Chapter 2

The next day Viola told everyone she had woken in the middle of the night with a cold ache in her chest. Helena promptly ordered a maid to take the blackthorn tonic I drank every day to Viola's room instead.

Agatha had written that recipe. I had swallowed it every day of my life, though it was bitter and hard to keep down. After only three days without it, my hands had turned ice-cold, and my chest felt as if a boulder soaked in ice water were pressing down on it. I did not ask for it back. I was afraid Helena would accuse me again of fighting my sister over a bowl of medicine.

That was when word came back that the border had been attacked.

Going through the granary ledgers, I found seven empty wagons that had no business being on the northern supply line. I wrote a letter that same night telling the patrol to change its route, and I handed the messenger a moonstone charm stamped with my blood seal. When Damian came home wounded, the one at his side was Viola.

She set the charm on the table. "I just noticed something was wrong on the northern line. I got there in time to save him."

I brought out the original ledgers and the draft of the message and laid them in front of everyone. Garrick turned two pages and shut the file.

"Does it really matter which of my daughters spotted the problem?"

"Three people died on that road," I said. "How the warning went missing matters very much."

Viola's tears spilled over at once. "All I did was carry my sister's message. She is already Luna. Why can she not give me one word of thanks?"

"Pull the message-seal records." I looked at Damian. "The Moon Tower keeps records of who wrote the letter and who intercepted it along the way."

Once again, all he had to do was lift a hand and I would have been cleared.

Instead he pushed the charm back toward Viola. "You have had a fright. Keep it. Starting tomorrow you may sit in on the Alpha's council."

Then he turned to me, looking drained. "Evelyn, you are already Luna. You do not need to keep score over a thank-you."

My rank had become the excuse for taking things from me.

That evening my brothers changed the locks on the gate of Blackstone Manor. Garrick came with a custodial document and informed me that Viola was low in spirits and needed to move in there for a while to recover.

"Blackstone Manor is what Agatha left me."

"The Ashbourne family raised you for nineteen years." Garrick's brows drew together. "Lending one house to this family's own daughter is too much to ask?"

Adrian would not meet my eyes. Lucas stood in front of the newly locked gate. When we were children they had carried me through that gate on their backs. Now they were the ones shutting me out of it.

Before I had even found somewhere to stay, Viola dropped her next piece of news.

She was giving off the sweet, coppery pregnancy scent that only comes with carrying an Alpha's pup. Damian admitted that on the night he was healing at the border he had been drunk, had lost control, had not pushed her away. He also kept insisting he could not remember the details.

"Bring in three healers and have her examined right now." My voice was strangely calm. My hands were shaking.

Damian was quiet for a moment. "If she really is pregnant, an examination like that would humiliate her."

"And if she is not?"

"We will talk about it once the scent settles." He put his hands on my shoulders. "Silverpine needs an heir. Evelyn, the thing I have always loved most about you is how kind you are. Let this go for now. Do not upset her."

He trapped me with a compliment, as if refusing to back down would cost me the very quality he claimed to love.

After dark I went back to the main bedroom to pack Damian's clothes. The key to that room had already been handed to Viola. He was moving into a guest room, so he could look after a child no one had confirmed existed.

With no one else around, Viola slipped off her shawl, took out a silver pin, and drew it slowly across my wrist.

"Your mate can smell me on himself now." She watched my face go white and enjoyed it. "So where is that black wolf from the story?"

The silver burn ran like fire along my veins straight to my heart. I braced against the wall to keep from collapsing. The moonstones set into the room cracked from the inside, and black lines spread over the whole wall like a spiderweb.

It startled Viola too. Then she sneered. "Even stone breaks when it touches you."

I paid for the repairs out of my own account.

As the door was closing, Damian added that he was only doing this to look after the child.

I looked down at the burn on my wrist. Moonlight came through the window and settled on it, turned into a thin black thread, and crawled slowly up my veins toward my heart.

I pulled my sleeve down over the mark.

I was afraid someone would accuse me again of putting on a pitiful act to win sympathy.