Chapter 6

Adrian's POV

I smelled the royal party before I saw it, horse and polished leather and, under it, the heavier scent of a Lycan, the kind that makes the wolf in an ordinary man go still and lower its head.

Prince Evander Dravane was waiting at the bridge below the village with a dozen riders in black. He swung down from his gray as I came up and stood in the road with his hands loosely at his sides, a tall man in a plain dark coat who looked as if he had been out for a pleasant ride and happened to meet an army.

I dismounted and went to one knee in the dust. "Your Highness. You do me too much honor."

"Get up, Vale. My father heard you were home and sent me to bring you in." His voice was easy and pleasant. "Three years on the Ashlands line. You've earned a better welcome than a bridge."

He offered his hand without quite touching my sleeve. His eyes went once over my face, then past me to the column, the supply wagons and the wounded in the carts, and came back. His heart beat slow and even the whole time, as steady as a man asleep. I couldn't tell what he was looking for, and that made me careful.

"Go home tonight," he said. "Your mother will want you. Come to the palace tomorrow, and my father will give you your reward in front of the court."

We rode in side by side. He asked about the Ashlands all the way in: how many days the supply road took in spring mud, where we had found forage for the horses, which of the river fords the rogues watched, how the men were fed in the last winter. They were the questions of an idle prince, and every one of them had a number at the bottom of it. By the time we reached the fork below the citadel, I felt like a horse that had been walked round and had its teeth looked at.

Everyone in the army knew the King had gone three years without naming an heir. Everyone knew which son they were waiting on.

At the fork he lifted a hand and rode away toward the palace, and I found I had been holding the reins hard enough to make my fingers ache.

* * *

The street before Duskmere Hall was packed wall to wall. My father stood on the steps in his best coat. My mother came down two of them with her handkerchief already wet and caught my arms before my knee could touch the stone.

"My son. Oh, my son."

I let her hold on. Over her shoulder I looked along the steps, at my sisters, my cousins, the stewards and the maids, all of them smiling.

She wasn't there.

Three years, and my mate couldn't come as far as the front door to see me home. I was surprised at how much that stung. Then I caught myself. She was shy, and a bound Luna doesn't stand gawking in the street with the crowd. She would be inside, waiting.

I had seen her exactly once, at the moonstone. A thin, pale girl of eighteen with her chin up, so nervous her hands shook on the vow-cord, though her voice didn't. The rider from the north came in before I could mark her. I had written to her every new moon since, four lines, because I didn't know what else to say to a stranger who was my mate.

"Brother!" Posy shot out of the doorway and stopped short in front of me, suddenly shy.

"Look at you. You've grown a foot." I put my hand on her head, and over it I saw a slender girl in an old green dress standing behind the others with her face turned away, talking quietly to a maid. I had taken a step toward her before I knew I meant to.

She turned and curtsied, blushing. "Welcome home, brother."

It was Clemence, my father's daughter by Lady Wynne. Sixteen now. I had last seen her with scabbed knees and a missing tooth.

"Clemence," I said. My face went hot.

I wanted to ask where my mate was, and I couldn't do it with every servant in Duskmere listening. My mother was already steering me through the door.

"Your rooms are ready. Ivers will see to your bath." She beckoned my old nurse forward. "Go and wash off the road, darling. I'll have the kitchen make everything you used to love."

* * *

My rooms looked exactly as they had the night I left. Same hangings, same bed, my old boots by the press. Nothing of a woman anywhere. No comb, no sewing, no scent but mine and the soap.

"Ivers," I said, when I had washed and dressed. "Where is my mate?"

She had been my nurse when I was small, and she had never once in my life been unable to look at me. She looked at the floor now.

"My lord... she isn't your mate anymore. She asked to be released. She's gone south to her mother's people in the Lakelands. She took the south mail."

"Released," I said. "When?"

"Three weeks ago, my lord."

"Where did she live?"

"The little rooms on the west side, my lord, behind the pear tree."

I went there before I went to my mother. The yard gate had a chain through it and an iron padlock as big as my fist. Over the wall, the pear tree had dropped its blossom on the path.

"The Luna had it locked so the servants wouldn't go poking through her things," Ivers said behind me, too quickly.

I ran my thumb along the cold chain and turned away.

* * *

My mother sent her women out and took my hands.

"I blame myself," she said. "She was young, and you were gone so long, and she was lonely. There was a stable hand, Tobin Rusk." She pressed her handkerchief to her eyes. "She was carrying, Adrian. Another wolf's pup."

Her heart was going fast. People who weep have fast hearts. A wolf can hear fear in a heartbeat. It can't hear a lie.

"Where is he?" My voice had gone strange in my own ears.

"Dealt with. We couldn't let him live to talk. Her two maids knew and said nothing, so I sold their bonds. For your sake, and the Pack's, we gave out that she was barren and asked to be released. Better that than the truth."

I had heard men in the camps talk about wives who couldn't do without a man for one winter. I had always thought they were bitter fools. I sat in my mother's parlor and thought, then I was the fool, to have pictured that girl with her shaking hands waiting for me.

"There's more," my mother said softly. "I sent Ivers and four riders to see her safe to the Lakelands. She wouldn't have them. She went alone on the mail, and the mail was taken by rogues at Corran's Gap. No one lived." Her voice broke. "I've given her an empty coffin at the temple. Whatever she did, she was ours once."

My father came in and laid a hand on my shoulder. "Your mother has done more than right by her, boy."

I stood up and bowed to them both.

"She was my mate," I said. "Whatever was to be done with her, you should have asked me first. Whatever she did, I'd have wanted to hear it from her own mouth."

"You blame me?"

"No." I looked at the cold supper laid for me. "It doesn't matter now. She's dead."

My mother's heart had been running fast since I walked into the room. Now, at last, it slowed.