Chapter 2: The Rules of a Paper Wife

Nyra's POV

"I don't know what you're talking about."

My voice came out steadier than I felt. Under the veil, my nails were cutting crescents into my palms.

Lyra laughed softly, like I'd told a sweet little joke. "Of course you don't." She smoothed a crease from her red sleeve. "Let me make it simple for you, since Ashfall never did teach its girls to read. Keep your mouth shut, stay out of his way, and nobody needs to visit that sad little cottage at the edge of your stepfather's land."

My blood went cold. "If you touch him..."

"Him?" Her eyebrows lifted. "Him who? I thought you didn't know what I was talking about."

I said nothing. I'd already said too much.

"That's what I thought." She leaned in again, and the smell of roses made my stomach turn. "Five years ago, nobody believed you. Do you really think anybody will believe you now?"

"Lady Lyra."

A man's voice cut in from behind us, calm and polite. Lyra straightened at once, her smile snapping back into place.

"Silas," she said. "I was just welcoming our new... guest."

"That's kind of you." The man who stepped up beside me was tall and lean, with tired eyes and an easy way of standing, like he'd spent a lifetime keeping the peace between angry people. "The Alpha's looking for you. Something about the seating at the high table."

Lyra's eyes flicked to me one last time. "We'll talk again, kitchen girl."

She swept away in a whisper of silk. I let out a breath I didn't know I'd been holding.

"Are you all right, Luna?"

I flinched. "Please don't call me that."

He looked at me for a long moment, then nodded. "All right. What should I call you?"

"Nyra is fine."

"Nyra." He offered his arm. "I'm to show you to your room. Alpha's orders."

I didn't take his arm, but I followed him out of the hall, away from the music and the laughter and the eyes. We climbed one staircase, then another, then turned down a narrow corridor where the carpet ran out and the stone floor turned cold beneath my thin slippers.

The servants' wing.

I knew this corridor. Five years ago I used to run down it with my arms full of clean linen, late and laughing, because a certain heir had kept me talking by the river again.

Silas stopped at the last door. "It's not much," he said quietly. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be." I pushed the door open. A narrow bed, a chipped basin, a window the size of a book. "I've slept in worse."

He hesitated in the doorway. "He isn't always like this, you know."

"Like what?"

"Cruel." Silas rubbed the back of his neck. "Something happened to him a few years ago. He came back... different. Colder. Most of us stopped trying to reach him."

Something happened to him. I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood. I know. I was there. I held his hand while you were all out looking for the wrong people.

"Goodnight, Silas," I said.

He gave me one last odd look, as if he were trying to place where he'd seen me before, then closed the door.

I waited until his footsteps faded. Then I sank onto the bed, tore the veil off, and pressed both hands over my mouth so nobody would hear me break.

How is the boy?

She knew. Lyra knew about Rowan. How? Garrick had sworn nobody outside Ashfall knew, that Mama Odette's cottage was safe, that as long as I behaved...

I had to get word to Odette. Tonight. I had to warn her to move him somewhere, anywhere, before...

The door opened without a knock.

I shot to my feet so fast the bed creaked.

He filled the whole doorway. The candlelight caught the sharp line of his jaw, the dark stubble along it, the pale scar running from his temple into his hair. He'd taken off his wedding coat. His shirt was open at the throat, the sleeves rolled to his elbows.

For five years I'd imagined seeing him again. I'd imagined screaming at him. I'd imagined running to him. I had never once imagined just standing there, unable to breathe, while he looked at my face like he'd never seen it before in his life.

Because he hadn't. Not as far as he knew.

His eyes moved over me slowly, from my hair to my mouth to my hands, which were clenched in the skirt of my dress. Something flickered across his face. A small frown, like a man trying to remember a word on the tip of his tongue. He lifted a hand and pressed two fingers against the scar at his temple.

"Do I know you?" he asked.

Yes. You know me better than anyone alive.

"No, Alpha."

"You looked at me like you did. In the hall."

"I couldn't see you in the hall. I was wearing a veil."

His eyes narrowed. "Clever."

He stepped inside and shut the door behind him. The room was suddenly half its size.

"I came to make sure you understood me," he said. "In case your stepfather filled your head with ideas."

"You were very clear, Alpha."

"Was I?" Another step. "Then tell me what I said."

I lifted my chin even though my knees were shaking. "Your name and a roof. Nothing else. I won't touch you. I won't speak unless spoken to."

"And?"

"And I won't pretend to be something I'm not."

"Good girl."

He said it so coldly that it hurt more than a slap. Five years ago he had said those same two words against my neck, laughing, while I tried to hide that I'd burned his breakfast.

I looked at the floor so he wouldn't see my eyes fill.

"Look at me when I'm speaking to you."

I looked up. He was closer now, close enough that I had to tip my head back. Close enough that I could smell him again, pine and rain and smoke, and the scar at my collar started to burn.

"Why do you smell like that?" he said suddenly.

"Like what?"

He didn't answer. His hand came up and caught my wrist, the same wrist he'd held at the altar, and pulled it toward him. He bent his head. For one wild moment I thought he was going to kiss my palm the way he used to. Instead he breathed in slowly against the inside of my wrist, eyes half closed, like a wolf catching a trail.

"River water," he muttered. "Cold river water and... something."

My pulse was hammering against his lips. I knew he could feel it.

"Alpha," I whispered. "You said I wasn't to touch you."

His eyes snapped open. Grey. Silver-grey, the exact color of the eyes I kissed goodnight every evening in a little cottage two days' ride away.

"I'm not the one touching," he said, low and rough.

He didn't let go.

Instead, he backed me up one step, then another, until my shoulders hit the cold stone wall. His other hand came up and braced beside my head. His breath was uneven. So was mine. His gaze dropped to my mouth and stayed there, and I hated myself for how badly I wanted him to close that last inch.

"What are you doing to me?" he said, almost to himself.

"Nothing."

"Liar." His thumb moved across the inside of my wrist, slow, once. "Every time you say that word, you lie."

Then something deep in his chest rumbled. I'd heard that sound at the altar.

He went rigid. He released me so suddenly that I slid a few inches down the wall, and when I looked up, his face had turned to stone.

"This," he said, pointing between us, "doesn't happen again."

"I didn't..."

But he'd already yanked the door open. He stopped on the threshold, his back to me, his hand gripping the frame so hard the old wood creaked.

"Silas," he called down the dark corridor.

Footsteps hurried closer. "Alpha?"

"I want to know everything about my wife." He said wife like it was poison. "Where she was born. Who she's lain with. Where she's been every single day for the last five years."

My heart stopped.

"Everything, Silas. I don't care who you have to ride out to Ashfall and question. Find out what she's hiding."