Blood and Binding

"Wake up, Luna. We're here."

I had not been asleep. I had been pretending for the last forty minutes, my forehead against the cool leather of the window, my eyes closed against a view I had not wanted to see arrive.

I opened them now.

The car had stopped on a gravel turnaround at the base of a mountain road. Beyond the windshield, through pines and thick low fog, the silhouette of something old and stone and very tall rose into the dark.

Riven was looking at me in the rearview mirror.

"You weren't asleep."

"No."

"I didn't want to be the one to tell you to look at it. I'm telling you now."

"Thank you, I think."

"Pretend you slept. It will be easier."

I sat up. Straightened the sweater Mira had packed. The small things a girl does in the last seconds before walking into a room she has not been allowed to refuse.

"What's the protocol."

"There isn't one. You walked into a blood debt at midnight in a sweater your friend bought you. You're improvising. He's improvising. The pack is improvising. The protocol is whatever happens in the next hour."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only honest one I have."

"You keep calling me Luna."

"By Draeven law, the moment a debt-call brings a woman across the border in a King's car, she carries the rank of his intended. That's who you are right now."

"And in his eyes."

"His eyes are his own. I can only tell you what is in our law."

"That is more honest than I was expecting."

"I have not learned how to lie to a woman in the back of my own car yet. I doubt I will start tonight."

He came around. Opened my door.

I stepped out onto gravel for the first time in my life, and the cold mountain air hit me clean and sharp.

The Keep stood above me. Stone and pine and fog. Lit windows scattered up its face like a star map I did not know how to read.

The staff lined the courtyard. Twenty in dark green. Heads bowed exactly to the degree custom required and not one degree more. I looked at every one of them. The steward. The captain of the inner guard. The kitchen master. The woman who would later turn out to be the one who washed my sheets. I would not forget any of them. I had decided that on the gravel.

The throne room was at the end of a long stone corridor. Riven walked ahead. The doors were already open.

I walked in.

The King was at the far window with his back to me. Tall. Dark grey jacket. Hair cropped close. He did not turn. He stood with his hands folded behind him and he did not move for the count of seven.

I counted.

"The omega," he said. Still without turning.

I did not bow.

I waited until he had to turn to see whether I had bowed at all, and when he turned, he turned slowly, the way a man turns when he is not used to having to.

His eyes found me. Grey. Steady.

"Custom requires a deeper bow," I said, "from someone of my rank, sir."

The room went still. Riven, at my shoulder, did not breathe.

The King looked at me for a long second. Then his mouth did something that was not quite a smile.

"You are not my omega yet."

"No," I said. "Not yet."

He held my eyes for one more beat. Then looked past me, at Riven.

"Take her to be prepared."

I turned with Riven and walked out. I did not give the King my back twice in the same hour. I gave it to him once, on my own terms.

The bathing room was warmer than the throne room.

Two women in dark green met me. Stripped me of Mira's sweater. Mira's jeans. Mira's boots. The quick competence of staff who had done this many times for many different girls.

They put me in a stone tub. Scrubbed me with something that smelled like cedar and crushed iron until my skin was the color of a person about to be bonded against her will.

I did not cry. I had decided about that on the platform.

"Stand up, please, Luna."

I stood up.

They dressed me in the red. Deep blood-red silk. Floor-length. High neck. Long sleeves. Twenty small pearl buttons from the small of my back to the nape of my neck.

It fit me.

It fit as though it had been measured for me weeks ago by someone who had known the shape of my shoulders before I had ever set foot in this Keep.

"Whose measurements did you use."

The taller woman did not answer.

"Whose measurements."

"That is not a question I am permitted to answer."

"Try."

She paused at the seventh button. Looked at the second woman. The second woman shook her head, very slightly.

"They came from the Voss pack three weeks ago, Luna. We did not know whose body they were for until you walked through the courtyard."

I held very still.

Three weeks ago. The same week Diana Cole had taken me on the shopping trip and pronounced the cream silk dress perfect. The same week my father had told her yes. The same week the woman in dark green silk in the third row of my bonding hall had measured a dress she had known I would never wear at home.

She had measured a dress she had known I would wear here.

They finished the buttons. Put my hair up. Did not put flowers in it.

