CHAPTER TWO

I did not run. That is the part I still cannot forgive.

I finished pouring. I bowed to Selene, because the cook was watching. I walked out of the hall with my spine straight and my face smooth, the way I had walked since I was six and my pack became the joke of every Alpha in the north.

Then I went to Kael's study. I needed to hear him say it.

The fire had sunk to orange embers. By the window, a skin of ice had formed over the ink in its well. A map of the northern territories covered one wall, stuck with iron pins, and the room smelled of lamp oil and dried juniper.

 I knew every corner of it. For two years, I had slipped in here after midnight, when the keep slept, and Kael had been someone else. He had once pressed his forehead to mine by that window and said, "You're the only quiet place I have." His hands had shaken when he touched my face. He had held me like something he was afraid to crack.

I had called that love. Maybe it was. I could no longer tell which answer would be worse.

I lit a candle and started searching. It took no time at all. The ledger sat open on his desk, as if he had never imagined anyone would read it.

Purchase of the Moonstone formula. Four hundred gold. Agent: Ashgrove. Sealed by order of Alpha Draven.

Beneath it lay a second paper, thick and cream-colored, stamped with the Frost family's blue seal. A marriage alliance. I checked the date twice. It was three weeks older than my letter to the buyer.

Three weeks.

He had signed Selene's contract before my father was poisoned. Before I begged. Before I stood in front of this desk with my hands shaking and asked for one cart and two guards.

The door opened behind me.

"Lyra."

I did not turn. "Did you buy my formula?"

The embers ticked. Then Kael walked in and shut the door with a soft click, the way you shut a door on a sleeping child.

"You sold it to a stranger," he said, as calmly as if we were discussing the weather. "I made sure it did not reach someone worse."

"You made sure it reached her."

"The Council will not accept a Moonstone as my Luna. You know that."

"I know you never asked them."

He crossed to the window and stood with his back to me. His shoulders were rigid. He pressed one hand flat against the frosted glass, and I saw the fingers shake before he curled them into a fist.

"Selene's family controls half the northern grain routes," he said. "Without them, my pack starves in a hard winter. You are not a child. You understand how this works."

"My father is dying." My voice cracked on the word, and I hated it. "The poison is crawling up his neck. I can slow it, but I need the stock in the south cellar, and your guards told me they had no orders."

"Selene needs those supplies."

"For a cure she did not make."

He turned. His eyes were amber and flat, hard as old coins. "You are my secret, Lyra. Not my Luna. Do not make me say it twice."

I will carry that sentence to my grave.

I wanted to hurl the ink pot at his face. I wanted to rip the ledger to shreds and scream until the windows cracked. But my father lay on a straw mattress behind the stables, black veins creeping toward his jaw, and I had learned a long time ago that anger costs more than I could afford.

"The gold," I whispered. "The buyer promised four hundred. I haven't been paid."

Something flickered across Kael's face. It might have been shame. It vanished before I could be sure.

He dug into his coat pocket, took out one gold coin, and let it fall. It struck the stone with a small, clean ring and rolled toward my boot.

"For your trouble," he said. "I'm being generous."

The coin spun against my shoe and stopped. I have heard that small, clean ring in my sleep ever since.

I thought of my father's breath, wet and slow in the dark. I thought of the sanctuary roof that had caved in ten years ago and still lay in pieces under the snow. I thought of my mother's face, which I could barely remember.

I got down on my knees and picked up the coin.

Kael watched me do it. He did not say a word. But as I stood, the bond shivered between us like a string pulled too tight, and I could not tell if the ache was his or mine.

I walked out with one gold coin in my fist. It was the heaviest thing I had ever carried.

The cottage sat behind the stables where the snowdrifts piled deepest. The wind slapped my face as I ran up the path, my boots punching through the crust.

The door hung open.

The candle I had left burning was out. The blanket lay twisted on the floor. My father's mattress was empty, and on the pillow, one long white-blonde hair curled like a question mark.

I stood frozen in the doorway. The wind stopped. And from somewhere beneath my feet, deep in the frozen ground, a man screamed.

I knew that voice.