Chapter 3

Iris heads for the staircase, trying to figure out what the hell just happened.

Queen Elara spoke to her. Smiled.

"Iris."

Cedric's voice stops her on the third step. She turns.

He's crossed the foyer, Viola trailing behind him like a shadow. The Queen and her entourage have moved deeper into the house, thank the goddess.

"The Queen seemed... interested in you," Cedric says carefully.

Iris shrugs. "She was being polite, I guess."

"She's never that polite," he mutters. Cordial, yes. But she doesn’t do warmth, and she’d smiled at Iris. Actually smiled. And the kinds of questions she was asking… His eyes narrow. "What was all that about? The White Wolf?"

"I don't know.”

He raises an eyebrow, waiting. She doesn’t budge.

Viola peers around Cedric's shoulder. "She must have seen something special in you, Iris,” she says, tone slightly envious. “You're still so likable.”

For a convicted arsonist who survived three years of Black Rock, she doesn’t say. Iris gets the drift.

Cedric rubs his temples, feels the tension headache coming on. His voice is laced with threat,"Iris."

She doesn’t look remorseful, doesn’t even look back.

Three years ago, she used tears and clinginess to compete for attention with Viola. Now, it’s ice. Different tactic, but it’s the same old game. If she’d just cut the bullshit and quit being so difficult, they could move past this and be a family again. He needs her to see that before she pushes everyone away for good.

He catches up with her on the stairs, gritting his teeth. "I'd hoped three years would teach you some maturity. Didn't they have reformation classes in Black Rock? Apparently, you learned nothing."

Iris goes still.

Reformation classes.

For other werewolves, there were group classes at Black Rock. For Iris, reformation class was sickening doublespeak - a solitary, cramped room so dark she couldn't see her own hands, where she was locked for hours on end. She’d always been afraid of the dark - and had made the mistake of calling for help the first few times. Had been beaten violently for it.

"What is it?"

She realizes her hands are trembling. She shoves them behind her back.

Emotion flickers across Cedric's face. He opens his mouth to speak when Viola moans softly, cradling her scraped elbow.

“Sorry," she breathes. "It just - it really stings. I'm fine, though. Don't worry about me."

Shit. He’d forgotten. "Let's get you back upstairs,” he tells Viola, “I’ll have the healer look at that."

Iris takes a breath as they tread up the stairs without her, steadies herself, and shoves the memories trying to surface down as far as they’ll go.

Moving through the east wing, she finds everything has changed.

Iris passes white walls, gold-leaf-framed artwork, chandeliers, and marble. She’s stepped into a Viola fever dream.

Then she reaches the old photo wall. Iris stops.

Three years ago, this wall held fifteen years of memories. Blowing out birthday candles surrounded by her brothers. Training exercises where she'd insisted on joining the older wolves. A candid shot of her laughing at something Cedric said, his arm slung around her shoulders.

All of it. Gone.

Now there's only Viola. Viola at a garden party. Viola with the triplets at some formal event. Viola smiling softly at the camera, delicate and perfect.

She turns away, doesn’t want to see it anymore.

Her old room is on the second floor, east wing - smaller than the triplets' and Viola’s suites on the third floor, but it’s hers.

She reaches her room, tucked in at the end of the hall. Finds, to her relief, her colorful, handwoven runner rug at her feet, runs her fingers along the familiar brass sconce. They’d let Viola redecorate everything else, but had saved this small piece of Iris.

She lets out a breath. Viola had yanked her photos from the wall, but her brothers had made sure not everything of Iris was erased.

She opens the door.

Racks of clothes greet her. Dresses, blouses, coats. There are shelves of shoes, a velvet ottoman, and a gold-framed mirror.

Viola’s walk-in closet.

Iris stands in the doorway for a long moment.

She closes the door quietly. She’d been wrong to hope. Wrong to think they still cared about her.

Numb and weary, she retraces her steps through the corridor, back to the stairs. She needs to find a bathroom at least, somewhere to wash the blood off her arm, somewhere to -

"Hey."

She turns to see Cedric and Viola filing down the stairs. Viola’s arm is neatly bandaged - the healer’s work clearly done.

Cedric steps off the landing. "Why are you wandering around down here?"

"I was going to my room."

Cedric raises an eyebrow. "You know you’re on the wrong floor, right?"

She shakes her head. "No. I was at the end of the east wing, on this floor."

He stares at her. “You’re in one of the suites up on the third.”

“I gave that to Viola three years ago.” She’d seen the way Viola looked at the spacious suite and offered it to her - had wanted to be a good sister to her, had hoped they’d be close.

Cedric blinks. “I didn’t realize. I - ”

How could he have missed something like that? Guilt shreds him into small pieces. He’d let it happen, apparently. Never questioned it or checked where Iris had landed, and wait -

“Was,” he says slowly. “You said ‘was’ on this floor.”

"It's Viola’s closet now," Iris says blankly. A floor below her bedroom. Not a coincidence.

Goddess, he had fucked up. Really, really fucked up. "I'll stay in your room," he says abruptly. "You can take mine for now. I'll have another suite prepared - "

“Wait,” Viola clasps her hands together, eyes glistening. "She can have my room. It's only fair. I didn't know - Cedric, I swear I didn't know it was her space they converted. I'll move out tonight."

Cedric nods. Good. It is only fair. “Okay, yeah. Let’s -”

"No," Iris interrupts. "I don't want her room.”

“Stop being difficult,” Cedric says, “Viola’s offering you the room back. What's the problem?"

Cedric grits his teeth. For the love of -

Why? Why is she always so willful? And how is he ever going to fix things? How will she ever fit back in, be part of this family again?

Viola’s close to tears. The complete and utter shame on her face, and Iris’s icy refusal in return, makes his blood boil. “Cut the shit,” he growls, “There are exactly zero reasons to be ungrateful and throw a temper tantrum. It was a mistake. We’ll fix it.”

“Don’t bother,” Iris says. Her shoulders slump, exhausted, but her eyes meet his, lock in a gaze steady and serious. “When the Queen’s visit is over, I’ll be gone, Cedric. I’m leaving.”

Silence.

Cedric goes very still. "This is your home."

"Not anymore,” she says softly.

"You - " He shakes his head. She’s serious. She’s actually serious. "That's not - you can't just leave."

Panicked, he reaches for her, his hand closing around her arm. Too thin. But he can’t think about that, because Iris is crying out in pain.

He ungrips her immediately and starts to mutter an apology as she gasps and jerks away, yanking her sleeve up - as though she can’t stand the feel of the fabric around her arm.

His brow furrows at the sight. He’d grabbed her arm right on top of a deep laceration. It had to be from the fall in the study. It’s deep. Way worse than Viola’s injury. “Fuck, Iris, I’m sorry.” He steps forward to check on her - help somehow - and that’s when he sees it.

The roadmap of violence covering her skin. Disfiguring her. Not an inch spared from thin, white lines and raised, pink welts - a visual history of purposeful burns, of infected gashes, torn flesh caught in barbed wire, lashes of whips, the carvings of dull knives. Healed over and torn into again. And again.

Cedric goes ashen. What did they do to her?