The Pen That Wouldn't Sign

Chapter 5: The Pen That Wouldn't Sign

The podium was twelve steps away. I counted every one of them.

The gold pen sat in my right hand and my fingers would not stop shaking. The mark on my neck was burning so hot I could feel my pulse inside it. Behind me, the King's footsteps matched mine. One step back. Never closer, never farther.

Four hundred guests were in that ballroom and nobody said a word. I could hear the camera shutters from across the room.

I reached the podium and set the contract down. The pen rattled against the wood.

Not here. Not in front of all of them.

Somewhere in the second row, Winifred was sitting with her hands folded in her lap. Next to her, Bettina had stopped smiling. Lowell looked at the floor. I saw all of it in one quick sweep, and I filed it away for later.

Five years ago I had walked out of a train depot with nothing but a sketchbook and a name that wasn't mine. Tonight my name was on the program, printed in gold.

So I uncapped it slowly. Very slowly. I took my time like I had all night and the room could wait until I was ready. Like I did this every day. The shaking was still there, but now it looked like a choice.

"Silverbrook's contract needs two signatures," I said. My voice came out steady. I don't know how. "Mine, and the Beta's. Silverbrook's Alpha signs through his Beta."

A man stepped out of the crowd.

My father.

He looked older. Thinner. There was gray in his hair that hadn't been there the last time I saw him. His suit hung off his shoulders like it belonged to someone bigger. He walked up to the podium with his eyes on the floor, and when he finally looked up, I saw them go wide.

He took the pen from the tray. It hovered over the page. His hand was shaking worse than mine.

"Del," he whispered. It was so quiet that only I could hear it. "You're alive. Thank the Goddess."

I kept my face blank. I had practiced that face for five years in a mirror, and I had never needed it more than right then.

"Sign, Mr. Ashby," I said. "The cameras are waiting."

He flinched like I'd slapped him. Then he bent over the page and signed. Tears ran down his face and dropped onto the paper next to his name. He didn't make a sound.

I waited to feel something. Anything. Anger, or relief, or even satisfaction.

I felt nothing. And I hated that I almost felt something.

I took the pen back and turned the page.

"There's one more page," I said, loud enough for the front tables. "Clause Fourteen."

I had written it myself. Three nights ago, alone, with no lawyer. Mara had read it over my shoulder and told me I was insane. Then she told me to keep it in.

I read it out slowly so every camera could catch it.

"Silverbrook's mills will submit to a Crown-supervised audit. And CORINNE silk will never be sold to any pack whose Luna has insulted the House in public."

Silence. A long one.

Then a chair scraped, and Bettina was on her feet in the front row. Her face had gone red under her makeup.

"You can't add terms at the table!" she hissed.

I smiled at her. I let it be slow.

"I can when it's my table."

Bettina opened her mouth again. Then she looked around and saw what I saw. Phones were up. Reporters were typing. Whatever she said next would be on the news by morning.

She sat down.

The murmur that went through the room was a good one. It was the sound of four hundred people deciding they'd just watched something they would talk about for a year.

My father's hand was still on the page. He didn't look at Bettina. He didn't look at anyone. He just stood there, signed, finished.

I stepped back from the podium.

One win.

* * *

The pain hit the second I left the podium.

It stabbed straight through the mark on my neck and down my spine. My knee buckled. My heel caught the edge of the platform and the floor came up at me.

A hand closed around my elbow before I fell.

I knew whose it was without looking. The heat of it. The way my body leaned toward it before my brain could stop it.

He had been standing three paces behind me this whole time. He hadn't left. Not once. Every guard in that ballroom was staring at the floor like it was the most interesting thing they had ever seen. Nobody was brave enough to look at the King and the woman he was holding up.

I had spent five years learning how to walk into a room without anyone seeing me. In ten seconds, that was gone. Every person in that ballroom knew my face now.

He let go of my arm the second I had my balance. His hand stayed in the air for half a breath, like he didn't know where to put it.

