Chapter Two

Odessa pov

Chaos doesn't sound like people think it does. It's not screaming. It's boots on stone, too many voices layered wrong, someone's mother sobbing into a phone three feet from a guard yelling for everyone to stay calm while his own hands were shaking.

Julian didn't let go of my arm until we were shoved into a side corridor with a dozen other students, all of us pressed against cold stone while guards sealed the main doors behind us.

"Are you hurt?" He turned me by the shoulders like he needed to check for himself.

"I'm fine." I wasn't, really. My pulse hadn't slowed down since the glass cracked. "Julian, I'm fine."

"You don't look fine." His eyes kept darting past me, toward the hall, toward the noise. "A scout's dead. On our border. Do you understand what that means?"

"I heard him the same as you did."

"It means Corvin's going to lose his mind trying to figure out who to blame." He said it low, almost to himself, and for once the polish dropped off his voice completely. "And I need you nowhere near whatever he decides to do about it."

That got my attention. "What's that supposed to mean?"

He didn't answer. A guard barked at everyone to move, and the crowd swept us forward before Julian could say anything else.

They herded us toward the east wing, not the dorms, and that alone told me something was wrong. Students didn't get called to the east wing. Council did.

The chamber was already half full by the time we got there, low murmurs bouncing off stone that never quite let a room stay quiet. I found a spot near the back again out of habit, and Julian, for once, didn't try to move me. He stood close instead, arms crossed, jaw tight.

Corvin took the floor like he'd been waiting for exactly this his whole life.

"A scout is dead," he said, no preamble. "Drained, on our border, less than an hour ago. I will not stand here and pretend that isn't an act of war."

A ripple went through the crowd. Somebody near the front actually said the word ‘war’ out loud, like saying it made it real.

"We don't know that Ironhollow did this," said a voice from the council table, older, tired-sounding. Councilor Marsh, I thought, though I only half recognized the face.

"We don't need to know," Corvin said. "We need to respond before they decide we're weak enough to test again."

Across the chamber, on the side reserved for treaty witnesses, the wolves stood in a tight knot, and the one from the assembly hall,the one who stared at me like I was a math problem he couldn't solve, had his arms folded and his face carved out of stone.

"You'd start a war off one body with no proof," he said, voice flat and carrying ease across the whole room, "before you even bother asking my father a single question?"

"I'm not asking your father anything, Mr. Kade," Corvin said, smooth as glass. "I'm addressing my own house."

‘Kade.’ So that was his name, or half of it, and something about hearing it out loud made the whole thing feel more solid, less like a nightmare I could wake up out of.

"Then address it," Kade said. "Just don't act surprised when we don't stand around waiting to be blamed for something we didn't do."

"Careful," Julian muttered under his breath, close enough only I could hear it.

Corvin held up a hand, and the room actually quieted for him, which told you everything about how much power the man really had. "There is a way," he said, "to prove good faith on both sides. A way our ancestors used, more than once, when trust ran thin."

My stomach dropped before he even said the word.

"A hostage exchange," Corvin said. "One of ours, placed under Ironhollow's roof for the length of the semester. Full transparency. Full access. Proof that we have nothing to hide."

The room erupted at once, half outrage, half relief, and I stood there frozen while Julian's hand found my arm again, gripping too hard.

"Absolutely not," someone shouted from the crowd.

"It's the only thing that'll actually calm this down," Marsh said over the noise, sounding almost pleading now. "Corvin's right. We need this."

"And who," said Kade, voice cutting clean through everyone else's, "are you volunteering?"

Corvin's eyes moved across the chamber slowly, deliberately, like he already knew exactly where they landed before he even started looking.

"Someone whose loyalty to this house has never once been questioned," he said. "Someone whose bloodline understands, better than anyone here, the cost of instability."

My whole body went cold a full three seconds before he said my name, like some part of me already knew.

"Odessa Ravencourt."

The room didn't erupt this time. It went dead silent, all those eyes swinging toward me at once, and I felt Julian's hand go rigid on my arm like he had been electrocuted.

"No," he said, loud enough that heads turned toward him instead. "Absolutely not, she's not. You can't just…."

"I can," Corvin said, calm as still water, "and I have."

"She's my intended," Julian snapped. "You don't get to hand her off like she's…."

"Like she's what, exactly?" Corvin's gaze flicked to me, gray and unreadable, and something underneath it made my skin crawl. "Expendable? I'd have thought you'd want to protect your future wife's standing in this house, Julian. This is an honor."

"This is a punishment and everyone in this room knows it," Kade said flatly, and for one strange second I felt almost grateful to him for saying out loud what I couldn't.

"Careful, Mr. Kade," Corvin said, without even looking at him. "You're volunteering to be her keeper, whether you mean to or not."

Kade's jaw ticked. He didn't say anything else.

I finally found my own voice, though it came out thinner than I wanted. "Don't I get a say in this?"

Corvin's eyes came back to me, and for just a second, something under that calm surface flickered,something closer to satisfaction, the same look he'd worn back in the assembly hall while the room burned down around him.

"You have a duty to this house," he said. "The same duty your parents forgot. I'd think you'd want the chance to prove you're nothing like them."

The room went so quiet I could hear my own heartbeat.

"That's not fair," Julian said, low, furious.

"Fair isn't the point." Corvin turned back to the chamber like the conversation was already over. "Miss Ravencourt will relocate to Ironhollow territory by sundown tomorrow, under direct supervision, for the remainder of the semester. All in favor."

Hands went up around the room, one after another, and I stood there watching my own fate get decided by a show of hands from people who never once bothered to learn anything real about me.

Julian was still arguing, voice rising, but it all sounded far away, like I was hearing it through water.

Across the chamber, Kade wasn't arguing anymore either. He was just watching me, that same unreadable look from the assembly hall, except now there was something sharper underneath it, something that looked almost like he already regretted whatever was coming.

Corvin's voice cut through the noise one final time, smooth and final as a door closing.

"It's decided."

I looked down at my own hands, steady on the outside, shaking on the inside, and thought, with a clarity that scared me more than anything else that night.

‘He wanted this. He wanted this from the very beginning.’