Chapter Four: What the Elder Knew

Seraphina got as far as the carriage before her hands started shaking.

She tucked them into her skirt, which was pointless. Lucian sat right across from her, and Vivienne was wedged so close on the other side that Seraphina could feel her pulse through the sleeve. Nobody spoke for the first mile. The wheels rattled over the cobbles. Behind them the palace lights shrank to a smudge.

"Well," Vivienne said at last. "That went better than I thought it would."

Seraphina made a noise that was half laugh, half hiccup. "I proposed to a man I'd spoken to for thirty seconds."

"Forty," Lucian said. "I counted."

"I kissed you."

"You did. I've been trying to think of a proper response, and all I've got is thank you."

Vivienne put her face in her hands. Her shoulders were shaking.

"For what it's worth," Lucian added, turning to the window, "my nephew has never looked that small in his whole life. I'd have paid money."

That did it. She laughed properly, helplessly, until her eyes stung, and Vivienne finally gave up pretending and laughed with her.

The manor sat at the far end of the valley, an old grey house with ivy over half of it. Every window was dark except one. Seraphina saw it as they came up the drive, a square of yellow in all that stone, and the back of her neck prickled.

"Someone's waiting," she said.

"Yes." Lucian didn't sound surprised. "He's been waiting a long time."

The study smelled of woodsmoke and old paper. The fire was low. In the chair beside it sat the white-bearded elder from the banquet, and up close he looked worse than he had across the hall. He was smaller somehow, and his hands wouldn't stay still on his knees. On the table at his elbow was a cup of tea he'd clearly forgotten about. A skin had formed on top.

He stood up when she came in. Then, to her horror, he bowed. Properly, from the waist, the way you bow to someone above you.

"Please don't," Seraphina said.

"Forgive me. I've practised this for twenty-six years and I still don't know how to begin." He cleared his throat. "My name is Corvin Ashgrove. I was your mother's friend."

"My mother died when I was a baby. Her name was Anna Vale."

"The woman who raised you for a while was Anna Vale, yes. Your mother was Marguerite." He said the name carefully, like something that might break. "She was the last daughter of the silver line."

Nobody said anything. The fire popped.

"That's not funny," Seraphina said.

"It isn't meant to be."

"I'm wolfless. Everyone knows that."

"Everyone knows what they were told." Corvin looked at her gently. "You heard a howl tonight, Lady Seraphina. The whole kingdom did. Do you honestly think it came from nowhere?"

She opened her mouth and shut it again. In her chest something warm moved, as if it had heard its name.

"Marguerite's enemies wanted the line finished," Corvin went on. "When she knew she wouldn't live, she hid you where nobody would look, with a family too ordinary to be suspected. She asked me to watch over you and wait. I wasn't allowed to speak. If I'd said a word, they'd have found you."

"Who's they?"

"That's a longer story." He reached into his sleeve and set a small glass vial on the table. A little grey sediment lay at the bottom. "This is more urgent. I took it from your stepmother's dressing table the week she died."

Seraphina stared at it. "What is it?"

"Silver-root tonic. One drop in a cup of tea every morning and a young wolf stays asleep for good. Beatrix started giving it to you when you were seven."

"No," Vivienne said sharply. Then, slower: "Oh, no. Isolde."

Seraphina didn't move. She was seeing it, clear as anything. Isolde in the doorway with a steaming cup, smiling, saying drink up, sis, you look tired. Every single morning for years.

"I stopped," she said, and her voice sounded far away. "Three weeks ago I had that horrible fever and the smell of tea made me gag. I've been on coffee ever since."

"Then somebody was looking after you," Corvin said. "Three weeks was just enough for her to stir. Tonight, with your heart breaking, she woke."

"She."

"Selene. That's her name. I don't know how I know, but I do."

A voice moved at the edge of her mind, so quiet she almost missed it. They lied to us. We are done being quiet.

Seraphina sat down, because her legs had decided for her. Three years of dinners alone. Twenty-six years of being called nothing. And all of it, every bit, had been stirred into a teacup.

"Why?" The word came out cracked. "Why would they bother?"

"Beatrix knew exactly who you were. She wanted her own girl on top, not some orphan from a dead bloodline. So she kept you quiet, let the kingdom call you wolfless, and Isolde carried on after her."

"And Damien?" Seraphina's chest tightened. "He said I owed his family. That I was married to him to pay a debt."

"That's what he was told," Lucian said from the doorway. He'd been so still she'd forgotten him. "My brother arranged the marriage. There was never a debt. A Luna under a powerful Alpha's roof is very hard to touch, and that was the point. He promised to keep you safe. He died before he could tell his son the truth."

"So Damien really believed it."

"All of it. Then Isolde added her own version, that you were hollow, cursed, bad blood. When he said they'd listen once they heard what you really were, that's what he meant. He thought he was exposing a fraud."

For one second, a very small one, Seraphina felt sorry for him. Then she remembered his fingers around her wrist, and it went away.

Lucian crossed the room and crouched in front of her chair. He didn't touch her. He just waited until she looked up.

"You don't have to decide anything tonight," he said. "Not the marriage. Not the rest of it. You owe nobody an answer."

"You're being very decent for someone I ambushed."

"It's a family failing. I'm the only one who got it."

Corvin coughed. "There's more, but it will keep until you've slept. The king ought to see you at first light, and he ought to see this." He nodded at the vial. "That's the first piece. The rest we carry in person."

Someone hammered on the front door. Hard, urgent, not stopping.

A young guard came in with mud to his knees. He'd clearly ridden hard and didn't stop to catch his breath.

"My lord. Word from the palace. Alpha Damien rode straight there from the banquet with Lady Isolde. He's asked the king to void the rejection." He swallowed. "He's also asked for Lady Seraphina to be arrested. Fraud."

"That snake," Vivienne breathed. "He couldn't even wait till morning."

Seraphina got up. Her knees had stopped trembling. She didn't know when that had happened.

"Then we go tonight," she said.