Chapter 2

Anara POV

"Who is that?" Cassian said.

He said it to Lyra, not to me, but he didn't look away from me while he said it. He'd gone pale under the red moon, paler than a man who had just been kissed ought to be, and one hand had come up to press flat against his breastbone as though something inside him had kicked.

"Nobody." Lyra smoothed her skirt where his fist had crushed it. "A maid, darling. She wanders off sometimes."

"She doesn't smell like a maid."

"Doesn't she?" Her voice stayed sweet, the way it always did right before a cut. "Look at that dress. You can see the scullery on it from here."

"Cassian." My own voice came out so small I hated it. "I didn't know it was you. I smelled something, and my wolf spoke, she's never said a word to me in my whole life, and she said…" I couldn't finish.

"Said what?" he asked, though he already knew.

"Mate."

Somewhere behind us the violins slid into another waltz. Nobody moved. Then Lyra laughed,a soft pretty one, and it was so much worse than if she screamed.

"Oh, sweetheart. Cass, this is my sister."

His eyes finally went over me properly, from my hacked-off hair to my cracked shoes, and I watched him do the sum. "The cursed one? That's her?"

"In the flesh. What there is of it."

"Gods." He dragged a hand down his face. "You told me she was locked up somewhere. You said she couldn't even shift."

"She can't. She just slipped her leash tonight." Lyra tilted her head. "Haven't you, Anara? Sneaking around on the night of the ball. Pell will be heartbroken."

"I'll go," I said. "I'll go back in, I only wanted…. Can we talk, just the two of us? Even a minute. It doesn't have to mean anything."

"It already means something!" Cassian snapped, and then, quieter, almost to himself, "That's the whole problem."

"It means nothing." Lyra stepped in close and laid her fingers on his sleeve, light as a moth. "Think, Cass. Father gives you the southern border the day we marry. Ashwood gets its alliance and you get the crown. And the first thing the Alpha King hears tomorrow is that his future son-in-law is bonded to the thing the prophecy says will burn his kingdom down?"

"I'm not a thing," I said.

Nobody answered that.

I took a step toward him, and he took one back, fast, like I came at him with a blade. "Don't," he said hoarsely. "Don't come near me. I mean it."

"I wouldn't tell anyone," I tried again. "I don't want your crown. I'd stay in the kitchens, I keep my head down. I've kept a lot of secrets."

"You'd last a week," Lyra said.

"She might be right." Cassian wouldn't look at me now. He was looking at the ground between us, at nothing. "Forty wolves follow me because I'm going to be the king's son. If I walk into that ballroom with you, I'm the Alpha who mated a cursed maid, and they would chain you up in the Moon Temple before sunrise. I'm trying to do you a favor."

"That isn't a favor."

"You felt it too," I said. "I saw your face. You can't tell me you didn't."

"I felt a smell, that's all." But his hand hadn't moved from his chest.

His hand lifted toward me. It only came up a few inches, palm open, and for one second I thought I might see what it meant to do. Then Lyra said his name again, one soft word, and the hand dropped to his side like it had been cut loose.

He straightened, and the man who made me smell rain and smoke across a whole garden went somewhere behind his face and shut the door.

"I, Cassian Ashwood, heir of Ashwood, refuse the bond. Before the moon and my promise, I reject you, Anara Moonvale, as my mate."

It didn't hurt right away. For a second it was only words, like someone reading out a bill. Then something ripped. It started under my ribs and tore clear through to my back, and my knees hit the gravel before I knew they'd gone. "Ahh.. ah, ah.." The sound kept coming whether I wanted it to or not, and I pressed both hands to my middle as if I could hold myself together. Inside me the thing that had said mate a few minutes ago let out a thin, high whine and went quiet, and the quiet was worse than all the years of nothing that came before it.

Cassian made a sound too, a short hard grunt like he'd been punched, and he swayed where he stood, breathing hard through his teeth. "Breathe, darling," Lyra said, rubbing his back. "It passes."

"No." It came out as a breath. "Please. You can't just…"

"I can, and I did." He said it fast, like a man pulling a splinter. "Go back to the kitchens. Keep your mouth shut. If one word of this gets out, you'll wish you stayed in your hole."

"Be nice, Cass, she's family." Lyra bent over me, and her perfume was lilies, the kind they lay on graves. "Oh, don't look at me like that. Did you honestly think a wolf would pick you? Look at yourself. You can't even hear out of one side of your head."

"Lyra. I'm your sister."

"You're a mistake Father kept. Do you know what he said the night we were born? 'Take that one away.' Mother wasn't even cold yet." She shrugged one bare shoulder. "Ask anyone. Go on inside, Cass, they'll miss us. I'll deal with this."

"Lyra." Cassian hesitated. "Don't hurt her."

"Would I?" She laughed again.

He went. He didn't look back, and the bond tore again as he walked off, a fresh rip that bent me over until my forehead touched the gravel.

Behind the hedges the violins hadn't even stopped. Somebody inside was laughing, and a glass broke, and the whole world went on as if nothing had happened, and I knelt there with my palms full of gravel.

When I could breathe I got my feet under me. Lyra was still there, picking a petal off her sleeve and humming along to the waltz.

"Where do you think you're going?"

"Away. You got what you wanted, you got all of it. Let me go."

"And have you run to Father? Or the Elders? Or Ambrose, he'd love that." She smiled. "Take one step past that gate, Anara, and I swear on the Moon Goddess there'll be blood on the grass. Yours. And I'll tell them you came at me first."

"You'll have to catch me," I said, which was a stupid thing to say with my knees still shaking.

"Catch you?" Lyra's smile widened. "Anara, I've been letting you run since we were five."

I ran anyway, as fast as I could.

Past the fountain, where Ambrose was on his feet shouting my name, past the rose beds, through the gate and up the hill into the trees. My left ear gave me nothing and my right gave me only my own breath, and the broken bond dragged at my side like a hook. A branch caught my sleeve and I tore it free. One of my shoes came off in the dark, and I left it where it fell.

Tomorrow there will be a honey cake outside a door I wouldn't be sleeping behind. That thought came from nowhere, and it nearly put me on my knees again. Then the palace bells began at midnight, twelve slow strokes, and under them, close and getting closer, came the sound of bones breaking as my sister let her wolf out.