I turned around. I made my voice polite. I made it the kind of polite that cuts.

"Your Majesty. Thank you for the catch." I smoothed my skirt. "The House of CORINNE will send you an invoice for the heel."

The gasp from the crowd was loud enough to echo.

He didn't smile. But his eyes did something I hadn't seen in them before. They softened.

"I'll pay it," he said. "In full."

He stepped closer. Low voice. Only for me. "We need to speak."

"Appointments go through my assistant." I pointed behind me without looking. "Mara will find you a slot. Next month."

Behind the King, his Beta made a sound. Bram. He coughed hard into his fist, and I would bet money that cough was hiding a laugh.

The King didn't look away from me. He lowered his voice until it was almost nothing.

"You think I haven't waited long enough?"

My breath stopped. Just for a second. I felt it in my chest, in the mark, in places I didn't want him to have any claim on.

I walked away.

I could feel his eyes on my back the whole way. The mark pulled at me with every step, like it wanted me to turn around.

I did not look back. I made it all the way to the exit before my legs started to feel like they belonged to someone else.

* * *

The corridor behind the ballroom was quiet and narrow and empty. I put my back against the wall and finally let my hands do what they had been wanting to do for twenty minutes.

They shook. Both of them. Badly.

I closed my eyes. The corridor smelled like floor polish and old carpet. After the ballroom, it was the best thing I had ever smelled.

Mara was there in two seconds with a bottle of water. She twisted the cap off for me because she could see I couldn't.

"You were terrifying," she said. "I loved it. Honestly. I think I loved it too much." She looked at my face. "Are you okay?"

"No," I said. I drank. "Give me one minute."

"Take two."

Heels clicked at the end of the corridor.

I knew that walk. I had heard it behind me for nine years.

Winifred came around the corner by herself. No assistant, no friends. Her face was drawn tight and her lipstick was perfect, like always. Whatever was happening inside her, she had made sure it didn't reach her mouth.

"Delphine," she said. "We should talk."

Mara stepped in front of me. "She's not talking to you."

"It's fine," I said, and moved Mara aside with my hand.

Winifred waited until Mara took two steps back. Then she dropped the sweet voice. I had never heard her without it. It was flat and cold and it sounded much older.

"Do you know what you've done? Standing out there with his mark on you, in front of the whole city? You'll destroy us all."

"Us?" I said. "You mean the people who drugged me?"

She moved fast.

Her hand came up and swung straight at my face.

I caught her wrist an inch from my cheek.

I didn't decide to do it. My arm just went. My fingers closed on her bones and held.

Something rose in my chest, hot and heavy. My vision sharpened. I saw Winifred's eyes widen and I knew what she was seeing. My eyes had gone green. Then, for one breath, white-silver.

And the voice that came out of me wasn't only mine. Linnet was in it. A low growl ran under every word.

"Nine years you held a cup to my mouth." I leaned in. "Touch me again, and I'll make sure every elder in the Crown Council sees the label on that tea."

Winifred went completely still.

She had heard it. The growl. I watched her hear it.

For nine years she had told me I was weak. That I was lucky to be kept at all. That there was nothing in me worth saving. And for one breath, she had looked at me like she believed the opposite.

And the fear on her face was real. I have seen Winifred pretend to be scared a thousand times. This wasn't that. But it also wasn't fear of me.

I let go. She pulled her hand back and held it against her chest.

"You don't understand what you're waking up," she whispered. Her lips had gone white.

She turned and walked away. Her heels didn't click as evenly as before.

Mara let out a breath behind me. "Del. Your eyes."

"I know."

"Did she just say... waking up what?"

"I don't know," I said.

That was the part that bothered me. Winifred hadn't looked at me when she said it. She had looked past my shoulder. Like there was somebody else in the corridor she was scared of.

Two wins. And one question I didn't like.

* * *

I took the long way around to the service elevator. I wanted ten minutes where nobody looked at me. I almost made it.

"Del. Del, wait."

