Chapter Seven: The Order With Her Name

Lucian had carried that order next to his heart for twenty-six years, and he had never once spent a night without it.

Seraphina did not touch the vellum. She looked at it the way you look at a snake someone has politely placed on your table.

"You kept it," she said.

"Every day." Lucian turned the paper so she could see the seal, a wolf's skull ringed with thorns. "I told myself it was evidence. Lately I think I kept it because I couldn't bear to burn the only proof of what I almost did."

"Almost."

"Sit down, Seraphina. Please. I'll tell it in order, and at the end you can throw something at me."

She sat. Her hand rested on the letter opener in her sleeve, and she let him see it. He glanced at it, nodded once, and seemed oddly relieved.

"Marguerite ran when she was five months along," he said. "She had a mate, a good man named Rowan. They hid in the northern hills until the Council's trackers found them. By the time I reached the cottage, Rowan had been dragged away in chains, and Marguerite lay in the bed bleeding from a poisoned blade that wasn't mine. She had just given birth. She had hours left. As for Rowan, I never learned what became of him. Voss told me he died in the first week, and I was fool enough to believe it."

Seraphina's voice came out hoarse. "Where was I?"

"In a cradle by the window. Silent. Wide awake. Watching me as if you already knew exactly what I was." His mouth twisted. "I had the knife in my hand. I want you to know that. I won't tell you I never lifted it."

Selene shifted under Seraphina's ribs, an unhappy rumble, but she did not rise. She waited too.

"Your mother didn't beg. She asked me one question. She asked what I would tell my brother's child, when he was old enough, if he wanted to know whether his uncle had ever done one thing he could be proud of." Lucian laughed without any humour. "Damien wasn't even born. My brother's wife had only just told us she was expecting. I never found out how Marguerite knew."

"So you didn't do it."

She hadn't meant to ask the next question. It came out of her anyway, small and raw. "Did she say anything about me?"

Lucian was quiet for a moment. "She said your name. She'd chosen it long before you were born. She said it sounded like starlight."

Seraphina pressed her lips together hard and looked at the ceiling until her eyes stopped stinging.

"I went home with a baby under my coat and a story. My brother Alaric agreed to hide you in the one place the Council would never look, under the roof of a rising Alpha. We invented a debt, a marriage contract between your fostering family and ours, signed and witnessed, so that when you came of age you'd be a Luna in a powerful house. I told the Council the silver child had died with her mother. They believed me. Why wouldn't they? I was their best Hound."

She stared at him. "You arranged my marriage to Damien."

"My brother did. I only wrote the contract."

"So you watched. For three years you watched me eat dinner alone."

"I watched from the far end of the table at every Blackthorn holiday," he said quietly. "You never once looked at me, because I made certain you didn't. If the Council saw me close to you, they would have started asking why. Your safety depended on my being a stranger."

"That's very convenient."

"It's the truth. It's also unforgivable. Both can be real."

She wanted to scream at him. She wanted, heaven help her, to believe him. Selene made a small, uncertain sound, as if she wanted that too.

Her hands had started to shake again. She walked to the window and pressed them flat against the cool glass, because she could not stay still. For three years a man at the far end of the table had been counting the hours until she was safe. Outside, the moon sat low over the valley, bright and ordinary. She remembered a tall man at the edge of the Blackthorn hall, turning away every time she lifted her eyes, as if the sight of her hurt. She had always assumed he disliked her.

"Who runs the Council?" she asked. "Who wanted my family dead?"

"There are twelve seats. Eleven are held by old men who like being told what to do." Lucian's mouth went flat. "The twelfth belongs to Chancellor Aldric Voss. He signed that order himself. He taught me to track. And I'm now certain he's the one who paid Beatrix to put silver-root in your tea."

Seraphina turned. "Why would a Chancellor care about one orphan?"

"Because of what a silver wolf is." Lucian looked down at the seal. "It isn't only strength. Yours is the one bloodline whose bite can break a blood oath. Every Alpha swears one to the Council the day he takes his title. That is how twelve old men keep a whole kingdom on a leash. Only a silver wolf can cut it. Voss has spent his life making sure none could."

The room felt colder. She thought of Damien kneeling in the throne room with his head bowed, and the elders kneeling beside him. All of them sworn. All of them owned.

"Then tonight," she said slowly, "when I changed in front of everyone..."

"You told the whole kingdom the leash can be cut. Voss will have heard before you reached the bottom of the hill." He stood. "That's why I couldn't stay silent any longer. You deserved the truth, and he's about to move."

"Move how?"

He never got to answer.

Three hard knocks hit the study door, and Vivienne came in without waiting. She was white to the lips, a candle shaking in her hand. Behind her stood the young guard from earlier, spattered with mud, still breathing hard.

"Corvin's gone," she said.

Lucian went rigid. "What do you mean, gone?"

"The palace guards who rode ahead with him never reached the vault." The guard swallowed. "We found them on the road, tied up and alive. They said riders in Council grey took the old man and the vial at the crossroads. They left this."

He held out a small square of gold-edged card. Seraphina took it with fingers she couldn't feel. Four words in a clean, elegant hand.

Breakfast. Alone, Silver Luna.

Below that, in smaller script, one more line.

Bring the Hound if you must. He knows the way.