Chapter 2: The Terms

Elena

The east wing smelled like cedar and something colder underneath it, something I didn't have a name for yet but would later learn was just what wolves smelled like when there were enough of them in one building. Dorian walked half a step ahead of me, hands clasped behind his back, the picture of a man who'd given this exact tour before and found it faintly tedious.

"Guest quarters," he said, stopping at a door carved with a symbol I didn't recognize — a crescent wrapped around something jagged, like a moon that had been broken and put back together wrong. "Yours, for now."

"For now."

"Things change quickly here." He pushed the door open without waiting for permission — mine or anyone's, apparently. "You'll want to get used to that."

The room was larger than my entire apartment back home, which felt like an insult dressed up as a kindness. A bed big enough for four people. A window that looked out over grounds I couldn't see the end of. Everything expensive, and none of it mine.

"I don't suppose there's a lock on this door," I said.

"There's a lock." Dorian's mouth twitched. "It just doesn't work the way you're hoping it works. It's not there to keep people out."

"Comforting."

"I didn't say it to comfort you." He leaned against the doorframe, studying me with that same unreadable curiosity from the hall. "Most humans who come through that door cry for the first three days. Some of them don't stop."

"Is that a warning or a prediction?"

"An observation." He shrugged. "You didn't cry once in there. Even the ones who hate him usually cry."

"Maybe I'm saving it for later."

"Maybe." He didn't sound convinced, and I got the distinct impression Dorian didn't say things he didn't mean, which made him either the most honest person I'd meet in this place or the most dangerous. Possibly both. "There's a packet on the desk. Terms of your... arrangement. His Majesty had it drawn up months ago, before you ever arrived."

"Months?" That stopped me. "He knew about this months ago?"

"Your father's debt has been public knowledge in certain circles for over a year," Dorian said, like this was obvious, like I should have known the shape of my own ruin before it swallowed me. "The King simply decided how he wanted to collect."

I didn't trust myself to respond to that yet, so I crossed to the desk instead and picked up the packet — thick, bound in leather, my name embossed on the front like I was a product that had been pre-labeled before the sale even closed.

"I'll leave you to it," Dorian said. "Dinner's at eight. You're expected to attend."

"Expected, or required?"

"With him, there's rarely a difference." He was already turning to go, but paused in the doorway, glancing back at me in a way that felt less like a warning and more like genuine advice, offered against his better judgment. "For what it's worth — don't perform for him. He's spent his whole life surrounded by people who perform. He'll smell it on you before you finish the sentence."

Then he was gone, and I was alone with a packet of paper that apparently contained the terms of the rest of my life.

I sat on the edge of the bed and opened it.

The language was formal, cold, exactly the kind of thing a lawyer would write if the lawyer had never once considered that the subject of the contract might read it herself. *The human, Elena Reyes, is bound to the territory and person of King Kade Voss for the duration of the debt period, no less than five years, during which time she is afforded protection of the crown in exchange for compliance with the terms herein.*

Compliance. I read that word four times before I made myself keep going.

*The human shall not leave the territory without express permission. The human shall attend court functions as required. The human shall not seek to undermine, embarrass, or act against the interests of the crown.* And then, near the bottom, in language slightly less rigid than the rest, like whoever drafted it had hesitated: *The King retains full discretion regarding the nature of the arrangement, including but not limited to matters of companionship, at such time as he deems appropriate.*

I read that line more than four times.

At such time as he deems appropriate.

I set the packet down like it had burned me, and for the first time since the guards had loaded me into the car outside my father's house, I let myself feel the actual size of what had happened — not the version I'd been performing in the Great Hall, chin up, mouth sharp, but the real one, the one where I was twenty-three years old and had just discovered I belonged to a stranger for a minimum of five years, with a clause at the bottom that meant whatever he wanted it to mean.

I didn't cry. Dorian would have been proud, or maybe just unsurprised.

I got up instead, because sitting still felt like losing, and started pulling books off a shelf that clearly hadn't been arranged with me in mind — old things, leather spines, titles in a language I couldn't read. Anything to keep my hands busy while the rest of me caught up to what my mouth had already decided in that hall: I was not going to make this easy for him.

A knock interrupted me before I'd made it through the second shelf.

I expected a servant. I got Kade instead, filling the doorway the way he'd filled the front of that hall — not dramatically, just completely, like there wasn't a version of a room he walked into that didn't rearrange itself around him.

"You read the packet," he said. Not a question.

"I read it."

"And?"

"And I'd like to know what 'at such time as he deems appropriate' means, exactly, before I decide how angry to be about it."

Something crossed his face — not quite surprise, but close to it, like he hadn't expected me to go straight for that line instead of the others. "It means what it says. Nothing has been decided."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one you're getting tonight." He studied me for a moment, the same assessing look from the hall, like he was still trying to solve a math problem that kept refusing to resolve. "You didn't cry."

"Is that a requirement I missed in the packet?"

"No." A pause. "It would have been easier if you had."

"Easier for who?"

He didn't answer that either — just looked at me a beat longer than the conversation strictly required, something unreadable moving behind those eyes, before he stepped back into the corridor.

"Dinner is at eight," he said. "Don't be late. And Elena—" He paused, one hand on the doorframe, and for just a second the King who'd burned down an entire compound rather than negotiate looked almost like he was choosing his next words carefully. "Whatever you're planning to prove down there tonight, in front of my court — be certain it's worth the cost of proving it."

Then the door was shut, and I was alone again, with a contract on the desk and a warning in my chest that felt less like fear than I wanted it to.

I looked at the clock. Six hours until dinner.

Plenty of time to decide exactly how much trouble I was willing to be.