LOGINJaceI did the only thing there was to do. I leaned into it."Forgive me." I put both hands up, open, rueful, and pushed every ounce of the harmless thing into my face. "Forgive me, that was—" I let myself laugh again, smaller, shaking my head, a man embarrassed at his own nerves. "I've been standing out here an hour working myself up to meet the Alpha of the North, telling myself all the ways it could go wrong, and then you both walk out and you're just—" I gestured helplessly at the two of them, at the snow, at the whole grand frozen picture of it. "You look like something off the front of a saga. And I'm a southern textile man with cold feet and a present I'm suddenly sure is too small. It broke something in me. I'm sorry. It was nerves. Bad ones."A beat. The courtyard held.Then Mina laughed, because she believed me and because she was strung tight herself, and her laugh gave the men permission to ease off their hands, and the thing passed over like weather.The Alpha didn't laug
JaceI'd been standing in the cold long enough to learn the courtyard by heart, which is a thing I do when I'm nervous and won't admit to being nervous.Forty-one paces along the front wall. A well with a frozen lip. Two of the Alpha's men at the inner door who had not stopped watching me since Mina went up, the flat unhurried watching men give a dog they haven't decided about yet. I'd given them nothing to decide. I'd stood with my hands where they could see them and my face arranged into the open, pleasant, harmless thing I'd spent five years building for rooms exactly like this one, rooms where the people in them could end me and were deciding whether to.The gift sat in its wrappings at my feet. I'd put it together since I got north, knowing I'd be standing in a courtyard like this one sooner or later and a man doesn't come empty-handed to an Alpha's gate. I nudged it straight with my boot and made myself stop.Mina came back through the inner door first.She came fast, fast as sh
SeraMina had been in our room for the better part of an hour and she had touched everything in it twice.She was at the window now, then she wasn't, she was at the foot of the bed picking up the comb I'd set down and turning it over and putting it back not quite where it had been. She couldn't hold still. She'd come in dressed already, the good wool, her hair done in a way I hadn't seen her bother with, and she'd been ready since before she got here and the readiness had nowhere to go, so it came out of her as motion, around the room, around us, while Fenris and I were still half into the day's clothes and moving at the speed of two people who had buried something heavy the night before and not slept much after."You're not even close," she said."We're close.""You're not. He's been down there since the sun was over the gate. He's going to think no one's coming.""He's not going to think that.""You don't know him." She caught herself, a grin slipping out at the floor. "You'll see.
Sera“Why would anyone do that.""Because I wanted you." He said it plainly, a fact too simple to need defending, and he couldn't seem to understand why I was making it complicated. "The child was already there. It didn't change what I wanted. So I took the vow."Something in me pulled tight and went looking for the soft place to put a knife."And you said nothing." Low. "For all of it. You knew, and you watched me carry it. You watched me go grey, you watched me flinch every time you came near with that nose of yours, and you said nothing. You let me come to you. Tonight, on the worst night of my life, you made me be the one to drag it into the light, when you could have ended it any time you wanted.""Sera.""That's what you do, isn't it." I couldn't stop. I didn't want to stop. "You decide what people get to carry. You sit on the hard things and call it protecting them. You'd rather hold a thing alone until it rots you out than say it to someone's face, because saying it means some
SeraI'd decided I would say it the second I walked in, before I lost the nerve, but Fenris was at the window with his back to me and the words went to nothing in my mouth.He had a map unrolled across the table, weighted at the corners with whatever was nearest, a knife, a cup, a stone the size of a fist. He wasn't reading it. He had his eyes on the dark below the keep where the torches marked the training yard, and his shoulders had the set they got when he was somewhere else, somewhere I couldn't follow him into. I'd come up here full of the thing I had to tell him and now I stood in the doorway watching the back of a man who already seemed to be carrying too much, and I thought, not now, do it later, there's never going to be a good time and this is a worse one than most.But Mina's voice was in my head. He should know. That's all I'm saying. He should know."Fenris.""Mm." He didn't turn."I need to talk to you."That turned him. Something in how I'd said it. His eyes came to me
SeraI grabbed onto her. Both hands on her arm across my chest, gripping hard, and I couldn't make myself let go."I'm sorry." I was crying. "I'm so fucking sorry, Mina. I'm sorry. I keep... I keep hurting you and you keep being here and I don't deserve it. I don't deserve you being here.""Shut up," she said into my back, soft. "Shut up. It's fine.""It's not fine.""It is. Shut up. Stop talking."I couldn't stop. "I used you. I kept you in the dark and I used you and then when I was scared I turned against you and I thought you'd sold me. You. The only person who—""Sera." Firm. "I said shut up."So I shut up. I stood there and held her arm across my chest and cried with my face wrecked and my nose running and absolutely nothing composed about any of it. She held on. We stayed that way until the breathing evened out and the fire had burned down to a lower sound and the guard's shadow had passed the window twice more.She let go first. Came around to face me. She had been crying too,
SeraNight fell fast, and with it, the temperature plummeted. We had three fires going, but the heat didn't seem to travel more than six inches past the flames. I sat on a log by the middle fire, pulling the wagon fur around my shoulders, shivering so hard my teeth were literally clicking together.
LyraShe ignored me. She dropped to her knees, her hands sliding down to the waistband of my trousers. She shoved her fingers inside the fabric, gripping my hips tight. With one sharp pull, she dragged the pants and my underwear down to my ankles. I stepped out of them, kicking my boots off in the
Lyra"Tell the girl to step into the room," he said."Leave her out of this," I said. My voice came out as a pathetic, raspy whisper. I cleared my throat, trying to find some spine. "She didn't do anything. It was my idea to come in here.""Tell her to step into the room," he said, his eyes going d
LyraThe voice didn't belong to Nadia. It didn't belong to me. It came from the metallic object resting directly behind my hip.Nadia froze. She pulled her mouth away from me and yanked her fingers out of my body. She stood up quickly, wiping her wet mouth with the back of her hand, her chest heavi