We left.

In the corridor between the bathing room and the silver hall, a small figure stepped out of an alcove.

An old woman. Grey hair tied back. A wooden spoon in her hand, as though she had been called from a kitchen and had not put it down.

She stopped when she saw me.

She did not bow. She did not look away. She looked at my face, and then at the silver-rejection scar at the open collar of the red dress, and then at my face again, and her mouth made the smallest movement I had ever seen a woman's mouth make.

"Luna," she whispered.

It was not a greeting. It was a recognition.

Something turned over deep in my chest. Slower than before. Heavier. The wolf I had been told my whole life I did not have lifted her head a second time.

Riven was three steps ahead. He turned back.

"Move on, mother."

The old woman moved on. The spoon stayed in her hand.

Riven looked at me. He had seen.

"Luna."

"Yes."

"Your name is Selene."

"Yes. I know."

He did not understand. He was a kind man and a careful man and a man who had not lied to me yet, but he did not understand. The part of me that had not been a part of me an hour ago had recognized something the part of him that worked for the King could not.

"Take me to the silver hall, Riven."

"Yes, Luna."

The bowl was older than I was.

The priest in his black robe. The King across the altar. Riven at the King's right shoulder. Three candles. The stone walls did not echo.

"Give me your right hand."

I gave it.

The cut was clean. Three drops, four, five into the silver.

The King held out his. The priest cut him. Three drops, four, five into the same silver.

"Touch your blood to him."

I looked up.

His grey eyes had been on me from the moment the knife touched my skin. He had not moved. He had not looked away.

I lifted my hand and pressed my open palm to his.

The thing in my chest hit.

Not a stir. A strike. Hard and clean, the way a bell is struck by a hammer, and the ring of it filled my whole body before I had time to brace. The rejection scar at my collarbone went silver-hot under the red silk. I felt the heat climb my throat. I felt it in my teeth and behind my eyes.

I gasped. A small sound.

The King's pupils blew wide.

It happened in less than a second. The grey of his eyes nearly disappeared. His hand tightened on mine. He closed his eyes for one full second, and when he opened them the grey was back but it was not the same grey. It had been somewhere else.

He did not let go of my hand.

The priest spoke the binding vow. I did not hear the words.

The King's thumb passed over the inside of my wrist where a new bond mark was forming under the skin.

He leaned in, close enough that only I could hear.

"Don't flinch. Not in front of them. They will eat you alive if you let them see you flinch."

The bond mark warmed.

I did not flinch.

He let go. Stepped back. Looked at the priest. The priest closed his book.

"It is done."

The King turned. Walked the length of the silver hall. Did not look back. Went through a door at the far end and closed it behind him.

Riven came around the altar. Stopped in front of me. Did not touch me.

"I am sorry, Luna. For what comes next. The corner room. He has chosen it on purpose. I cannot tell you why."

"Is it punishment."

"No, Luna."

"Is it cruelty."

"I don't know yet. I will tell you when I know. Come with me."

I went with him.

The corner room was small. Wooden door. Stone walls. A narrow bed. No window. A single oil lamp already lit.

"Water in the basin. Linen in the chest. The corridor will be guarded. No one comes in unless you call. If you call, I will come."

"Thank you, Riven."

"Luna. I am sorry."

"You said that already."

"I will say it as many times as I need to."

He closed the door behind him.

I stood in the center of the room in a dress someone had measured for me three weeks ago, with a fresh bond mark forming at the inside of my wrist.

He had told me not to flinch and touched the bond mark like he was claiming it.

He had discarded me into servant quarters like I was nothing.

Both were true.

I would have to decide which one was the lie.

I would not decide tonight.

KAEL'S POV

"Pour me one. Don't ask."

I did not turn around when Riven came into my study. I had heard him on the stairs. I had heard him in the corridor. I had been hearing him my whole life, but tonight I heard him the way a man hears the only living thing in a stone room after a thing has woken up in his chest that had not moved in three years.

He poured. Set the glass on the side table. Did not pour one for himself.

"Sir."

"Riven."

"She's in the corner room. I posted a guard. Not for her. For her."

"I understand."

"She didn't ask why. She walked in. Sat down on the bed. She didn't cry."

