Old Woman

POV: Selene

"Eat what you are given, omega. And do not ask for more."

The kitchen head did not look up from the pot she was stirring. She said it the way you tell a child to stop touching a hot stove. I had been standing in the doorway of the lower kitchen for forty seconds, and she had decided in the first ten of them that I was not the kind of guest the Keep was going to be kind to.

"I asked for bread and water," I said. "I didn't ask for more than that."

"You asked at the wrong door, omega."

"What's the right door?"

"The right door is the door someone tells you to go to. No one has told you yet. Eat what you've been given."

She turned and slid a half-cup of broth and a slice of dry toast across the side table by the wall. The toast was the kind left out for the dogs in the courtyard. There was no chair next to the table.

"You'll eat standing, omega. The chairs are for the staff."

"I'm not staff."

"You're not Luna either. The corner room is not Luna's room. Eat your bread."

I looked at the bread.

I had not eaten in twenty hours. I had not slept properly. I had been in this Keep for fourteen of those hours, and I had been bonded to its King in the eighth of them, and I was being given dog toast in a side kitchen by a woman who would not look at my face. I made a small decision. I picked up the bread. I ate it standing.

I ate it the way Mira had taught me to eat at Voss pack functions when Diana had been watching. Selene, she had told me when I was sixteen, you eat like a girl who knows the dog will not bite if she does not run. I drank the broth. I set the cup down.

"Thank you," I said.

The kitchen head looked up.

She had not been expecting that. The three other women in the kitchen, who had been pretending not to see what was being done to me, had not been expecting it either. The kitchen head looked at me for the count of three.

"You should not thank a woman who has just disrespected you, omega."

"I know. Goodbye, ma'am."

I walked out of the kitchen.

I had been walking for an hour when the steward stopped me at the door of the great hall.

He was perhaps sixty. He had the careful face of a man who had served three Alpha Kings in his life and had not been wrong about a guest yet, and he stepped in front of me in the doorway and lifted one hand, palm flat, in the manner of a man trained to refuse without offending.

"The great hall is not open to omegas of this household, miss."

"What's your name?"

"...Beckman, miss."

"Mister Beckman. Is the great hall closed to omegas? Or is it closed to me?"

"...Miss."

"It's a question. Is the rule new this morning, or is it old?"

He looked at me for a long second. He did not bow. He did not soften. He held my eyes the way a man holds the eyes of a thing he has been told is below him and which he is beginning to suspect is not.

"The rule is old, miss. But the application of the rule to a specific guest is new. The application has been made this morning."

"By whom?"

"That, miss, I am not permitted to say."

"Of course not."

"...Yes, miss. I'm sorry."

"Don't be. I appreciate the honesty. Goodbye, Mister Beckman."

I walked away from the door of the great hall.

I had spent the morning catalogueing. The kitchen head. Two stewards in the long hall who had pretended not to see me when I had asked for directions. A young maid in the corridor outside the laundry who had stepped to the other side as though it would be wrong to brush against me. Now Mister Beckman. I filed each of them in the same place I had filed Diana Cole on the night of my rejection, which was the place I had not yet looked at twice.

I would look at them later.

For now, I learned the shape of the building. The corridor outside my corner room had a guard. The corridor outside the corridor had a second guard. Whatever the King had done in giving me a corner room with no window, he had also decided, more quietly, that no one was going to walk into that room without his permission. The two guards had not spoken to me. They had stepped back when I had passed.

The footsteps outside my door last night had been his. I knew that by ten in the morning. I had not known how I knew. I had only known.

"You're in the wrong corridor, Luna."

The voice was Riven's. I had turned a corner I had not turned before, and Riven was at the end of the long stone hall, leaning against a doorframe with the careful patience of a man who had been waiting for me for forty minutes.

"Are you following me, Riven?"

"No, Luna. I've been waiting for you."

"Why?"

"Because you've spent the morning being told things you did not need to be told by people who did not need to tell you. I thought you might appreciate being told one true thing by a person who hasn't lied to you yet."

I stopped in front of him.

"What's the true thing?"

"There is a library on the second floor of this wing. The door is the third on the right at the top of the staircase behind me. The door is not locked. It has not been locked in seventy years."

"And?"

"And the current head of the lower kitchens won't enter that library because the books are above her station. The current head of the great hall won't stop you at the door because the library is not his to the police. The current Alpha King is in his study working through the morning's correspondence with the Council. He will not be in the library for the next four hours, Luna."

"You're telling me to go to the library."

"I'm telling you what I would do if I had walked into this Keep last night the way you had."

"What would I find in the library?"

"What you went looking for in the corridors all morning. I won't name it for you. You'll recognise it when you see it."

He did not smile. He did not soften his face. He looked at me with the careful steadiness he had used in the back of the SUV at three in the morning, and I felt the small bright bell in my chest, which had been quiet all morning, lift slightly.

