Chapter 3 The Rainy Night and the Pendant

Ivy POV "A man who's been comatose for a year," I said, "can't humiliate me the way a husband who was wide awake managed to, for six." Meredith's mouth thinned. Nobody at the table had an answer ready for that, least of all her. An elder near the head of the table found his voice first. Both hands pressed flat against the wood, like he needed it to hold himself up. "Ivy. Listen to an old man for one moment. You fought free of one cage today. Why climb straight into another, with a door that may never open again?" "She's right to worry for you," another said, gentler, shaking his head slow. "We watched you grow up in this house. None of us wants to see you throw yourself away on a gamble that never pays out." A young elder I didn't recognize as well leaned forward, his voice careful, almost kind. "Even if he wakes one day, what will be left of you by then? You'll have spent your best years nursing a stranger." A third leaned toward Meredith instead of me, voice dropping like he thought I couldn't hear it from there. "If House Blackwood declines, what's left for her? Nothing. Not even this roof." "This roof was never mine to lose." I looked at him until he stopped pretending he hadn't said it to my face. "I'll find another one. I always have. I did it once already, the night my father's name stopped meaning anything to anyone in this hall, and I'll do it again if I have to." He had nothing to put against that. None of them did. I let all of it land and stay there. None of them had earned a fight out of me. "Whatever the answer turns out to be," I said, "you'll all see it soon enough." I turned before anyone found another argument to throw. The doors shut behind me. The echo lasted longer than it should have. Alone in the corridor, I let my shoulders drop the half inch I hadn't allowed them inside. Six years of folding myself small enough to fit whatever room Julian stood in. One council meeting, and I'd already stopped doing it without even noticing the change happening in myself. My hand found the bare skin at my collar before I'd gone ten steps. Three days the pendant had been gone, carried past the palace gates in Raine's closed fist along with everything else I'd staked on one answer. It used to sit there even in the rain, two years ago, hidden under a coat that smelled nothing like Julian. By the time the hunting party scattered, I was the last one left on the mountain road, engines already fading into the trees ahead of me. A few other cars passed close enough that their headlights swept right over me, and not one slowed. Nobody wanted to be the one Julian heard about later, helping the wife he'd already forgotten in the dark. I kept walking because there was nothing else to do with my legs. Sylvie didn't surge to carry me. She hadn't surged in years. A car finally did slow, idling at the edge of the road like it had been circling back for me on purpose. "You're a long way from Silvercrest territory." I didn't place the voice until the window came down and I saw the crest stamped into the door. Silas Blackwood, watching me through the gap in the glass. "I'm fine," I said, because that was the only thing I knew how to say to anyone by then. "You're not." He was already out of the car, already shrugging out of his own coat. He didn't ask before he settled it around my shoulders, the wool still warm from his own body. "Get in. I'll take you the rest of the way." I didn't move yet. "Why would you bother?" "Because nobody else did." He said it plainly, like the answer embarrassed him more than it should have. I cried somewhere around the second turn and couldn't make myself stop, my breath catching in ugly little hiccups I couldn't smooth out. He didn't ask why, didn't fill the silence with anything that needed answering, just drove with one hand loose on the wheel. I trusted my voice again before I spoke. "He'll come looking for you eventually. When he remembers I exist." "Let him look." Silas didn't take his eyes off the road. "You're not his to find tonight." When the gates came into view he pulled over short of them, like he understood I didn't want to be seen arriving this way. He pressed something small and cold into my palm and folded my fingers shut around it before I could look down. "What is it?" My fingers were too numb to feel the shape properly. "Something to remember me by, if it ever comes to that." He said it like it cost him nothing, though I learned later that nothing about that pendant had come cheap. "Keep it. If you ever need anything, ask. I mean it." Nobody had ever meant anything that plainly with me before. A young attendant's voice cut through the memory, close and apologetic. "My lady, Madam Meredith is waiting." "For what?" "Settling the household accounts, my lady. She said it's time everything currently in your name was accounted for." I knew exactly what that meant. If Blackwood turned me down, she meant to make sure I walked out of this house with nothing she hadn't already counted twice. The boy led the way three steps ahead, eyes on the floor the way new staff always kept them. Mine were half on the floor too, still caught somewhere on that rainy road. He stopped so abruptly I nearly walked into his back. He dropped into a bow before I'd even registered why. "Alpha Julian." I looked up, startled out of the mountain road and back into the present. Julian stood at the mouth of the corridor, arms crossed. "Convenient." He didn't wait for me to come any closer. "You knew I'd be through here. Staging your little victory lap right in front of me." "I didn't know anything. Your mother summoned me." "You expect me to believe that?" His mouth curved, ugly at the corners. "You didn't get what you wanted in that council room, so now you're out here proving a point to anyone who'll watch. This is spite, Ivy. Nothing more. You'll regret it, and sooner than you think." "Funny." I held his stare. "I wasn't the one who took the long way around just to end up standing exactly where I'd have to pass." "I don't go out of my way for you." "Then it's a remarkable coincidence. Twice in one day." "Careful." His voice dropped, quieter than before, which had always meant something worse was coming. "You're enjoying this a little too much for someone who just humiliated herself in front of the entire council." "Is that what it looked like to you?" I tilted my head. "From where I stood, you were the one who couldn't find his own voice once I put that contract on the table. Every elder in that room saw it happen." "You think this makes you clever." His voice climbed. "It makes you desperate. A woman throwing herself at a corpse because the living wouldn't have her." His jaw locked. For one full second nothing in his face moved at all. Then the pressure came down, that old familiar weight of an Alpha trying to flatten everyone smaller than him into the floor. It used to buckle my knees before I even understood what was happening to them. I stood there and let it land on me. Nothing in me buckled. Sylvie didn't even stir. Something caught in his own throat instead. His breath snagged hard, his hand coming up to his collar, and he had to look away and force a cough out before he could speak again. I almost laughed. I didn't bother hiding that I wanted to. "Something funny?" His voice came out rough, scraped thin, like the cough had taken something out of him on its way up. "You. Choking on your own temper because I didn't flinch." His face went a shade darker. He took a step closer, hand lifting halfway, like he hadn't decided yet what he meant to do with it. I didn't step back to find out. Footsteps cut in before he had the chance to decide, fast and uneven on the stone, like whoever it was had run most of the way. Raine rounded the corner first, a messenger from the inner court half a step behind her, his collar still crooked from how fast he'd come, his chest still working to catch up with his own legs. Raine's eyes went straight past Julian and found mine. "My lady. There's an answer. From House Blackwood."