CHAPTER 6

Ivy's POV

The full moon rite starts without me.

I know because I can hear it through the stone walls. My blood is already answering it before I've decided anything.

I sit on my bed and read the same paragraph of territorial history for the fourth time.

I read for about eleven minutes, and I tell myself I'm just going to the walkway.

The walkway is allowed. If I happen to hear the rite from there, that's geography, not disobedience.

I open my door and Rook is sitting on the floor outside it, back against the opposite wall, forearms on his knees, looking up at me with the expression of a man who has been waiting for exactly this.

"I'm just going to the walkway," I say.

"Alright."

He stands and falls into step beside me without being asked, and I don't tell him not to. Having him beside me is practical.

That's all.

The walkway is cold and bright, the moon so full it looks close enough to touch. The rite grounds are north and invisible from here, but the sound reaches us perfectly.

I grip the railing.

The pull hits immediately. Stronger than every other night, moving through me from the ground up, feet to knees to sternum to throat, and my breath goes short, and I close my eyes and try to breathe through it the way Maren told me to.

She said it like it was simple.

It is not simple.

Something inside my chest shoves against its own walls like it has somewhere to be and I am the only thing in its way. My grip on the railing tightens until my knuckles ache.

"Rook," I call out.

His hand closes around my arm. Steady and solid, the kind of grip that isn't restraining, just anchoring.

"Breathe," he says.

I breathe, in and out and in again, and the pull crests and holds without breaking me, and slowly the shaking in my hands stops.

I open my eyes.

Rook is close, close enough that I can see the moonlight catch the line of his jaw.

He's looking at my face the way he looks at things he's trying to assess quickly, moving over my eyes and my breathing.

"Better?" he says.

"Yes," my voice comes out steadier than I expected, "you can let go."

He doesn't immediately.

One second. Two. Then he lets go, and we stand side by side in the cold, and I think about what he told me in the library, and I think about his hand on my arm, and I think about how neither of those things are something I know how to file correctly.

"In the Syndicate," I say, because talking is better than thinking, "they told me I didn't have a wolf. That the gene was dormant and it was like it was a medical condition. Something to manage."

Rook is quiet.

"They were lying," I say, not as a question.

"I don't know what they knew," he says carefully.

"But you know something," I turn to look at him, "you've known something since before we left. That's why you're here."

His jaw tightens.

I turn to face him fully. The railing is behind me and he's in front of me and there's not much space between us, and he doesn't step back, just goes very still.

"Eight years," I say, "you've been right behind me for eight years, and I've spent most of them pretending I don't notice. You know something about what's happening to me and you've decided not to tell me, and I need you to decide differently."

Something shifts in his face.

"Your father's instructions," he says slowly, "when he assigned me to escort you here, were specific."

"What instructions?"

He looks at me for a long moment.

"To make sure you arrived," he says, "and to make sure you stayed."

The moon is huge and silent above us.

"He didn't say to protect you," Rook continues, "he said to make sure you stayed in Ashveil territory." He lets that sit.

"Those are different things, Ivy."

The gap between them lands in my chest like something with an edge.

My father didn't send Rook to keep me safe.

He sent Rook to keep me here. Like a hand on the back of an envelope already sealed.

"He knew," I say, and my voice comes out hollow, "about what I am. He knew before he sent me, and he sent you to make sure I couldn't leave."

Rook says nothing.

I turn back to the railing and something settles in me. Cold and clarifying.

"Rook."

"Yes."

"Are you going to make sure I stay?" I ask. "Is that what you're here to do?"

The silence stretches between us. When I turn to look at him, his expression is the most open I have ever seen it, stripped back to something unguarded and almost painful.

"No," he says.

One word. But the way he says it tells me something was decided inside him long before tonight.

From the rite grounds the sound rises suddenly, all voices together, and I grip the railing and breathe through it, and this time Rook's shoulder is pressed against mine. Solid and warm.

Below us, from the path along the eastern courtyard, a figure steps into the moonlight and looks up.

Caelum.

He sees us at the railing, me and Rook, shoulder to shoulder in the cold, and something moves through his face that he doesn't manage quite fast enough before he puts it away.

He holds my eyes for one long moment, then he turns and walks back toward the rite grounds without a word.

And I stand between the warmth of Rook's shoulder and the space Caelum just left in the air below me, and for the first time, I feel the specific weight of a situation I have no clean way through.