Chapter 8: What the Treaty Actually Wanted

Twelve hours.

That was all we had before Selene stood in front of Malachi Voss and made whatever case she’d built against me, and I spent the walk from the gate to Thorneheart’s main hall doing the math on exactly how much damage a well-timed lie could do to someone who’d already lost everything once.

“We use the time we have,” Maren said, reading the tension in my shoulders without needing me to explain it. “Sit. All of you. We’re not solving this standing in a doorway.”

We sat in Thorneheart’s main hall … Maren at the head of the table, Dorian by the door, Kian’s chair pulled close enough beside mine that his knee stayed pressed against mine the entire time, a small, steady anchor while the rest of the conversation threatened to pull the floor out from under me.

“Show her the footnote first,” Maren said. “Then we deal with the sister.”

Cassian laid the ledger page on the table. I read the footnote twice before the words settled into something I could actually absorb … a name, not a bloodline description. My name, written into a treaty two generations before I was born, in a hand that predated my grandmother.

“How is that possible,” I said.

“I don’t fully know yet,” Cassian admitted. “My father either knew and lied for twenty years, or he genuinely believed the vaguer language covered it and never looked closely enough to find the footnote. Given how he’s reacted since I found it, I think it’s the first one.”

“He knew,” Kian said flatly, his hand settling over mine on the table now, unhurried, entirely unbothered by who was watching. “Man like that doesn’t look surprised by his own hesitation unless he’s hiding something.”

Cassian’s eyes tracked the movement … Kian’s hand over mine … and something flickered there, old grief dressed up as composure, before he mastered it and didn’t argue the point, which told me something too.

“There’s more,” he said. “The healer who examined the damage from the eastern breach found something odd in the pattern of the attack. Whoever hit that fence knew exactly where the weak stretch was … a spot that’s only been weak for the last three weeks, since a storm damaged it. That’s not public information. That’s information from inside my household.”

The room went very quiet.

“You think someone in Ironwood fed the attack,” Maren said.

“I think someone who had access to my father’s repair schedule fed the attack.” Cassian’s eyes flicked to me, apologetic in a way that made my stomach drop before he even said it. “I don’t want to accuse anyone without proof. But there’s a very short list of people who had that access and also had a reason to want chaos at exactly this border, at exactly this time.”

I thought of Selene’s face at the ceremony, delighted, timing her cruelty like she’d rehearsed it. I thought of her letter, every line of it hunting for my location instead of asking how I was.

“My sister,” I said quietly.

Nobody in the room contradicted me.

“She’s not just talking to your father tomorrow morning,” I said, watching the pieces settle into a shape I didn’t like. “She’s building a story first. By the time she sits down with him, whatever she says is going to sound reasonable, because she’ll have spent the whole night making sure it does.”

“Then we get ahead of it,” Cassian said. “I can send word tonight … get to my father before her audience, lay out what we’ve found in the treaty, make sure he’s hearing the truth before he hears her version of it.”

“Your father invoked an override clause to force a rejection based on nothing but which sister looked better at a dinner table,” Kian said, sharp, his thumb tracing an absent, grounding line across the back of my hand. “You think he’s going to listen to reason from you now, twelve hours before a woman he’s never had reason to distrust tells him a story he wants to be true?”

Cassian’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t argue. “Probably not. But I have to try.”

Something in that landed harder than I expected it to. Not forgiveness … I wasn’t there, not close to it … but something that looked, for the first time, like a man choosing to spend something real instead of just apologizing for what he’d already spent carelessly.

“I’m not going to pretend that doesn’t complicate things for my family,” Cassian said. “If Selene’s behind this, it means a member of my own treaty partner’s household orchestrated an attack on my territory to manipulate a personal outcome.”

“Careful,” Maren said, dry. “Almost sounds like you’re worried about someone other than yourself for once.”

Cassian’s mouth twisted, something rueful in it. “I’m aware of how the last week looks from where you’re all sitting. I don’t expect credit for catching up this late.” He stood, pulling his coat back on. “I’ll ride through the night. If I’m fast enough, I can reach my father before Selene does.”

“And if you’re not,” Maren said.

“Then I’ll deal with whatever’s waiting for me when I get there.” He paused at the door, looking back … not at me this time, but at the two of us together, Kian’s hand still resting over mine. “I hope this works out for you both. I mean that. Whatever I get to keep after tonight, I don’t get to keep resenting the fact that someone’s finally treating her right.”

He left before I could answer, which was, I thought, probably the wisest thing he’d done all evening.

Kian’s hand was still around mine. Neither of us moved to let go.

“You believe him,” he said, not quite a question.

“I believe he means it tonight.” I turned my hand slightly in his, lacing our fingers properly instead of just holding on. “Whether that’s enough to matter by morning is a different question. I keep thinking about what he said, watching us … that he doesn’t get to keep resenting it. I didn’t expect that from him. Not this soon.”

“People surprise you sometimes, once they run out of easier options.” Kian’s voice was even, no bitterness in it that I could find, which surprised me more than Cassian’s words had. “Doesn’t mean I trust him. Just means I can believe he’s telling the truth about this particular thing without believing he’s earned anything from it.”

“That’s a very precise kind of forgiveness.”

“I’m not offering him forgiveness. I’m offering him the accuracy of not pretending he’s lying when he isn’t. Those are different things.” He turned to look at me fully, something softer moving into his expression. “I’m not worried about him, if that’s what you’re asking without asking it.”

“I wasn’t asking that.”

“Good,” he said, “because you don’t need to be. I know what I have. I’m not spending tonight worried about losing it to a man who had his chance and spent it on four cruel words in front of two hundred witnesses.”

Something in my chest eased at that, warm and certain in a way that still occasionally caught me off guard, four days into feeling it at all.

We sat there a while longer after Maren and Dorian moved off to discuss watch schedules, the hall quiet around us, his thumb tracing slow, absent circles against the back of my hand, his shoulder warm against mine in a way that no longer felt new, exactly, but still felt like something I hadn’t stopped being grateful for.

We were still sitting there, hands joined, when the front gate bell rang three times in quick succession … not Cassian returning, too soon for that, and not the alarm horn either.

A single rider. Alone. And when Dorian went to the door and came back, his face had gone the particular gray of a man delivering news he didn’t want to be the one saying out loud.

“It’s from Ironwood,” he said. “Selene got there first. Hours ago.” He held out a sealed dispatch bearing the Voss crest, its wax still faintly warm from a hard ride. “Alpha King Malachi’s issued a formal summons in her name. He’s naming Ivy a fugitive under treaty law and sending an armed retrieval party to collect her … by force, if Thorneheart refuses to hand her over. They’ll be at our gates by first light.”