Chapter 7

On the night of the lunar eclipse, the whole Wolf Keep lay beneath dark crimson moonlight.

I bathed and dressed as usual, putting on the blue-green gown I had worn when Kael Blackthorn first saw me. Mira watched me leave each piece of jewelry on the dressing table. Her eyes reddened, but she never shed a tear.

"Once the fire starts, leave with the people from the western kitchen. Do not look back." I handed her a letter. "Three months from now, come to Cedar Valley and find me."

"My lady, what about you?"

"I will take the priests' secret passage."

I would not entrust my life to an uncontrollable blaze. The story that I had perished in the flames was merely a performance for Seraphine Voss and Kael Blackthorn.

At midnight, the ritual flame at the eastern gate went out as arranged. At the same moment, the black sand Willow had planted in the Moonlight Hall storeroom met the heat and sent harmless black smoke billowing into the sky. The alarm pulled guards toward Moonlight Hall. Before I knew whether the distraction had worked, the first wolf-fat arrow struck my window. Willow's warning had been exact: the attack had been arranged before the eclipse, not improvised in response to the smoke.

Three days earlier, Willow had replaced a packet of black-obsidian powder with sand that smoked when heated but would not burn. It created confusion without endangering the night watch. The real fire came from the orders Seraphine had placed days before.

When the first arrow pierced the paper window, I was still sitting before the mirror. Its head buried itself in a bedpost, and the sickly sweet wolf fat began to melt at once. I pressed the recording sigil on the moon-sound stone. The second and third arrows followed close behind. The Royal Guards outside made no move to fight the fire. Instead, they locked the doors from the other side.

Mira went deathly pale. "She truly dares."

"Remember the number of arrows." I pressed a wet cloth over her nose and mouth. "Eight in all, fired from the northwest corner. One day, every archer will have to answer for them."

We laid a Silvercrest funerary effigy on the bed. Such figures were used when a body could not be recovered: sacrificial bone formed the frame, beeswax held the shape, and a little blood and shed hair lent it the dead person's scent for a single night. It could fool guards and tracking wolves through heat and smoke, though no healer would mistake it for a body under formal examination.

The moon-sound stone, now bearing both my earlier account and the live record of the attack, was sealed inside a fireproof moon-crystal shell and hidden in the hollow chest. A replica of the Moon-Bound's silver ring circled its wrist. I needed the effigy to buy hours, not to survive an autopsy.

Matron Sable's courier reached the northwest post just before the fire spread. Through the locked door, I heard the captain read the sealed order aloud: no one was to leave Moon-Tide Hall. The moon-sound stone caught every word, and Mira, watching through the smoke, saw the Voss command token in his hand.

By then, flames from the eight wolf-fat arrows had climbed the curtains. Wearing a Silver Moon priest's scent-veiling cloak, I opened the mechanism beneath the bed and entered the secret passage, leaving behind a wax-and-bone double adorned with my jewelry.

Mira did not follow me down. She had to blend into the fleeing crowd so everyone would see the fire force her out, while Seraphine Voss remained convinced I was trapped inside alone. Before the hidden door closed, Mira suddenly dropped to her knees and struck her forehead hard against the floor.

"My lady, come back alive."

"You too."

The stone door divided us, and I walked alone into the darkness. The passage had gone unused for years. Stagnant water rose over my ankles, while loose earth continually sifted down from above. At the second fork, stones clattered behind me. A search party had entered the ruined chamber sooner than expected and released tracking wolves after the strongest scent they found--the cloak I had dragged through the tunnel.

I did not break into a panicked run. I stopped and tested the currents of air. The left branch led to the cellar, and I could already hear wolf claws scraping the floor at its end. The right was an abandoned drainage channel. Its exit lay farther away, but the flowing ice water could wash away my scent.

I turned right, removed the cloak, and tied it around a piece of driftwood so the current would carry my scent downstream. Then I shifted into half-wolf form and climbed with my claws into a narrow ventilation fissure. The tracking wolves raced after the drifting cloak. None of the men beneath me saw my face or caught my true scent.

Half an hour later, I squeezed out through a crack in the cliff. The rock had torn my shoulders and back until they streamed with blood, and my lungs felt packed with ice, until the wind from Cedar Valley reached me.

The tunnel emerged on the cliff north of the Wolf Keep. My father's people had snow-horses waiting.

As I swung into the saddle, Kael Blackthorn's wolf howl suddenly rang out behind me, scattering the night birds.

"Elara--"

Panic broke into his voice.

I kept my eyes on the passage ahead.

We reached the border at dawn. At the far end of the snowfield, the Court's black banners were no more than a blurred speck.

The priest my father had sent to meet me asked, "Moon-Bound, where are we going?"

The words had scarcely left his mouth when three tracking flares appeared in the distance. Seraphine Voss had sealed the northern gate and unleashed her personal White Wolf Guard along every scent trail leaving the cliff. They had no confirmed sighting of me; they were hunting the possibility that someone had escaped the fire.

Freya offered me a moon blade. I left it in her hand. "Divide into three groups and lay three scent trails. Do not engage them. If none of the guards can identify which trail is mine, Seraphine will have nothing but ashes and doubt."

The pursuers far outnumbered us; there was no sense in facing them head-on. Cassian Silvercrest's caravan had buried salt crystals beneath the ice along the western decoy route. When the last rider carrying my discarded scent crossed, Freya kindled moonfire and split the river behind them. The White Wolf Guard followed that trail onto the breaking ice while my own group crossed at a reed-covered ford farther south, veiled by priestly mist.

No one died, and no guard came close enough to identify me.

I looked back once. Kael Blackthorn's howls still carried from very far away. They sounded less like grief than the rage of a beast that had suddenly discovered his claim of ownership no longer held.

That was no reason for me to turn back.

I removed the silver ring that marked me as the Moon-Bound and buried it in the snow.

"The Court's Moon-Bound no longer exists."

I looked toward Cedar Valley beneath the morning light. "From this day forward, call me Elara Silvercrest."

As the dawn rose, I burned the last outer robe that carried the Court's scent beside the frozen river. The flames devoured the silver thread, revealing the tiny moon-crystal casket I had stitched inside--the one containing the black cloth from my daughter's birth.

I tucked it against my heart.

I had taken nothing Kael Blackthorn had given me. What I carried away was the beginning of a reckoning.