FIVE

~Kaius~

Duskhold rose out of the mountain like a thing that had never been built. Black stone towers climbed the cliff face, silver banners snapped from every wall, and below it all the valley lay in blue evening shadow. I had been looking at it all my life, and I had never once been glad to see it. Tonight, I watched Calla's face at the carriage window instead.

She said nothing. Her hand trembled against the frame, and her knuckles were white, but she kept looking.

By the time we reached the outer gate, every man in the convoy knew what she had done in the gorge. Brin had told the story twice at the evening camp, and I had heard the changes in it grow. By the third telling, she had lit up the whole sky. My riders no longer whispered wolfless when she walked past. They went quiet instead, and one or two of them touched their fists to their chests.

The court was a different matter.

They were waiting in the great hall, forty or fifty nobles in dark velvet, with Chancellor Edric at the front in his gray robes. He was an old man with a white beard and a spine like a drawn sword, and he had served my father for thirty years. He bowed to me exactly as deeply as protocol required and not one inch further.

"Majesty. We received your rider." His eyes slid to Calla. "I confess the contents of the message gave us pause. A wolfless Omega, rejected by your brother, who claims a second mate-thread. It is a good deal to ask the court to believe."

"I haven't asked the court to believe anything," I said. "Calla Reeve is a guest of the Crown. Anyone who insults her insults me."

"No insult was intended." Edric inclined his head. "But the Lycan queen has always been a wolf of great power. Your lady mother was a Beta's daughter, and even she had a wolf that could stand against a warband. We have no wish to see the throne of Duskhold weakened by a bond that the Goddess may have granted in error."

A murmur went through the hall.

"I can hear you, you know," Calla said.

Everyone looked at her. She stood in the middle of the marble floor in her borrowed gray cloak, small and tired and dusty from the road, and she looked straight at the chancellor.

"I'm not going to be the queen of anything," she said. "I'm here for thirty days to figure out why I'm hurt. If the Goddess made a mistake, I'd like to know that, too. But I'd appreciate it if you'd say it to my face instead of discussing me like furniture."

The silence went on for several seconds. Then somewhere at the back of the hall, a young noble laughed, quickly turned it into a cough, and was glared at by his mother.

Edric's mouth twitched, though only slightly. "As you wish, Miss Reeve."

I had her taken to the east tower, the guest rooms with the long windows facing the valley. I did not give her the Queen's wing. It had been locked since my mother died, and I could not bring myself to open it for anyone. She stood in the doorway of her new room for a long moment, looking at the fire and the wide bed and the pile of folded clothes laid out on it by the housekeeper.

"Why is everyone in this castle so afraid of you?" she asked.

"They're not afraid of me."

"The maid dropped a tray when you walked in."

"She's new."

Calla gave me a long, dry look. It was the first time she had looked at me as if she saw me and not the crown. Something in my chest turned over.

"Goodnight, Your Majesty," she said.

"Kaius," I heard myself say.

She hesitated. "Goodnight, Kaius."

General Thane was waiting for me in my study with a decanter of whiskey and the face of a man who intended to say something unpleasant. He poured two glasses and handed me one without a word.

"You went feral in the gorge," he said.

"I know."

"You've never gone that far. Not in nine years." He swirled his drink. "Halvard says the bloodmadness is advancing faster than he thought. By his count, you've got until the next Blood Moon before you lose it for good."

"I know that, too."

"Thirty days, Kaius." He looked at me levelly. "Exactly the same thirty days you just promised her."

I had noticed. I had noticed in the council chamber, when she asked for the thirty days and I said yes without a second's thought, and a cold hand had closed around the back of my neck. A king who went feral could not be reasoned with. He could not even be restrained. The Lycan law was clear about what the council did with a feral king, and it was not kind.

"She stopped it," I said. "I would have torn out that man's throat, Thane. And she walked up to me and put her hand on my face, and it just stopped."

"I saw." Thane drank. "And you didn't tell her that she's your cure."

"I am not going to tell a girl who has just been rejected by one brother that the other brother needs her to stay alive." I put the glass down hard. "She would never know whether she was choosing me or saving me. I won't do that to her."

"She'll find out."

"Then I'll tell her myself. Not yet."

Thane gave me a long, tired look. He opened his mouth to argue, and the door banged open.

It was the captain of the night watch, panting from the stairs. "Majesty. Forgive me. There's a man at the outer gate."

"Who?"

"Alpha Dorian Ashcroft, sire." The captain swallowed. "He's alone, and on foot. He ran the whole way in wolf form. He's been standing at the gate for four hours, and he says he won't leave until Miss Reeve comes out to see him."

I stood up slowly.

"Do you want him removed?" Thane asked.

I thought about my brother standing alone in the dark, bareheaded and exhausted at the foot of my walls. I thought about what it must have cost him to come to Duskhold at all. And I thought about the girl upstairs, who had asked me for the right to decide.

"No," I said. "I'll ask her."