Chapter Eight: Breakfast With the Chancellor

Chancellor Aldric Voss served breakfast on gold plates and delivered his threats in a voice like warm honey.

The Council hall stood on a hill above the capital, white stone and tall windows, nothing like the dungeon Seraphina had imagined all night. Sunlight poured across a long table laid with fruit, fresh bread and a silver pot of tea. She did not touch the tea. She did not touch the bread or the fruit either, or anything that had passed through a stranger's kitchen. Three years of Isolde's cups had taught her that much.

Two rows of Hounds in grey lined the staircase, hands resting on their sword hilts, every one of them pretending not to stare. Seraphina counted twenty-three before she lost track. "If this is breakfast," Vivienne muttered, "I'd hate to see dinner."

She had not come alone. Whatever the card said, Lucian walked half a step behind her, and Vivienne walked half a step behind him, glaring at every guard in grey. Voss only smiled when he saw them.

She noticed that the tall windows had no handles and the doors had no locks on the inside.

"Lady Seraphina. How good of you to come. And Lucian, my oldest student. Sit, please, all of you."

Seraphina stayed standing a moment longer than politeness allowed, just to prove she could. Then she took the chair that put her back to the wall.

He was older than she had expected, silver-haired, with a gentle face and kind brown eyes. His only ornament was a heavy iron ring stamped with the same wolf's skull she had seen on the vellum. If someone had told her he taught children to read, she would have believed it. The moment he spoke, Selene stirred in the back of Seraphina's mind, a low growl. Not rage. Recognition.

"Where is Corvin?" Seraphina asked.

"Master Ashgrove is resting. He's an old man, and he's had a shock. I'm told he took a fall on the road. He is being very well looked after."

"Looked after by whom?" Lucian asked, flat.

"By people who know how to treat an elderly guest. Don't fret. You taught me better than that."

"I want to see him."

"After we've talked." Voss poured himself a cup of tea and drank first, the way a host does to prove it's safe. "Let me begin by saying how sorry I am. The kingdom has treated you abominably. A wolfless Luna, a cruel husband, a faithless sister. If the Council had known the truth, none of it would have happened."

"The Council did know," Seraphina said. "You signed the order yourself."

A small, delighted laugh. He glanced at Lucian. "He's been talking. Good. I always hoped he would. It saves me a speech." Voss set down his cup. "Yes, my dear. Twenty-six years ago I sealed an order for your death. I'm not ashamed. I would do it again, knowing what I knew then. It was never hatred. It was arithmetic. One child against a kingdom."

Vivienne made a furious noise. "Where is Corvin, you smiling snake?"

"Miss Hartley, isn't it?" Voss turned his kind eyes on her. "Your family runs the northern mill. Such a lovely business. I would hate to see anything happen to it." He said it so gently that it took her a moment to understand she had been threatened. Seraphina put a hand on her arm before she could stand.

"Then what changed?"

"First, allow me to mention your sister. Isolde is with us, by the way. The king's guards were so rough with her. We have given her a room and a hot bath." He sipped his tea. "A girl like that needs gentle handling. She is very useful."

Seraphina's heart skipped, but she kept her face still. "I asked what changed."

"You did. You walked into a throne room and made every wolf in the kingdom kneel." His eyes brightened. "I spent my life believing the silver line was a plague. It turns out to be a key. And you, my dear, are the loveliest key I have ever seen. Imagine a hundred Alphas answering to one living will. Imagine a kingdom that never argues again."

Under the table, Lucian's hand closed on the arm of his chair until the wood creaked.

A servant carried in a folded paper on a silver tray. Voss opened it with obvious pleasure and slid it across to her.

"Guardianship. A simple arrangement. The Council takes custody of the silver Luna and her wolf, for her own protection, and in return we restore everything Damien and your family took from you. Your name. Your dignity. A house, an income, a seat at this table."

Seraphina read the first paragraph, then the second. The words were plain and polite, and under every one of them lay a hook.

"This gives the Council authority over my wolf," she said.

"Over your wolf's gifts, yes."

"And over any children I might have."

"Naturally. The line must be safeguarded."

Selene snarled, deep and ugly, and the sound rolled up through Seraphina's body until her teeth ached. She breathed through it. She would not shift in a room full of Hounds.

Then a smell reached her, thin and sharp under the honey and the warm bread. Bitter. Green. Familiar in a way that made her stomach turn.

Silver-root.

Selene's voice came quick and cold. He is drinking it. His cup. His pot. The whole table. He has been caging his own wolf for years.

Seraphina looked at the tea in Voss's cup, and she understood. A man who lived by locking other wolves down could not afford to have his own wake at the wrong moment. Whatever Voss was, he was not at ease in his own skin, and a man like that was afraid of something.

"I'll need time to read this properly," she said aloud.

"Of course." His smile widened. "Read it twice. Show it to a lawyer. But, my dear, Master Ashgrove is old, and old men do not last long without their medicine. I would decide before sunset."

Vivienne started to rise. Lucian caught her wrist without looking.

Seraphina scanned to the bottom of the page. Two signature lines. One was blank, waiting for her. The other was already filled in, in a bold, slanted hand she had seen only once before, on a marriage contract she had never been allowed to read properly.

Witnessed by the Council's own Hound. Lucian Blackthorn.

Dated yesterday.

She looked up. Lucian had gone the colour of ash. He stared at the page like a man looking at his own ghost.

"I never signed that," he said.