"Did you expect her to."

"I had prepared myself. I brought a cloth."

I looked at him.

"You brought a cloth."

"I don't know why I'm telling you this. She didn't ask for it. I put it on the chest at the foot of the bed in case she changed her mind in the night. I expect she won't."

"No," I said. "She won't."

I picked up the glass. Did not drink. I had not been able to drink in three years. I had not stopped pouring because pouring was something I could do with my hands while I waited to feel a thing I had stopped feeling.

I set the glass back down.

"The bag she didn't bring."

"Packed by her friend Mira Cordova. Three days ago. Cordova south was expecting her. She was offered an exit. She didn't take it."

"Why didn't she take it."

"I don't know yet. I'll know in a week."

"What else."

He did not answer at once.

"Riven."

"There's been another communication from Diana Cole. It arrived four hours ago. I haven't opened it."

"Open it."

He broke the seal. Read it without expression. Turned it so I could read it too.

I read it twice.

Cole household letterhead. The hand was not Diana's. Older. The signature at the bottom was Diana's, but the writing was not. Three sentences. Polite. Congratulatory. At the bottom, in a different ink, a line of accounting numbers and a date.

Transfer of funds.

Four months ago.

The amount was the going price of a custom-prepared compulsion artifact.

The recipient was the Voss pack treasury.

I set the letter down.

I looked at Riven. He looked back at me. He had seen it before I had read it twice. He was a clever man.

"Diana paid for the rejection."

"Yes, sir."

"The boy didn't choose. He was made to."

"Yes."

"The compulsion came from the Cole household. The signature is older than Diana. Her mother prepared it."

"Yes."

"Seraphine Cole."

"Yes."

I had not said that name in nine years.

In the dark place at the base of my ribs, where the silence had lived for three years, the thing that had pressed once against its own wall earlier tonight pressed again.

Not a hand this time.

A word.

Mine.

I went very still.

I had not heard that voice in three years. The healers had told me my wolf had grieved himself silent and would come back when he came back. I had stopped waiting for him in the eighth month.

He had spoken.

One word. The moment the Cole household name had crossed my desk.

I closed my eyes. Let myself feel the word the way a man lets himself feel the first warm air after a winter that has gone on too long.

When I opened them, Riven was watching me. Not with concern. With something closer to relief.

"Sir."

"Riven."

"He's back."

"Yes."

"How long since."

"Three years."

"And the woman in the corner room."

"Yes."

He did not say anything else. He did not need to.

I looked at the letter. The cut on my hand. The line of brandy I had not drunk.

"She's not staying in the corner room past tomorrow morning."

"No, sir."

"Find her something with a window. East wing."

"Yes, sir."

"And Riven. Diana Cole sent that letter to gloat. She wanted me to know she paid for the rejection. She wanted me to know the boy hadn't chosen. She wanted me to know her mother prepared the artifact."

"Yes."

"She did not know what she was telling me. She does not know I know who Seraphine Cole is. She does not know what Seraphine Cole did twenty-one years ago. She does not know the girl in my corner room tonight is the only person alive who carries the bloodline her mother spent forty years trying to end."

"No, sir. She does not."

"Good."

I picked up the letter. Folded it. Put it in the locked drawer at the bottom of my desk. Locked it. Put the key back on the chain at my throat.

I looked at the door of my study.

I did not go through it.

I had wanted to. The wolf in my chest, awake for the first time in three years, had wanted me to. The bond mark on my own wrist, still warm, had wanted me to. I had stood for one full minute looking at the door before I had decided.

She had walked off a platform tonight in front of two hundred people on her own feet. She had walked into my Keep in a sweater her friend had packed with eight dollars in her pocket. She had looked at me across a throne room and refused to bow.

She was not going to thank me for arriving at her door at three in the morning.

She was going to make me earn it.

I went back to the window.

The fog was lifting off the pines. The sky to the east was the color it gets an hour before dawn. Somewhere five floors down, in a windowless room I had told my beta to take her to on purpose, she was sitting on the edge of a bed in a dress someone had measured for her three weeks ago, deciding which one of us was the lie.

Mine.

He said it again. Quieter. The way a thing whispers when it is settling in.

I did not answer.

I did not need to.

He already knew.