Chapter 11: What Walks In

RowanShe arrived on the third day.I knew before anyone told me. Something shifted in the air around midday, some low pull at the base of my skull, faint enough that I could have ignored it if I’d wanted to. I didn’t examine it too closely. Just set down the report I’d been reading and looked at the window.Lake appeared in the doorway twelve minutes later. “She’s at the gate.”“I know.”He opened his mouth.“Tell the council the meeting is postponed.” I stood. “And keep Rurik away from the east wing.”“He’s going to ask questions.”“Let him ask.” I straightened my jacket. “Just make sure he asks them from a distance.”The courtyard was half full when I got there. Word moved fast in a palace, it always had, and I could see the staff finding reasons to be near windows, near doorways. I ignored them. Walked to the front steps and stood there with my hands clasped behind my back and waited.The car came through the gate and stopped.Chase got out first. I’d known about Chase, had him lo

Chapter 12: Teeth First

AthenaThe east wing was nice.I hated that it was nice.I’d been prepared to find something to complain about, some deliberate slight in the room choice, something that would confirm what I already believed about being here. Instead I walked into a suite with high ceilings and wide windows overlooking a garden, furniture that was heavy and dark and clearly expensive, and a connecting room that had already been set up for a child.Amara walked into it and stopped dead.There was a small bed with carved wolves on the headboard. A window seat. A shelf with books on it that someone had clearly placed there recently because the spines were too neat, too deliberate.“Mama.” Her voice came out hushed.“I see it.”“There are wolves on my bed.”“I see that too.”She turned to me with an expression that was trying very hard not to be delighted and failing completely. Then she ran and threw herself on the bed and the stuffed rabbit flew somewhere and I stood in the doorway watching her and felt

Chapter 13: First Blood

AthenaI found the dining hall on my own.Took two wrong turns and ended up in what I think was a weapons storage room before I got my bearings, but I found it. Small victories.It was early enough that I’d expected it to be mostly empty. It was not mostly empty. Maybe thirty wolves seated at various points across the long tables, the low hum of conversation that stopped in sections as I walked in, like someone turning down a volume dial one notch at a time.I kept walking.Chase was behind me, Amara’s hand in mine, and I could feel her looking around with that wide open curiosity of hers that hadn’t yet learned to be self conscious. I envied her that.I found a spot at one of the side tables, not the head, not the far end, somewhere in the middle that said I’m not hiding but I’m not performing either. Chase sat across from me, Amara beside me, and I picked up the menu card on the table and looked at it like thirty pairs of eyes weren’t doing what they were doing.Food came. We ate. A

Chapter 14: Bad at This

RowanVera had apologized.I hadn’t told her to. Lake had, apparently, on his own initiative, which meant I was going to have to have a conversation with him about overstepping, except that the outcome had been fine so the conversation was going to be difficult to frame correctly.I’d watched it happen from across the dining hall. Athena walking over, sitting down, the whole thing done quietly and without spectacle, no raised voice, no scene. Just her, a chair, and whatever she’d said that had made Vera’s face do what it did.Then Vera crossing the room twenty minutes later to apologize and Athena accepting it like she was signing off on a document.Lake slid into the seat across from me. “She handled that well.”“I saw.”“Better than expected.”“I expected her to handle it well.” That wasn’t entirely true but I wasn’t going to say that out loud.“Rurik wants a meeting.” Lake said, moving on with the efficiency of someone who knew when not to linger on a topic.“Of course he does.”“T

Chapter 15: Still Counting

AthenaI made a mistake.Not a catastrophic one, nothing that couldn’t be managed, but I let my guard down for approximately forty minutes in the east grounds watching my daughter befriend a wolf, and now I was paying for it by standing in my room thinking about what Rowan had said.I’m bad at this. I’m working on it.Six years ago he wouldn’t have said that. Six years ago he wouldn’t have crouched down to her level in a corridor and answered questions about wolves for twenty minutes with the patience of someone who actually had it and not just the performance of it.People changed. I knew that, had lived it myself, had changed so completely from the girl who’d broken a bond on her knees spitting blood that sometimes I barely recognized her.That didn’t mean I had to do anything with the information.I changed out of the east grounds clothes and sat at the small desk by the window with my sketchbook. Drawing helped me think, always had, my brain settled when my hands were doing someth

Chapter 16: Rurik

RowanHe was already in the east hall when I arrived.Sitting at the far end of the table like he owned it, one ankle crossed over his knee, a glass of something dark in his hand at eleven in the morning. That was Rurik. Always already there, always already comfortable, always making sure you noticed both things.We shared a father. That was the beginning and end of what we shared.He looked up when I walked in, smiled with all his teeth. “Brother.”“Rurik.” I pulled out a chair on my side of the table and sat. Didn’t pour a drink. Kept my hands visible and still, an old habit from negotiation training. Show them your hands, show them nothing’s coming, let them relax just enough.“Congratulations are in order I hear.” He swirled his glass. “The runaway princess has returned. And with a gift.”“Watch your mouth.”He raised both hands, the picture of innocence. “I only meant the child. A daughter, yes? She has your eyes, they say.”“Who says.”“People talk.” He shrugged. “Palaces talk.