What the Record Says

KAEL'S POV

Lorenzo doesn't look up when I walk in. He's bent over a book so old the spine's been reinforced with tape that's itself started yellowing. Its pages are spread across his desk, as though he hasn't moved in hours.

"Tell me," I say. "Now."

"Sit down first."

"I don't have time to sit down."

"You have exactly as much time as I give you," he says, finally lifting his head, "so sit down and let me explain this properly instead of in pieces you'll misunderstand out of panic."

I sit.

For a second, before he says anything else, I find myself studying him the way I'd study a stranger.

I've known Lorenzo my whole life. He trained under the last councilor and has never once lied to my face about pack law. He's also the one who flagged this problem instead of staying quiet. But I've also never actually tested whether his loyalty is to me, or to the law itself, or to something else entirely. Right now, with Lyra's life and mine both hanging on what he tells me next, that difference matters more than it ever has before.

"Are you helping me because you want to," I ask, "or because the law says you have to?"

He looks at me for a long moment. "Both," he says simply. "I don't see those as separate things. But if it reassures you, Kael, I could have told your pack what I suspected the morning after the rite. I didn't. I came to you first because I wanted you to have a chance to fix this before anyone else decided what to do about it."

That's enough for me, for now. I nod, and he keeps going.

"The second signature in the light," he says, "the one I couldn't place during the rite. I think, as best I can tell from what's written here, it's a binding curse." He turns the book toward me, tapping a page so old the ink has gone brown.

"I want to be honest with you, Kael. This text is older than anything I've worked from before. I'm reading it the same way you'd read a language you learned as a child and haven't used since. I believe I've understood the meaning, but I can't promise I've got everything right."

"Where did this even come from?"

"The sealed archive beneath the pack hall. Every councilor before me added to its records before sealing it again. Most of the records down there haven't been opened for generations. I only opened them today."

He taps the page again, more gently this time.

"I won't lie to you and say everything in it is reliable. Some of it could be missing. Some of it could be wrong. There may be no one left who knows the truth."

"Then how do I know any of this is real?"

"You don't. Not for sure."

Lorenzo looks me in the eyes.

"But it's the only answer we have, Kael. I'd rather give you an imperfect answer than give you nothing at all."

"Tell me what it says."

He reads aloud, slow, translating as he goes. "A bond formed over one already claimed shall not stand unchallenged. The elder claim endures until broken at its root." He looks up. "Claimed. That word matters. Someone claimed her before you did."

"That's not possible." I'm already shaking my head before I finish the sentence. "There was no bond. No blood, no rite, nothing like what Lyra and I did at the circle. Whatever Ashford has with her, it's an arrangement her father made. That's not a claim. That's a conversation between two men who thought they had the right to one."

"I understand why you'd think that." Lorenzo doesn't rush to correct me, which somehow makes the correction land harder when it comes. "But the old law doesn't define a claim the way you're defining it. It was never about blood or ritual. It's about intent, and authority. If someone with the authority to promise her to another man, her father in this case, made a binding promise with the intention of honoring it, the old magic recognizes that as a claim. No blade required. No circle. Just a promise made in earnest, by someone the law considers entitled to make it."

"That's insane."

"It's old," Lorenzo says. "Old laws rarely bothered asking whether they were fair."

The word promise sits there between us, and everything slides into place at once, cold and immediate.

My father promised me to Roman Ashford. Her voice, in the cave, three nights ago, before any of this, before I knew what that sentence would eventually cost me.