I pressed the button and kept my eyes on the doors.

Lowell came up beside me, alone. No Bettina. His tie was loose and I could smell the whiskey on him from two feet away. He looked like he hadn't slept in days.

"I made a mistake," he said. "I know that. I think about you every day. Bettina's not... she's not what I thought she was."

The elevator numbers kept dropping. Slowly.

"You told me you'd waited a year," I said, still not looking at him. "For me. Remember? I counted too, Lowell. Every day. Do you know what I was counting them for?"

His whole face lit up. He actually leaned toward me.

"For me?"

"For a cake."

The doors opened.

He stood there with his mouth half open, and I stepped inside and pressed the button for the lobby.

The doors slid shut on his face.

Inside, I grabbed the railing with both hands. My own words kept replaying. For a cake. It had come out so easy. It had sounded so cold.

It had also been true, and that was the problem. I had been counting days toward a cake and a white dress and a man who was already sleeping with somebody else.

Mara had followed me in at the last second. She watched me. She saw all of it.

She said nothing. That is why I keep her.

* * *

The lobby was almost empty. Staff were stacking chairs. A cleaner pushed a cart across the marble.

I was halfway to the front doors when someone stepped out of the shadow beside the pillar.

Bram.

He bowed. A real one, low and slow, with his hand over his chest. I had never seen a Beta bow like that to anyone who wasn't a king.

"Miss Corinne," he said. "His Majesty asks nothing of you tonight. He wanted me to give you this."

He held out a plain black envelope. No name on it. No seal.

I didn't take it.

"Your Beta stood in a depot five years ago," I said, "and looked me in the face. You knew."

His jaw worked. He didn't pretend not to understand.

"I didn't know it was you," he said. "Your scent was gone. I walked right past you. I told myself the pain in my chest was nothing." He swallowed. "I've wondered about it every night since. Why it hurt when I walked out."

I stood there. I could not think of a single thing to say.

Five years I had been angry at the Beta who walked past me. I had never once thought about what it cost him to not know why.

He placed the envelope on the table beside the pillar. He straightened, bowed once more, and left without another word.

I watched the doors close behind him.

Then I took the envelope.

* * *

My penthouse was dark when I got in. I didn't turn on the lights. The city did enough of that through the windows.

I peeled off the tulle layer by layer and dropped each piece on the floor. By the time I got to the mirror, I was down to the base dress and my bare feet.

I looked at the mark.

It was still glowing. Faintly now, a pale light under my skin. I touched it. It was warm. It had been warm all night.

The envelope sat on the table where I had dropped it. I stared at it for a long time. Then I picked it up and slid my finger under the flap.

One sheet. One line. A heavy, careful hand, the kind of handwriting someone does when they have rewritten the sentence many times.

Two brides wore white and died. Wear anything but white for me.

I read it three times.

Then I laughed. Once. It came out shaky and wrong.

Was that a threat? Or was it a warning? I honestly couldn't tell. And I couldn't decide which one scared me more.

My phone buzzed on the counter.

I looked at the screen. Unknown number. No name, no photo.

One message.

Ask yourself why your mother's sketchbook has a page torn out. Ask your father who tore it. Don't trust the King. Don't trust the tea. Don't trust me yet.

My stomach went cold.

Nobody knew about the sketchbook. Nobody. I had never shown it to anyone, not even Mara.

I crossed the room and opened the safe. The sketchbook was where I had left it. I took it out and held it against my chest for a moment before I opened it.

The ribbon marker slid and the book fell open to the last page.

I ran my thumb down the spine.

There was a thin, rough edge there. A strip of paper that didn't match the rest. Torn, not cut. Someone had ripped a page out, and they had done it carefully enough that I had never noticed in all these years.

I stared at it. My hands had finally stopped shaking, and I wasn't sure that was a good thing.

Outside, the lights of the city flicker

ed once. Then again.

And in my head, for the first time since she woke, Linnet spoke in words I could understand. Clear and quiet.

Someone is watching.