Chapter 1

Nerissa POV

"Don't look at her arm," the guard beside me muttered, which was the quickest way to make me look at her arm.

"Too late, I already looked," I said.

It was cut open from the elbow to the wrist in four long gashes, and the edges had already gone black, with dark lines crawling toward her shoulder. Hettie Doyle lay on the silver floor, kicking at nothing.

"Mama! Ahhh, ugh, it's in me, it's in my arm, AHHH, somebody get it out, get it out!"

"Hold her still, damnit!" a healer snapped. "Hettie, look at me. Breathe, girl, you're not dying."

Two guards hauled her toward the doors by the shoulders and ankles, smearing a dark streak across the moon carved into the floor. Yarrow stops bleeding, I told myself. Plantain draws out infection. Comfrey for sprains. I kept listing, because it was that or throw up on somebody's expensive shoes.

"Nine," said Lord Cormac, the Regent, from the long stone bench where the Council sat. He said it the way a man says the price of bread. He was big and handsome in a plum velvet coat, with a silver ring on every finger, and he tapped one of them against the armrest, slow and steady. "Nine girls in eight months, gentlemen, and forty days to the Blood Moon. I believe we've all seen enough."

"Will that one keep her arm?" someone asked.

"Does it matter? Brackenridge has plenty of girls."

"The law says every candidate gets her turn, my lord," an elder objected. "There's one left."

"One." Cormac laughed. "A marsh girl somebody added this morning. Fine. Bring her up and let's finish it, so we can all go home and stop pretending."

"Candidate ten," the herald called. "Nerissa Marsh, of the Greyfen Pack. Omega."

The word went down the bench like a bad smell. An elder with a lumpy nose leaned toward his neighbor. "Greyfen? Do they still have a pack down there, or just a puddle?"

"It's a very wet puddle," I said, louder than I meant to. "We're proud of it."

Somebody coughed to cover a laugh. Cormac didn't bother covering his. "She has a mouth," he said. "Good. She'll need it to scream. How old are you, girl?"

"Twenty-two, my lord."

"And your wolf? Does it have anything to say for itself?"

"It's never said a word. I think it's shy."

"Shy." Cormac smiled at the Council. "You read the paper, I assume. About your brother's bed."

"Twice, my lord."

"Then you know it's paid for either way. Whether you walk out of here or get carried."

"That's very reassuring," I said. "Do you say that to all of them?"

"Only the ones who talk back. Walk her up."

The guard steered me down the middle of the hall with one hand hovering near my elbow. "You're not shaking," he said. "They usually shake."

"I'm numb. It's different. What happens to them afterward? The ones the healers take?"

"They get patched up and sent home."

"All of them?"

He found something very interesting on the ceiling.

My father had said yes on the third try, and he said it to Finn's coughing instead of to me. The paper the recruiter unrolled on our table had Tobias's name on it, right where it said introduced by. I was still wearing the reed ring he braided for me last spring. I worked it off my finger and let it drop, and it rolled under a bench and out of sight.

The prince's bed sat on a raised platform under a round window of colored glass, and a big grey-bearded man stood at its head with one fist wrapped around the bedpost. He looked at me like something the carriage had dragged in.

"Beta Dunstan Reeve," the herald whispered, as though I asked. "He hasn't left the prince's side since the Harvest Moon. He'll catch you if the wolf throws you. Probably."

"Probably," I said. "That's comforting."

"If you've got a prayer, girl," Dunstan said, in a voice like gravel in a bucket, "say it now. I'm tired of carrying them out."

"I've got a list of herbs. Does that count?"

He blinked at me, and for a second his mouth almost did something. "It'll do. And don't run when he moves. The ones who run are the ones who get clawed."

"I don't think I could run if I wanted to."

"Good. Stay that way."

Prince Grayson Halloran lay with his hands at his sides on a white blanket, thinner than any prince should be, a pale scar splitting his left eyebrow in two. His eyes were shut. I could hear every candle hissing and every breath on that bench, and the smells came at me all at once, wax and sweat and the guards' fear, and lavender hanging thick where Hettie had lain. Under the lavender was something sharper I couldn't name, which never happened to me.

"Whenever you're ready, marsh girl," Cormac called. "Some of us would like our supper."

I stepped up to the edge of the bed, and the prince's heartbeat jumped. I heard it plainly, calm one second, then fast, as if he just noticed me.

"Easy," Dunstan muttered, and his hand dropped to his sword.

Cormac's ring stopped tapping.

The prince's right hand twitched on the blanket. His nails turned black and grew into curved claws as long as my fingers, and a growl rolled out of him that I felt in my teeth. It didn't come from his mouth. His lips never moved.

"Pull her back, Reeve!" the lumpy-nosed elder shouted. "She's tiny, he'll snap her in half!"

"Leave her," Cormac said, almost cheerfully. "The Council wants to see it finished."

"Girl, step away from the bed," Dunstan said. "Slowly."

"I'm trying. My legs just aren't taking orders."

"Then talk to him," somebody called. "Say something!"

"Fine." My voice came out thin. "Listen, I know I'm just the tenth girl on a very bad night, and I'm sorry about whatever's wrong with you. But I've got a little brother. He's nine and he's sick, and if you tear me open nobody pays for his bed. So I'd really appreciate it if you didn't."

The hand came off the blanket fast. Every person on the bench sucked in a breath, and Dunstan's sword slid halfway out of its sheath.

His fingers closed around my wrist. Gently. That was what I couldn't get over. The claws drew back into plain, ordinary nails, and the growl cut off as if somebody had shut a door on it. His hand was hot, a lot hotter than a sleeping man's should be.

"Um," I said. "Your Highness? You've got my wrist."

"I'll be damned," Dunstan breathed.

"Bloody hell, he's holding her!" the lumpy-nosed elder shouted. "Reeve, do you see that? He's holding her!"

"Oh, shit," I said. "I didn't do anything! I just stood here!"

"That's not possible." Cormac was on his feet, staring at the hand on my wrist, and all the cheer had drained out of his face. "It's a reflex. The wolf is reaching for anything warm. Reeve, pull her away from him. Now."

"Then why didn't he reach for the other nine?" Dunstan said. "I'm not touching either of them, my lord. Not after that."

"He's chosen her!" someone yelled. "Fetch the scribes! Somebody write this down!"

"A Greyfen omega can't be a Luna!"

"The law doesn't say she has to be strong, it says the wolf has to choose!"

"Has anyone told the King?"

"The King hasn't left his rooms in a month. Who's going to tell him?"

"Seal the doors now!" Cormac roared. "Nobody leaves this hall!"

Under all that noise, his thumb moved against the inside of my wrist, two slow taps, right on my pulse.