THE LUNA THEY HID IN THE SHADOWS

The silver crown sat on its velvet cushion at the high table, waiting for a head that wasn't mine.

I watched from behind the last pillar in Draven Hall, a heavy wine jug dragging at my arm. Pitch-pine torches spat resin along the walls. The north door stood open a hand's width to let the smoke out, and frost had crept in anyway, furring the iron hinges white and biting the back of my neck.

My apron had a wine stain on the hem. My fingers reeked of crushed silver-leaf, a bitter green smell that eleven nights of boiling had soaked into my skin for good.

Under the leather cuff on my left wrist, the mate mark itched. It was a thin black line, like a claw scratch. Two years ago, Kael had buckled that cuff around it himself.

"Keep it covered," he had said, without looking at me. "Just for now."

Just for now had lasted two winters.

Three hundred wolves crammed the hall shoulder to shoulder, smelling of wet wool and barley beer. Raven banners hung from the rafters. Salt cod and roast boar steamed on the long boards, and nobody touched a bite. Every eye was on the Alpha.

Kael stood at the head table in his dark coat, black hair swept back, the scar through his left eyebrow white in the torchlight. His gaze swept the room and skipped over the pillars. It always had.

I had been awake since before dawn. I had changed three bandages in the infirmary, ground willow bark for two coughing children, and scrubbed dried blood from the floor where a patrol had dragged in a wounded man the night before. Across the yard, behind the stables, my father was coughing himself awake in a cold cottage, and nobody was there to hold the cup to his lips.

Two nights ago, I had begged Kael for a cart and two guards to carry him to the southern healers. He had signed a grain order without looking up.

"Resources go to Selene's research," he had said.

"For three hundred years," Kael said now, and his voice rolled off the beams, "Silver Rot has hunted our bloodlines. It took my father at forty. It took his father at thirty-eight."

Nobody coughed.

"Tonight, it ends."

Selene Frost glided forward, holding a crystal case in both hands. A vial of silver liquid glowed inside, soft as a lantern behind frosted glass. Her hair hung to her waist, pale as bleached linen. Her smile stopped well short of her eyes.

"I only followed the old books," she said. "The Moon Goddess did the rest."

I knew that liquid. I had simmered it for eleven nights in a copper pot in the cellar, stirring until my wrist cramped and the handle raised blisters on my thumb. I had slept on the stone floor beneath bundles of silver-leaf hanging from the beams. Nobody in this hall had ever asked where I went at night.

The hall erupted. Fists hammered the tables, and cups jumped. A chant started at the front and rolled back like a wave. "Selene! Selene!"

Old Brann bellowed along with them. I had cut the rot from his leg last spring. I had sat beside him for six nights while he wept for his dead wife and called me by her name. I waited for him to look my way.

He kept his eyes on Selene.

Kael raised one hand, and the noise died.

"There are whispers," he said, "that a girl from my kitchens helped with small tasks. Bandages. Broth."

A few men chuckled.

"Lyra Moonstone has done a servant's work, and I thank her for it. But let me be plain. She has contributed nothing to our survival."

The words did not land right away. They sank slowly, like a swallowed stone, while the hall spun around me. Then the bond tugged in my chest. I pulled back through it, the way I had on a hundred lonely nights, and found something on his end clamped as tight as a fist.

Then he slammed the door on me.

"Moonstone," a woman muttered beside me. "That fallen pack never could do anything but scrub."

I stared at my boots. My knuckles ached around the jug handle.

Kael lifted the crown. Selene knelt on the stone floor, and the silver settled into her hair.

"Selene Frost," he said, "future Luna of the Draven Pack."

The roar shook soot from the rafters.

A cook jabbed my shoulder. "Don't just stand there, girl. Wine for the new Luna."

So I crossed the long aisle in my stained apron, carrying wine to the woman who had just taken my life. Wolves peeled away as I passed, as if I carried a sickness. I stopped at the high table, close enough to smell cedar smoke and cold iron on Kael's coat. His eyes stayed on the crowd.

Selene held out her goblet. I poured. Her fingertips brushed my knuckles, cool as river stones.

"Thank you, little healer," she murmured, too softly for anyone else to hear. "You did all the hard work."

She knew.

My hand jerked. Red wine splashed across the board, and nobody noticed. I fixed my eyes on the crystal case because I could not look at either of them.

The vial was sealed with gold wax. A raven had been pressed into it, wings spread. The raven's left wing had a tiny nick, as if something had bitten a chunk out of the feather.

My free hand dropped to my apron pocket, where the buyer's letter crackled. I had read it until the folds went soft. Four hundred gold, it promised. Enough to save my father. Enough to rebuild the sanctuary. The letter was sealed in black wax, and the raven in that wax had a nick in its left wing.

The same raven. The same flaw.

I looked up, and Kael was looking at me.

Two years in the shadows, and he chose this moment, in front of three hundred wolves, to meet my eyes. His amber gaze burned into mine across the table. Then he shook his head. Once. Barely. The way you warn a child away from thin ice.

The pack was still chanting when I understood what I had done. I had sold my cure to the man who had just stolen it from me. And he was afraid of what I would do next.