4

“The duke summoned me to his study today.” I looked up, meeting Griffin’s eyes.

He raised his eyebrows. “The duke? He hasn’t asked for you specifically in… Gods, in years.”

“I know,” I said. “He got a dispatch from Efra.”

“From the king?”

I nodded. “He’s holding a King’s Choice.”

Griffin was silent. He set his hand at my waist and squeezed like he knew where this was going. “Reyna… You don’t mean…?”

“Yes.” Somehow saying it to Griffin made it more real. Anxiety curled in cold in my chest. “I’m to go as the representative from Daybreak.”

Griffin stepped back and pushed both hands through his hair. “You can’t. Reyna, you can’t go to the Court of Nightfall.”

“I don’t exactly have a choice here,” I said. “I’m a Lady of the Court, and the duke has ordered me to go.”

“Fuck the duke,” Griffin said low, through clenched teeth. “We can talk to him—there has to be something—”

“He can barely stand to look at me,” I said with a disbelieving laugh. “Do you really think he’d listen to anything I had to say? I tried to get him to consider other women who could go, but he wouldn’t hear anything.” I frowned. “He even bared his teeth at me.”

Griffin sighed heavily. “Bared his teeth? Immediately?”

“Immediately,” I said.

Griffin swore under his breath. I didn’t love the obscenity, but I understood his anger. I felt the same way. Neither Griffin nor I shifted often, and he also considered brazen shows of one’s wolf to be rude and lacking control. He knew that if my father was revealing his wolf with such little provocation, there would be no getting through to him. He’d made up his mind.

“We’ll run,” Griffin said. “We’ll leave Daybreak. We can leave tonight.”

“Don’t be naïve.” I tugged him closer with my hand on his hip. “You know my father would come for me.”

My pack was a seafaring one, and once upon a time, we’d been a pack of explorers, too. We knew how to travel and how to track. If I ran, my father’s wolves would find me with ease.

“Then what?” Griffin asked. “You just go?”

I nodded. “That’s exactly what I do,” I said. “I’ll go. I’ll compete in the King’s Choice, and I’ll lose.”

“You’ll be disgraced if you do that,” he said. “You won’t be able to show your face in the court.”

“Exactly,” I said. “If I lose, we’ll be able to get out of here—for real. We can start our own lives.”

“You make it sound easy,” Griffin said. “Like you’re not going directly into the Court of the Bloody King himself.”

“I’ll be fine,” I said, even if I only halfway believed it. “I know how to hold my own. Even if it is the Nightfall wolves.”

Again, Griffin sighed. He knew I was stubborn, and he knew he wasn’t going to win me over in this discussion. Not when I’d already made up my mind about how I was going to play this. “You know it’s not as simple as losing. If you offend the king, he’ll do worse than kick you out.”

“I know,” I said. “I can walk that line, Griffin.”

He didn’t look convinced—and honestly, I sounded more confident than I felt.

He was right. I had to remember that the king wasn’t above making an example of a wolf who offended him.

“I trust you,” Griffin said, “it’s the king that scares me.”

“Me too,” I admitted in a small voice.

Griffin wound his arms around me, pulling me close to his body. I wrapped my arms around his slim waist and rested my cheek against his shoulder, breathing in his familiar scent tinged with the inescapable stale beer smell of Marco’s. He brushed his nose against the crown of my head, careful not to disturb my braid.

“But I won’t let anything happen to you,” Griffin said. “If the king tries anything—I’ll come for you, Reyna.”

I nodded, hugging him a little closer to me. Even if that didn’t seem possible, my heart wanted to believe that. That there was someone in Frasia who cared enough to come for me if the king decided I wasn’t worth keeping alive. And Griffin and I still had so much to do together. We’d been together for a long time, but we’d only kissed once—at the solstice party, on the rare occasion of my being drunk on wine. I wanted to be married before we did anything more than that. I was a lady, after all. I wanted our first time to be special—I wanted it to be the beginning of the rest of our lives together. And I wanted to know that he was the kind of man that would wait until I was ready. A man who would commit to me for me.

I had high standards for the company I kept. I knew that to some members of the Daybreak pack, that made me seem standoffish and cold—and I knew they called me the Ice Princess behind my back because of it. My pale features certainly didn’t help, either.

But it was easy to be myself around Griffin. I pulled away and offered him a small smile.

