Chapter 4

"Swear it again, Madam Hale. Slowly, for the record."

Elder Harlan Grey's voice creaked across the council chamber. Odalys lifted her chin, laid a trembling hand on the silver moon-disk, and smiled at the room like a woman who had already won.

"I swear by the Moon Goddess," she said, "that my stepdaughter Liora owns nothing. No land. No savings. No property. Everything she has ever eaten, worn, or slept on was paid for by my family and by the Rourke pack."

I sat at the far end of the bench with my hands folded in my lap and my face perfectly blank.

Keep going, I thought. Say more.

A night and a morning had passed since the vault.

I had slept on a cot in Moonhollow's servant quarters, wrapped in a blanket that smelled of cedar and dust. The crate had stayed in my palm all night, tiny as a grain of rice, humming against my skin. By dawn I had learned how to put it down and pick it up again. Not well. Each time, a dull ache pulsed behind my eyes. But it worked.

The ledger had listed an emergency number on its last page. An old landline in the manor still had a dial tone. A dry, precise voice answered on the second ring.

"Quill and Sons. Ambrose Quill speaking."

"My name is Liora Hale," I said. "I believe you were my grandmother's lawyer."

Silence. Then a soft exhale, almost a sob.

"Miss Hale. I have waited eleven years for this call."

By noon, a Blackthorn runner had found me on the lower road with a summons in hand. The elders wanted me in the council chamber by three. Cassian and Odalys had filed a claim.

I went.

Now the chamber smelled of old wood and sweat. Three elders sat behind a long table. Cassian stood at the left, jaw set, sleeves pressed. Beside him, his father, Emeric Rourke, the retired Alpha, leaned on a walking stick with his cold grey eyes fixed on me. Luna Regina sat behind them with her hands folded. Beta Marlowe lounged near the door.

Tess Marlowe stood in the corner. Our eyes met. She looked away first.

"The Alpha's claim," said Elder Grey, adjusting his glasses, "is as follows. Liora Hale has rejected a legitimate mating, causing shame and financial loss to the Rourke line. He requests compensation of six years' upkeep, the full cost of the aborted ceremony, and half of any property she holds."

"She holds none," Odalys said sweetly.

"Then the compensation comes from the Hale estate," Cassian said. His voice was flat, controlled, his cuffs perfectly straight. "Which her stepmother, as guardian, has agreed to assign to me."

I looked at my stepmother.

Odalys avoided my eyes. Her fingers twisted the strap of her purse.

She had sold me. Of course she had. The cottage, the little savings my father left behind, the furniture, my mother's jewelry. All of it offered up to buy her way back into Cassian's good graces.

Anger crawled up my throat, hot and sour.

I swallowed it.

"Miss Hale," said Elder Grey. "Do you contest the claim?"

I stood.

"I have one question for my stepmother."

"Object," Odalys snapped.

"Allowed," Elder Grey said mildly.

I turned to her. My voice stayed soft. "You swore on the Moon that I own nothing."

"Yes."

"You are certain."

"Of course I am certain. You have nothing. You never had anything. Everything you are came from us."

"Even the rings?"

Her mouth twitched. "What rings?"

"Mother's rings. The emerald and the pearl. You told me she was buried in them."

Color drained from Odalys's face.

The truth was that my mother's jewelry had sat in a lockbox in Odalys's closet for sixteen years. I had never been allowed to touch it. But I had watched Odalys sell three of the pieces last winter and lie about it, and I remembered it because I remembered everything from my first life.

"That is a lie!" Odalys hissed.

"Then you will not mind if the elders check the pawn shop records in Harrowgate."

A murmur rolled through the room.

Cassian's head turned slowly toward his future mother-in-law. "Madam Hale."

"She's twisting things," Odalys said, too fast. "I gave those away to charity. I was ashamed of how little we had."

"You swore," I said, "that I have nothing. You also swore you supported me my whole life. Which is it?"

Elder Grey's pen scratched. He wrote something down.

Odalys's hands began to shake.

I let the silence stretch.

Then I looked at Cassian. "You want compensation for shame and expense. Fine. What is the sum?"

He named it. A number so high that a murmur broke out among the elders. It was five times what Odalys's whole cottage was worth.

"That is absurd," said Tess from her corner, quietly. Everyone looked at her. She shrugged. "It is."

"The Alpha's honor is not cheap," Emeric Rourke said, the first words he had spoken.

I inclined my head. "I agree. Honor should never be cheap."

I glanced at the door.

"Mr. Quill?"

The door opened.

A slight man in a grey three-piece suit stepped inside, carrying a leather case in one hand and a folded parchment in the other. He was old, perhaps seventy, with a neat white mustache and eyes as sharp as needles. He bowed politely to the elders.

"Ambrose Quill, of Quill and Sons, Harrowgate. I represent Miss Liora Hale."

Cassian's brow furrowed. "Represent her in what?"

"In the matter of her holdings." Quill laid the case on the table and snapped it open. "Which the Alpha has apparently been informed do not exist."

"She has no holdings," Odalys said.

"Madam Hale, you have just perjured yourself before three elders and the Moon Goddess," Quill said, in a tone of mild regret. "I would strongly advise you to stop."

Odalys's mouth opened. Nothing came out.

Cassian took a slow step forward. I felt his stare on my face, and the raw, ugly confusion in it. He did not understand. In his head, I was still the girl who cried in the kitchen.

"Where did you get a lawyer?" he asked.

"From my grandmother," I said.

"Your grandmother died penniless."

"Did she?"

I let it hang.

Quill drew out the parchment. It was thick and cream-colored, sealed with black wax, and a crescent moon was pressed into the center. The moment I saw it, my pulse jumped.

Elder Grey went absolutely still.

"That seal," he whispered.

"Registered in your own archives, Elder, three hundred years ago," Quill said. "Confirmed by the council of the day. It has never been revoked. Nor could it be." He cracked the wax. "Shall I read the first line?"

"Please," said Elder Grey. His voice had turned hoarse.

Quill unfolded the parchment. He cleared his throat and read in a clear, steady voice that carried to every corner.

"The territory known as Moonhollow, its vault, and all that lies within it, belong by blood to the last descendant of the Royal Wolf line. Its heir is Liora Hale."

No one breathed.

Cassian's face went blank. Odalys's purse slid from her lap.

And Emeric Rourke, retired Alpha of Blackthorn, went white as bone.