Chapter 3 The Wolf in the Dark

By morning, the king's tower had a second bed in it. It wasn't really a bed. It was a narrow couch pulled up beside the hearth in Rhydian's own chambers, with a wool blanket folded at one end. Ysolde stared at it from the doorway while Hesper pretended to be very busy with a water jug. "No," Ysolde said. "The Elders will be watching the tower by nightfall," Rhydian said without looking up from the letter he was reading. "A slave sleeping alone in a locked room can be reached by anyone with a key. A slave in the king's chambers cannot." He turned a page. "You wanted your people at my table. This is the price of keeping you alive long enough to enjoy it." "You want me close." "I want you alive." His eyes lifted, amber and unreadable. "If you would rather be found with a knife in your back, say so now, and I'll move you back to the tower." She looked at the couch. At Cinder, already curled in front of the fire as though the arrangement had been settled hours ago. At the lock on the outer door, now bolted from the inside. "I'll sleep by the window," she said. "As you like." It was not a victory, but it didn't feel like a defeat either, and that unsettled her more than anything else. They spent the day hunting a ghost. Rhydian had her sit at his long table with a plain ledger and a cup of tea she didn't touch, while he asked questions in a low, steady voice. Who had handled her key? When had she last seen it? She answered each one carefully, and she watched his face for lies the way he was clearly watching hers. "It was on my neck the night of the treaty dinner," she said. "Four days before the siege. My uncle embraced me, and I felt it against my collar. After that..." She stopped. "After that?" "I changed for the evening. I left the chain on my dressing table." Her stomach turned. "A gift arrived while I was out. A box of lavender soap, from the Blackthorn envoy. A courtesy. I assumed one of the maids had brought it in." Rhydian's pen stopped. "Which envoy?" "I never learned his name. He was gone before I..." She pressed her fingers to her temples. "I can't see his face. Maybe I never did." For a moment he said nothing. Then he closed the ledger very gently, as though he were afraid of what it might say. "Blackthorn sent four envoys to Hollowmere that week," he said. "Only three came home." A chill went through her. "The fourth?" "Is buried under a collapsed mine shaft. The report said it was an accident." His jaw tightened. "I signed it myself." He rose and went to the window. She watched his back, broad and still, with the afternoon light cutting across his shoulders, and understood something that made her throat ache without her permission. He wasn't angry at her, or at the Elders, or even at the traitor. He was angry at himself, the way a man is angry when he's been made a tool in his own house. "You couldn't have known," she said quietly. He glanced over his shoulder, startled, as if she'd said something in another language. "Don't comfort me, Lady Ysolde. I'm not your friend." "No." She met his eyes. "You're my jailer. But I know what it looks like when someone blames himself for something that was done to him, and I won't pretend I don't." The silence stretched. Cinder lifted his head from the hearth and looked between them. "Go to bed," Rhydian said at last, rough and low. "You've done enough for one day." She woke in the dark to the sound of someone breathing. Not Cinder. She knew Cinder's breathing already, slow and heavy as a bellows. This was lighter, and closer, and it came from above her. She didn't move. She kept her eyes nearly closed and her breath even, and through her lashes she saw the shape: a man crouched on the window ledge, dressed in Blackthorn black, with a thin blade in his hand. He'd come over the roof. Four stories of sheer stone, and no sound at all. Wynne, she thought, and her wolf rose so fast it hurt. The assassin dropped silently to the floor. He took one step toward her, then another. In the firelight his eyes were flat and empty, a man doing a job. Ysolde rolled. The blade slammed into the couch where her ribs had been. She kicked the blanket across his face, grabbed the iron poker from the hearth, and swung it as hard as she could. He caught it on his forearm with a crack of bone and drove his shoulder into her chest. She hit the wall hard enough to black out the edges of her vision. "Quiet," he said, almost kindly. "It will be quick." He raised the knife. Then something black exploded across the room. Cinder hit the man like a landslide, a hundred and fifty pounds of fury and teeth, and they went down together in a tangle of snarls and torn leather. The knife skittered across the floor. The assassin screamed, a high, wet sound, and the door to the inner room slammed open. Rhydian was across the chamber before she could draw breath. He was in shirtsleeves, hair wild, eyes glowing a fierce molten gold, and when he reached the struggle he didn't even use a weapon. He took the assassin by the throat with one hand and slammed him against the stone wall. "Who sent you?" The man gurgled. Cinder stood panting at the king's heel, blood on his muzzle. "Who?" Ysolde pushed herself up on shaking arms. She'd bitten through her lip without noticing, and the taste of copper filled her mouth. Rhydian's head turned toward the sound, and in the half-second his attention left the assassin, the man's gaze slid past the king and found her. He smiled. It was an awful, bloody smile. "The Moon is waking in her," he rasped. "He said you'd know. You'd feel it." Rhydian's grip tightened. "Who said?" But the man's eyes had already gone glassy. His body spasmed once. A thin line of black foam slid from the corner of his mouth, and he went limp in the king's hands. Poison. He'd swallowed it before the guards could come. Rhydian let him drop. The room fell silent except for the crackle of the fire and Cinder's heavy breathing. Then the king turned, and in two strides he was kneeling in front of her. His hands were everywhere at once. He tilted her chin to the light, pushed her hair aside, and swept his thumb along the bruise rising on her ribs, quick and careful, as though he were afraid she might break. "Are you hurt? Tell me where." "I'm fine," she said, and was horrified to hear her voice shake. "You're not." His own voice was low and ragged. His hands were trembling, she realized, the great, scarred, terrible hands of the Alpha King. "I heard the window and thought... for a moment I thought..." He stopped. He was very close, close enough that she could see the gold fading from his eyes and the raw, unguarded fear underneath. She should have pulled away. She was his captive, and he was the man who had burned her home. Instead she raised one hand and laid it against his jaw, over the scar, and felt him go perfectly, completely still. "You came," she whispered. "I will always..." He caught himself, too late, and his gaze fell to her mouth. For one long heartbeat the world narrowed to the heat between them and the pulse hammering at her throat. Then footsteps pounded in the corridor, and the door burst open. Guards flooded in with drawn swords, and Maren Cael was among them, silver hair disordered, eyes wide with concern. "Majesty!" he cried. "Thank the moon you are unharmed. And the girl?" Rhydian stood, the mask sliding back over his face so quickly it was almost frightening. His eyes found hers over the Chancellor's shoulder, and what passed between them was a command as clear as a spoken word. Say nothing about the key. The Moon is waking in her. Ysolde looked at the dead man on the floor. Then she looked at Maren Cael's kind, worried face. Slowly, deliberately, she lowered her eyes in the soft, submissive way of a frightened slave. And behind her bowed head, her wolf began to smile.