"Riven."

"Yes, Luna."

"Why are you helping me?"

"...That's a question I'm not yet permitted to answer in full, Luna. I'll answer it later. May I give you a partial answer for now?"

"Yes."

"Because someone has to."

I held his eyes for the count of three. I nodded.

"Riven."

"Yes."

"Have you eaten today?"

"...Yes, Luna."

"What did you eat?"

"Eggs and bread. In the upper staff kitchen. With butter."

"You're going to want to fix the lower kitchen, Riven."

"...Yes, Luna. I noted it when you walked out of it. I'll be fixing it tonight. Quietly."

"Good."

"And, Luna."

"Yes."

"If you are in the library when the Alpha King's correspondence ends earlier than I have predicted, do not be surprised."

"You're telling me he's going to be there."

"I'm telling you he might be. I don't know. I'm not omniscient. I'm only useful."

"All right. Thank you, Riven."

"Yes, Luna. Go up the stairs."

I went up the stairs.

The library was bigger than I had been expecting.

The shelves were three stories high. Narrow wooden walkways ran on iron galleries around the upper levels. There were long oak tables at the centre and a stone fireplace at the far end and tall narrow windows along the eastern wall. The light coming through them was the soft amber light of a long late afternoon.

There was no one in it.

I walked the shelves. PACK LAW. CONTINENTAL CODES. FOUNDER-LINE PROVISIONS. I pulled down a thin grey volume titled The Hierarchies and Rights of the True Alpha: A Reading. I carried it to the long oak table at the centre. I sat down. I opened it.

I had been reading for forty minutes when the library doors opened.

I did not look up at once.

I knew who it was. I had known the moment the doors had opened, the way I had known the footsteps in the corridor at three in the morning, the way I had known the words on the southern road. The small bright bell in my chest, which had been quiet most of the morning, was no longer quiet.

He stood in the doorway.

He stood there for a long moment. He did not greet me. He crossed the library. He walked the length of it to the shelf nearest my table. He reached up to the second shelf. He took down a book. He opened it. He stood there reading, three feet from the back of my chair, in the soft amber light.

I kept reading.

The paragraph on the page in front of me explained, in dry continental code, that any True Alpha heir of a recognised founder line, upon her surfacing in the Keep of a sitting King, became subject to a prior-claim provision held by any sitting alpha on the continent who could prove a recognised house and a documented interest.

I read it twice.

I read it the second time with the heat of his body three feet behind me and the bell in my chest ringing very softly.

He took a step closer.

He did not touch me. He did not put his hand on the back of my chair. He did not lean down. He stood close enough that I felt the heat of him through the thin dress, and he stayed there, and he read.

He was reading over my shoulder. I knew because I felt his breath against the top of my hair. Not loud. Not on purpose. The breath of a man who had been standing very close to a book and was reading what was in front of him.

I did not move. I counted.

I reached five.

He spoke.

"Reading anything interesting?"

His voice was very quiet. It was the voice he had used in the silver hall when he had told me not to flinch.

"Pack hierarchy law."

"Why?"

I did not turn around. If I turned around I would have to look at his face, and his face was perhaps eight inches from my own.

"Because I want to know what I am to you in your law."

A silence.

A small one. Smaller than the silence Tyler Voss had used last night before he had said the words his mouth had not wanted to say. But silence.

Then he said, very quietly, into the top of my hair: "What do you think you are?"

I closed the book.

I closed it slowly. I set my hand flat on the cover. I did not turn around.

"I haven't decided yet."

He was quiet for one more breath.

"Then decide carefully."

He stepped back. He set his book on the shelf. He did not look at me. He walked the length of the library back to the doors. He pulled them open. He went through them. He closed them behind him.

The library was empty again.

I did not move for three seconds.

I could not. I sat with my hand flat on the cover of The Hierarchies and Rights of the True Alpha and the small bright bell in my chest ringing the way a bell rings when it has been struck twice in twelve hours by a hand that has not yet decided whether it has the right to strike it a third time.

Three seconds.

I had not been able to move for three seconds.

I had been able to walk out of my own rejection on my own feet in front of two hundred witnesses. I had been able to stand at the door of my father's house at midnight and tell him to get out of my way. I had been able to cross the gravel of Caer Draeven in a sweater Mira had packed for me and meet Riven's eyes without looking away.

I had not been able to move for three seconds after a man I had been married to for less than a day had read over my shoulder for five breaths and walked out of the library without looking at me.

I sat at the long oak table for one more minute before my body remembered how to stand.

Then I stood up. I put the book back on its shelf. I walked out of the library by the same door he had walked out of.

Riven was no longer in the corridor at the bottom of the stairs.

He had been right about the four hours.

He had been right about everything else.

He had read over my shoulder for five breaths and not touched me. I had not been able to move for three seconds after he had left.