lasted a heartbeat. Perhaps two. His expression was soft, concerned, perfectly kind.

I couldn't tell whether it was warning or worry. I couldn't tell whether he already knew.

"Understood?" he said.

"Yes, Father," I said, and the word tasted like ash. "Understood."

I had lied to him before, small lies, kind lies. I had never lied to him with a cold pulse and a steady voice and a whisper in my head that said, I can feel your heart racing, little wolf.

I bit the inside of my cheek until it bled.

Training that afternoon was a mistake.

I should have known it. I couldn't sit still, couldn't think, and the only thing that ever quieted my mind was a blade. So I took the sparring yard, where the younger warriors trained on the packed dirt, and I let a green-eyed recruit named Jory volunteer to spar with me because he was too eager to be afraid.

The first few passes were easy. I held back. Jory was quick, but he was raw, and I could read every move before he made it.

Then the fever spiked.

It came out of nowhere. One moment I was circling, blade low, and the next the whole world went sharp and bright and burning. I could hear Jory's heartbeat. I could hear the wind change direction. Every sound was a spear driving into my skull, and my body was moving before I told it to, faster, stronger, hotter than any body should move.

I swung.

The wooden sword shattered against Jory's guard, and the force of it lifted him bodily off his feet. He flew ten feet and hit the dirt in a cloud of dust, and the whole sparring yard went silent.

I stood there with the splintered hilt in my hand, gasping.

"Jory." My voice sounded strange. "Jory, I'm— are you—"

He was already sitting up, blinking, more startled than hurt. "I'm fine, Blade. I think. I think my arm's just numb."

His arm was not just numb. It was hanging at a wrong angle.

Posy was beside me in an instant, pressing a cloth to my forehead, murmuring something bright and soothing to the recruits gathered around us. "Adrenaline," she was saying. "Blade's been fighting for two days straight. Give her some air. Someone get Jory to Morwenna."

The recruits scattered, whispering. I watched Jory walk away with his good hand clamped over his shoulder, and something cold curled in my stomach.

"That wasn't adrenaline," I said quietly.

"It was today," Posy said. She was not smiling. She was staring at my hands, which were trembling, and for a moment I thought she might ask.

She didn't.

"Go lie down," she said instead. "Please. Before you break anyone else."

Night came slowly.

I lay on my bedroll in the dark with my eyes open, staring at the canvas, listening to the sounds of the camp settling. Low voices. A distant cough. The crackle of a dying fire. Every breath tugged at the hollow under my ribs, and my skin felt three sizes too small.

Someone had left a small cloth pouch beside my bedroll while I was out.

I sniffed it. Bitter root and honey.

There was no note. There didn't need to be.

I brewed it on the little fire outside my tent, and it eased the fever just enough that I could close my eyes. But it didn't touch the ache. It didn't touch the sound of a low, rough voice saying mate over and over in the back of my mind, though no one had spoken in hours.

Are you awake, little wolf?

I went rigid.

It was softer than before. Almost hesitant. Not commanding, not urgent, only there, like a hand resting against a closed door.

I pressed my palms into my eyes.

Get out of my head, I thought, as fiercely as I could.

Silence.

Get out. I don't want you here. I don't trust you. You're the enemy and I don't want to hear your voice.

For a long moment, nothing.

Then, quiet and steady and utterly without reproach:

As you wish.

And the thread in my chest went slack.

Not gone. I could still feel him, somewhere out there in the dark, the way you feel a fire after it's been banked. But the voice was gone. The presence was gone. He had done exactly what I asked.

I lay there for a very long time, with my hands over my face, and I told myself I was relieved.

I told myself that until morning.

He kept his word. That was the worst part.