Chapter 4

Anara POV

"...not a spy, Sebastian. Look at her."

"I am looking at her, that's what worries me. Alpha, nobody swims the Ravenmere in winter for fun."

"She swam it because her sister was trying to eat her."

"Or her sister was told to chase and she was told to swim. It's what I'd do if I wanted a rat in your house."

I heard all of it with my right ear and none of it with my left, so the voices came out lopsided, like people talking on the other side of a wall. I tried to open my eyes and they wouldn't. Everything under the blanket was too heavy and too hot, my back was on fire, and my tongue had stuck to the roof of my mouth.

"Water," I said, or tried to. A croak came out.

A cup touched my lip and I drank until a hand tipped it away. "Slow, or you'll bring it all back up," a woman said, in a voice like a rasp on wood. "There. Nobody's sending you anywhere tonight, girl, so stop looking for the door."

"I wasn't."

"You were, in your sleep. Your whole foot was pointing at it."

I almost laughed, and then she peeled something off my back and I didn't laugh at all. "Ahh..ow..hhh, that burns, that burns!"

"That's the point. Hold her shoulders, Alpha, she's stronger than she looks."

Hands settled on my shoulders, big and careful and warm. I waited for them to press me down, the way hands always had. They didn't. They stayed where they were, and every time I flinched they eased off and came back.

"Four deep ones, the rest are scratches," the healer went on. "The leg's the worst. She'll limp for a week. Whoever did this wasn't playing."

"It was her sister," the Alpha said. "She tried to follow her across."

"Maren, how long before she wakes properly?" Sebastian asked. "Because I've got questions, and so does half the pack."

"Tomorrow, maybe. Or the day after. And you'll ask your questions when she can sit up, Sebastian, not before. Hold that lamp closer. Something's wrong along her spine."

Cool fingers pressed along the old scar, and the sting that had been hiding under all the other pain came up to meet them, sharp and bright and shaped like a line. I made a noise I wasn't proud of, a thin "nngh" through my teeth.

"Hell and ashes," Maren said, much more softly. "Alpha. Come and look at this."

"That's wire," Sebastian said from the foot of the bed. "Is that wire? Under her skin?"

"Silver thread, worked right through the muscle in a pattern." The rasp had gone out of Maren's voice. "I saw it once, on a rogue his own pack had bound. It's a seal. It shuts a wolf up and keeps it shut."

"How old is it?" the Alpha asked.

"Years. The stitching's small, the way you'd sew on a child. And clean. Whoever did this knew exactly what they were doing."

"Can you take it out?"

"Not tonight, not with this fever, and not without knowing what's behind it. It's grown into her. Pull the wrong thread and you could open the whole thing at once." She paused. "There's a wolf in there, Alpha. A big one. I can feel her pushing from here."

"Then leave it alone."

"Alpha…" Sebastian said. "What in the hell is a king's daughter doing with a wolf seal in her spine? And you carried her into this house the same week Cormac Raith is counting votes against you."

"I know what week it is."

"You didn't even blink at the seal. Everyone else in this room blinked. Why didn't you?"

The Alpha said nothing. The silence stretched until the lamp hissed. Then, flat: "Go to bed, Sebastian."

A door opened and shut. Cloth went over my back and the burning eased all at once, as if someone had opened a window.

"That's the bond sickness, on top of everything else," Maren said, lower now, as if she thought I couldn't hear. "I can smell it on her, it's cut raw. Somebody threw her away tonight. Her mate?"

"The Ashwood heir."

Maren spat into something that rang like a bucket. "May the Goddess take his teeth. You'll want to sleep, Alpha."

"I'll sit."

"Then sit quietly. She's had enough noise for one night."

The chair creaked, the lamp dimmed, and the room went quiet except for his breathing and mine. I tried to hold on to the shape of him sitting there with his elbows on his knees. It slid away from me anyway.

Somewhere under all the heat, a whine started up, thin and far away, the same sound my wolf had made in the garden when the bond tore. She hadn't gone anywhere. She was only hurt, like me.

I was nine, carrying Lyra's tea up the stairs with both hands, counting steps so I wouldn't spill. Seventeen. I always counted. At the top, Lyra opened her door, looked at the cup, and knocked it out of my hands with one finger.

"She threw it at me!" Lyra screamed, before the cup had even stopped rolling. "Guard! She threw it at me!"

The guard didn't ask. His open hand came across the left side of my head so hard the hallway turned white, and then there was a long high whine that never really stopped. I sat on the wet floor with tea soaking into my knees while Lyra cried real tears over me, and I remember thinking, even then, that she was very good at it. That night Elder Isolde cleaned the blood from my ear and told me no more trays, and I was so grateful I cried.

When I came out of it the ringing was gone and the left side of my head was just empty, the way it had been for eleven years. The lamp was low. The Alpha was still in the chair, bent over something small in his hands, and a thin curl of wood dropped from his knife onto the floor.

"What are you making?" My voice came out as a thread.

He didn't look up. "Nothing. Go back to sleep."

"You're the Butcher."

"So I'm told."

"You don't look like one."

"What do I look like, then?"

"Like you haven't slept in a week."

"I haven't." The knife went on, patient and slow. "Sleep. I'm not going anywhere."

I didn't believe him, but my eyes shut anyway, and the room went away again, and I was seven, looking up at the dried herbs hanging from Elder Isolde's ceiling.

Hands held my ankles and wrists, and it wasn't the hands I minded. It was the needle, long and thin and so cold it felt wet, going in beside my spine and not coming out, and going in again.

"Mmph! Mmmph!" It was all I could get around the leather strap between my teeth, and a soft, dry hand stroked the hair back off my forehead.

"Be brave," said the voice that belonged to the hand. "Nearly done."

I rolled my eyes as far as they would go. Past the lamp a door stood open, and in the doorway was a tall man with a gold chain across his chest, his face turned far enough away that all I could see of it was his ear.

"Papa?" I tried to say, around the strap. "It hurts."

He didn't turn his head. "Do it properly, Isolde," my father said. "I won't have this undone."

"Always, my king." The soft hand stroked my hair again, from my forehead back to my ear, the way it had a hundred times. "Hush, little one. This is how we keep you safe.”