Chapter 3

Wren's POV

"So you do understand." The Luna straightened. "Die of the fever, and Duskmere gives you a proper pyre. Your name stays clean, and so does your mother's."

"And Adrian comes home a widower," I said. "He'll sit a full season of mourning before any Pack lets him near a new mate. A princess won't wait a season for a man in ash-gray. And people talk about a wolf whose mate dies before he's even marked her."

Sera made a small scornful sound. "Then what would you have us do?"

"Reject me on other grounds." I kept my eyes on her mother. "I'll sign a declaration of barrenness. I can't give Duskmere an heir, I'm ashamed to stand in the way of a better match, and I ask to be released before he comes home."

"Adrian is the soldier who was wronged. Duskmere is the Pack that did right by a war orphan. I carry the shame out the door with me, and his next binding is clean."

The Luna looked at me a long time, and I made myself hold still under it. A barren mate was an ugly reason, but it was cleaner than a bastard or a funeral, and she could see that as well as I could.

"It's late," she said at last. "We'll speak tomorrow. Nessa, take your lady to her rooms."

I bowed my head as low as I could without toppling. "Think on it, Luna. I'm a wolfless orphan with no Pack behind me. Once I'm outside your walls, what harm could I do you?"

Nessa held my arm on the way back as if it were something soiled, her fingertips barely resting on my sleeve.

"Don't hate me, my lady," she whispered. "It was the Luna. She said if I didn't name Tobin, she had other ways to make things hard for us. A pup doesn't come from nowhere."

I took my arm back and walked on alone.

"The Longest Night," I said without turning. "At Hollowbrook. What happened to me?"

Her steps faltered behind me, then hurried to catch up. "Nothing, my lady. You fell asleep over the cots. The mead—"

"Then why were you the only one there when I woke? Where was Briar?"

"She'd gone down to the carriage for your fur cloak. You were cold." Too quick. "I kept the door so none of the Hollowbrook servants would wander in."

"You kept the door." I stopped and looked at her. "Which door, Nessa?"

She went white in the moonlight, and for a moment I thought her knees would give.

"Who was it?" My voice had gone very quiet. "Who was in that room with me?"

"I don't know! I swear it. Lady Sera's woman Fenna took us up to a guest room at the top of the east stair. She brought the tea, she told me you were worn out from the mead and I was to keep the door and let no one in. Before it was light she came back and helped me carry you down to the sickroom chair. That's all I know."

I had guessed it a hundred times. Hearing it aloud still turned me cold.

"Did you hear anything?"

"Only you, my lady." It was barely a breath. "Talking in your sleep. I couldn't make out the words."

Something gave at the back of my memory like a seam pulling loose. A heavy bed-curtain pressing down. Incense that wasn't ours, sweet and smoky. My body too soft to lift, my throat too dry to speak. A man's breath harsh in the dark, a hot hand, a voice low against my ear saying things I couldn't hold on to.

That was all. Not one word of it would come back.

I walked the rest of the way with my back straight. My hands were freezing inside my sleeves, and I kept them there so she wouldn't see them shake.

* * *

They had taken Briar away the night before, and the house girls had gone with Pell, so there was no one left in my rooms but Nessa and me. I didn't sleep.

At first light I went out into the little yard behind my rooms. The pear tree by the wall had put out a few early blossoms. I was standing under it, counting what I still had to bargain with, when something scraped on the far side of the wall.

A small leg came over the top, then a skinned knee, and then all of Posy Vale landed in my herb bed with a thump and a wail. She was six, the youngest of the Alpha's pups, and her mother was Lady Wynne, who had been shut up in the west wing since the thaw.

"Sister," she sobbed, holding out her knee. It was scraped raw and full of grit.

Nessa came hurrying from the doorway. "Miss Posy, you can't be here. If the Luna finds you—"

"She's bleeding," I said. "Bring me warm water from the kitchen, Nessa. Clean."

Nessa looked at the knee, then at me, and went.

I knelt and picked the grit out while Posy hiccuped against my shoulder. My linen strips were in my apron pocket, where they always were. I had written the note in the dark with stillroom ink and folded it narrow as a straw. I wound the first turn, then the second, and the note went into the last turn and lay flat under the knot.

"Let your mother change this tonight," I told her. "No one else."

She nodded, very solemn, and went back over the wall by the pear tree. When Nessa came out with the basin, I was standing where I had been, looking at the blossoms.

An hour later Pell came through the gate with five of the heaviest women in the house and didn't knock.

"The Luna says my lady has taken a chill and must rest undisturbed," she announced. "Anything that might upset her goes. Every book, every letter, every scrap with writing on it. Turn it all out."

They pulled out my drawers and slit my mattress. One of them found my mother's receipt book, the only thing I had in her handwriting, and dropped it in the basket with the rest. I wanted to go for it. But there were six of them and the gate stood open behind them, and that was exactly what they were waiting for. So I sat on the step and kept my nails in my palms.

When they had gone, the gate shut and a key turned in the lock.

A chill, then a fever, then a pyre. Quiet, the way Sera wanted it. Posy's bandage was the only thing that had left these rooms since last night.

Nessa brought breakfast on a tray. Barley gruel, gone cold, with a skin on it. The smell reached me first, and I had to turn my face away with my hand over my mouth, retching, though nothing came up but sourness. Four months, and I had never once been sick.

"You should eat something, my lady," Nessa said, stepping back.

I didn't touch it. Nothing from that kitchen was safe now, and I was twenty-one, and I did not want my last meal to be cold gruel in a locked room.

* * *

The Luna came herself in the afternoon. She stopped inside the gate and took in the slit mattress, the straw across the floor.

"What is this?"

"Mistress Pell came this morning, my Luna," Nessa began, "with—"

The Luna turned on Pell, who had followed her in. "Who told you to turn the heir's mate out like a thief? I sent you to tidy her rooms, not to frighten a sick woman half to death."

Pell's mouth opened and shut. She understood what this was for faster than I did, and she went to her knees on the flagstones.

"Twenty across the mouth," the Luna told the women behind her. "And she kneels there until my lady forgives her."

The slaps rang in the little yard. Pell took them without lifting a hand. The Luna didn't watch. "And you," she said to Nessa, "let your lady sit in this filth. Half a year's wages. Neglect her again and I'll sell your bond at market."

Then she came to me with her face soft and sorry and reached for my hand. "My poor girl. The servants guess at what I want and get it all wrong."

I drew my hand into my sleeve before she could take it, and bent my knee. "You're too kind, Luna."

Her hand stayed in the air a moment before she lowered it. "I didn't come only to scold servants. Perhaps last night we both said things in anger." Her eyes went to my belly. "We're family. There's nothing that can't be mended."

I had seen that face before, at first frost, with the stillroom keys in her hand. I waited.

"I've found a better way," she said, stepping close under the eaves. "The healer with the gentlest hands in Silverkeep. Something mild, done quietly, and no one ever knows. When Adrian comes home, I'll tell him the stable boy forced you, and you were the one wronged. He's fair-minded, and I'll be beside him when he hears it. Once it all blows over, you'll still be his Luna."

She laid her palm flat on my belly, over the heartbeat she could hear and I couldn't.

"We'll be rid of it together," she said.