He placed his palm on my cheek. “I mean it. I won’t let anything happen to you. The Bloody King won’t hurt you.” His expression darkened. “And I won’t let him marry you, either.”

“I’ll be back before it snows in Efra,” I promised. “Before you’ve even realized I’m gone.”

Griffin shook his head. “Not possible. I miss you already.”

Chapter Two

Three days passed in a blur. Three days was not enough time to prepare for a long-term trip to a different pack, in a different climate. My wardrobe was mostly linen dresses and skirts with a few long jackets for the rainy season. But Efra was much colder, and my father had the tailors work overtime. He insisted that I needed an all-new wardrobe for the weather there and to show my status as a Lady of Daybreak.

Now, I stood at the front gate of the manor. Three trunks were stacked up behind me and a fine brand-new, fur-lined coat hung over my arm. I was dressed simply in a linen skirt and blouse for the travel, but I had a fine silk gown to wear for when I made my entrance at Efra.

Over the past three days, I felt like I’d barely had a chance to breathe. I’d had my hair done, my nails groomed, my skin exfoliated, undergone a brush-up on my etiquette, and a crash course in the history of all five packs. No one knew exactly what to expect from the King’s Choice, especially one held by Nightfall after a hundred years. The best I could do was to be prepared in, well, everything.

“You think you brought enough?” Barion asked, eyeballing the three trunks stacked up behind me. He had a simple canvas bag swung over his shoulder and was dressed in his usual workwear of linen pants and boots.

“I wasn’t the one who packed them,” I huffed as I crossed my arms over my chest. If it was me, I’d be traveling much lighter and covering as much distance as possible. I’d even map the journey along the way.

Barion grinned. “Figured.”

The coach, a fine, sturdy wood structure pulled by two draft horses, approached the manor. Barion gestured, and three servants hopped off the outside of the coach and hurried to load the trunks onto the cargo hold on the back. Barion swung his canvas bag on top of the trunks and fastened the straps of the hold down. Then he glanced over his shoulder at me. “You ready for this, little wolf?”

I huffed at the nickname. He hadn’t called me that since I was a girl, barely tall enough to hold a sword on my own. “I’d better be, after all the prep I just went through.”

Barion boomed his big laugh, then walked around to check the horses, just in case the stable boys weren’t up to his standards.

I glanced at the front door of the manor. My father was nowhere to be seen, and I didn’t expect him to come see me off. But part of me still ached that he hadn’t. I was his only child. There was a chance I might never return from this journey. And he couldn’t even come upstairs to say goodbye. Likely he didn’t even want to.

He was just glad to be rid of me.

“Lady Reyna!” a familiar voice called. “Reyna!”

“Oh, here we go,” Barion muttered. He shook his head and turned his attention to triple-checking the horses’ yokes.

Griffin hurried up the path to the manor, cheeks flushed with exertion. “I was afraid I’d be too late,” he said.

Affection swelled in my chest as he hurried closer. I reached for him. He took my hand in his, then smoothed his thumb over my knuckles. I tried to memorize his face: the freckles on his nose, the curve of his lips, his thoughtful green eyes. How long would it be before I saw him again? I could be eliminated after the first trial—or I could be in Efra until the bitter end.

As long as I made it back here, to Daybreak, Griffin and I could start a life far away. That would make it all worth it.

“I brought you something,” Griffin said.

I blinked. “What? Griffin, you didn’t have to—”

“I know,” he said. “I wanted to.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small box, then pressed it into my hand.

Inside the velvet-lined box was a pendant. It was big, really big, nearly the size of a chestnut. It was set in fine, delicate silver and surrounded by what looked like diamonds. My eyes widened.

“It’s a promise,” Griffin said. “A promise from me to you, that if something goes wrong, I’ll come for you. I won’t lose you to Nightfall.”

I nodded. The pendant was a little ostentatious for my taste—much larger than anything I’d gotten for myself—and part of me itched at the idea that Griffin thought he might have to come rescue me. I wasn’t a damsel in distress getting dragged blindly into the king’s bedroom. I was a noble and a diplomat. I was going to handle this my way, so I could build the life I wanted. Part of me thought Griffin seemed a little too sure that he’d need to rush in sword drawn, but I knew he was just as worried as I was. We both didn’t know what exactly the Choice was going to be like, and we were handling it in different ways.

“Thank you,” I said. “I love it.”