Chapter 5

Nerissa POV

"I eat when I'm nervous too," I said. "On things. Once I ate on a goat."

Dunstan's eyebrows climbed. "On a goat."

"A small one. It was a bad week."

"And the room?"

"He's a wolf. Don't wolves run hot?"

"Not like this." He brushed the crumbs off the blanket with the side of his hand, sniffed his fingers, and frowned. "Madam Vane's honey cake. She'll be glad somebody's eating it." He straightened. "If I find out you're lying to me, girl, I'll..."

"You'll what?"

"I haven't decided. Go to bed. Court's at sunrise. And Madam Vane's cake stays off the prince."

"Yes, sir."

"Don't sir me. Sir is for people I like."

"Hold still," said the girl pinning my hair, "or I'll stab you, and then I'll have to explain it."

She had introduced herself in one breath an hour ago: Bess Tuckett, kitchens, promoted because she knew everything and couldn't keep it to herself. She was nineteen, quick as a sparrow, and she talked as if the words were on fire.

"The whole palace is talking about you," she said. "Cook says it's love. The stable boys say it's witchcraft. I've got a copper on him mistaking you for a ham."

"And what do you think?"

"I think nine girls got shredded and you got your wrist held. That's a good day." She jabbed in another pin. "Ow. Sorry. Not you, me."

"Is that supposed to cheer me up?"

"It's supposed to scare you a little. A scared girl lives longer."

"Anything else going around?" I asked.

"Nope. Nothing at all." Bess started humming.

"You're humming."

"I hum when I'm happy."

"You weren't happy a second ago."

"I'm extremely happy. Hold still."

"Is there something about the Regent I should know?"

"Only that he likes his eggs soft and his servants hard. Hold still!"

The Hall of Moons looked different in daylight. The round window threw colored light across the silver floor, and the dark streak Hettie had left was gone, scrubbed so hard the carved moon underneath looked rubbed raw. The prince's bed sat in the middle of it as if nothing had happened, and Dunstan stood at its head with his arms folded and his eyes on me.

"Closer," Cormac ordered. "The wolf behaves for her, so she stands at the bed. Did you sleep well, Your Highness?"

"Like a baby."

"How reassuring. Babies wake up screaming."

I stood a hand's width from the blanket and kept my eyes on the herald. Don't look at him. The heat coming off the bed was like standing next to a kiln, and his heartbeat went on beside me, slow and even, a little too even, like somebody counting.

"You smell like honey," Dunstan muttered, barely moving his lips.

"It's soap."

"Funny soap."

"Item one," Cormac said, in the voice of a man ordering lunch. "The Luna Princess requires a household. It would be unkind to leave a girl from the marsh to manage a palace on her own, so I've found someone who knows her habits, her tastes, and her health. Bring him in."

The doors opened, and Tobias walked in.

He wore plum velvet, the same shade as Cormac's, with a gold pin at the collar, and he combed his hair the way he did for festival days. He walked like he owned the floor. Under his arm, held against his side the way you hold something you're proud of, was a small green book with soft corners and a blue ribbon sticking out of it.

My mother's notebook.

"Master Tobias Crane," the herald announced. "Master of the Luna's Household."

"Your Highness." Tobias bowed, and he said it the way you say a joke you've been saving.

"What are you doing here?"

"Looking after you, Nessie. Somebody has to." He looked me over. "Princess suits you."

"You look like a man who got paid."

"Two hundred gold and a post in the Regent's household." He smiled. "I'd call that a good wage." He tipped his head at the book. "I brought your mother's recipes. I know how much you've missed them."

"Give me that."

"After court." He stepped close, as if he meant to kiss my hand, and lowered his voice. "I read it on the carriage ride. Page forty-one." His thumb tapped the ribbon. "The cordial isn't for your chest."

A growl rolled out of the bed.

It was low and long, and every head on the benches turned. Dunstan's hand dropped to his sword. Cormac leaned forward, looking delighted. "Well. He doesn't care for our Master Crane."

"Step away from her, boy," Dunstan said.

"I'm Master of her household. I'll stand where I like."

"Then you'll like somewhere else."

Tobias didn't step back. He smiled wider. "She was hiding you," he whispered. "I always wondered from what."

My fingertips were burning. It began as heat, as if I held them over a lamp, and then the heat turned into a deep, pulling ache under each nail.

"Tobias," I said. "Move."

"Or what? You'll hit me? You've never hit anything in your life."

Something went snk.

I looked down. My nails had split, all ten of them, with a small wet sound like green twigs snapping, and out of every tip pushed a curved claw, black at the root and grey at the end, as long as my thumbs. "Ahh, ugh, ahh!" The noise came out of me before I could stop it, high and ugly and not brave at all, and I grabbed my own wrist and bent over with blood running down my knuckles.

"What the hell is that?" an elder shouted.

"That's no omega's hand!"

"Omegas don't have claws!"

"Healers!" a woman screamed. "Somebody fetch a healer, she's bleeding!"

"Nobody moves!" Dunstan barked. "Everybody stay where you are!"

Tobias stumbled backward, and the smile fell right off him. "Nessie," he said. "That's not... it wasn't supposed to..."

"Don't call me that. You knew."

"Not this. I swear, I didn't know this."

"What does page forty-one say?"

"Ask your mother."

"She's dead, Tobias."

"Then I suppose you never will."

"Master Crane," Cormac said. "You told me she was a weak omega. No wolf worth the name, the sort a pack sells without a second thought."

"She is. She was. My lord, she's never done anything like this."

"Then you're a fool or a liar. Pick one."

Cormac turned and looked at my hands the way another man might look at a fine horse. "Well, Your Highness. It seems the marsh mouse has teeth."

"Then keep your distance," I said.

"Oh, I intend to stay very close."

Dunstan shoved a folded handkerchief at me. "Wrap those," he said gruffly. "Before you bleed on the floor."

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me. Just wrap them."

I wound the cloth around my fingers, and it soaked through red before I finished. Nobody on the benches had stopped staring.

Five days without the cordial, and my wolf was clawing her way out through my fingertips. It had never been for my chest. I thought about every morning I stood at the stove stirring marsh willow and mint, humming her tune, believing I was being good. My mother had spent four years and a notebook keeping me small, and I didn't know why, and the one person who did was standing three feet away with her handwriting under his arm.

I hadn't looked at the bed. I'd been told not to. But something moved at the edge of my sight.

The prince's fingers twitched against the blanket.

Then his heartbeat slammed twice, hard and fast, the way it had when Tobias said my mother's name.

I looked up.

Cormac had stopped watching my claws. His attention was fixed on the prince's face, specifically the pale scar through his left eyebrow. The skin beside it had just moved.

Then Cormac smiled,and I knew he had seen it too.