Chapter 1

"The Wolf Queen wants another child. You bear easily, so carry one more for her."

Because Seraphine Voss said she wanted a daughter, I carried another child for ten months and delivered a silver-eyed wolf cub.

The cord had barely been cut when the midwife wrapped my daughter in black cloth soaked with scent-severing herb. The drug could break a newborn's instinctive dependence on her birth mother's scent. Before my hand touched the bundle, four attendants had carried her out of the birthing room.

She was the second.

Three years earlier, when I gave birth to my eldest son, Rowan Blackthorn, I had not even seen his face clearly before Kael Blackthorn carried him away himself. He left me only one sentence: "The Wolf Queen will raise him from this day on. Elara, do not make things difficult for the child."

Back then, I had wept. I had dragged my unhealed body after them. Later I learned that tears only showed a hunter where the wound hurt most.

So this time I lay quietly on the blood-soaked hide and counted the footsteps beyond the doors.

Twelve royal guards. Six attendants from Moonlight Hall. Two midwives. When they took my daughter away, the west door opened once, and the wind carried cedar, scent-severing herb, and black-obsidian powder.

I committed every detail to memory.

Mira's hands shook so badly that she could barely hold the bronze basin when she brought me hot water. She had come with me from the Silvercrest clan and was the only person in the birthing room who dared meet my eyes. Lowering her voice, she told me that before my daughter was sent to Moonlight Hall, the midwife had placed a drop of black medicine on the back of the baby's neck.

"I tried to stop her, my lady, but the royal guards had their blades across the door."

"Did you see the bottle?"

"White jade, with the Voss clan's red cord around its neck."

I told her to cut away the corner of the swaddling cloth that had touched the medicine and bury it at the bottom of the brazier ash. We could not send it out of the Wolf Keep yet. The people from Moonlight Hall were certain to search us. For now, the most dangerous object was safest beneath their own eyes.

Half an hour later, a senior attendant stormed into the birthing room with several women behind her. They opened every chest, tore apart the pillows, and examined even my bloodstained clothes. Matron Sable, who led them, smiled and said the Wolf Queen was merely being considerate. Unclean things, she explained, must not offend the cub.

I leaned against the headboard and let them search.

When Matron Sable's hand reached the rim of the brazier, I deliberately coughed up a mouthful of blood. Mira cried out and lunged toward me, overturning the hot water and throwing the room into confusion. Matron Sable recoiled in disgust and missed the scrap hidden under the ash.

Only after she left did I unclench my aching fist. A pale silver moon-mark glowed in my palm, the mother-child bond my daughter had left at birth. Black Moon magic could conceal a scent, but it could not erase blood. As long as that mark remained, my daughter and I had not truly been severed.

I pressed the moon-mark onto paper, then wrote down the date, the hour, and the names of everyone present.

From that moment on, nothing done to me would remain merely an injury. It would become evidence.

On the full moon, Seraphine Voss ordered me to attend the morning rite at Moonlight Hall. She sat beneath the silver-wolf totem with my daughter in her arms and smiled. "You look pale, Moon-Bound. Are you reluctant to let her go?"

"I understand my place." I bowed.

She kissed the baby's forehead, making certain the soft whimper reached my ears. "If you enter the royal court, you must understand your duty. The king took you as his mate for the loyalty of the Silver Moon priesthood and for this body of yours, which can bear pure-blooded cubs. What value do you possess beyond that?"

Snow had just begun to fall outside the hall. She ordered me to kneel on the moon terrace and reflect.

I had barely stepped through the doors when I heard my daughter crying inside. At first it was weak. After a silver bell rang three times, the cry turned suddenly sharp, as though something were sawing through her undeveloped moon-vein.

I turned on instinct. A royal guard's spear immediately barred my path.

Seraphine Voss watched me through the doorway, triumphant pity in her eyes. "What is this? Did the Moon-Bound not claim she understood the rules?"

I stopped. I did not force my way in, and I did not beg. If I rushed inside now, she would gain precisely the charge she wanted: that I had lost my reason and tried to harm the cub.

I turned and knelt in the snow. Under my sleeve, I cut my index finger with a nail. Silver Moon blood fell into a hollow button and settled in a thin layer along its hidden groove. Each time my daughter cried, the mother-child bond trembled through the blood. Once I returned, a valley healer could use that blood-button to identify the forbidden spell used on her.

Cold drove through my kneecaps and into my flesh. Pleading would have changed nothing. I fixed my gaze on a thread of dark red moss between the stones. Duskblood moss grew only where black-obsidian powder had been scattered.

Seraphine Voss believed I was silently enduring humiliation. She did not know that I had finally confirmed something else: she had been hoarding a forbidden substance of the wolf clans.

Kael Blackthorn did not pass until nightfall. He did not even stop. "Send the Moon-Bound back," he said mildly. "Seraphine means no harm. She only wants too badly to be a mother."

When we returned to my chambers, he urged me to be understanding. If I conceived again, he said, perhaps the next cub would be allowed to stay with me.

I looked at him and felt no pain at all.

"The king has ruled for three years now, hasn't he?" I asked Mira after he left.

"Yes. The northern border is settled, the Water Valley clan has submitted, and the council of elders is largely stable."

I smiled slowly.

Three years earlier, I could not leave because Father needed my marriage bond to keep the priesthood and the war-wolf clans from tearing each other apart. Now the court was stable, and both my children were here.

The time to act had come.

That night, Mira retrieved the scrap of cloth from the brazier. The black medicine had dried, but moonlight revealed a web of fine patterns across it. I sealed it with the blood-button inside a double-layered moon-crystal casket. On the base, I carved a mark that only a Silver Moon priest could open.

I had my first piece of evidence.

My next task was to make them believe I was still weak.