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Chapter 3 REJECTED BEFORE THE KINGDOM
The words landed, and the hall did not breathe. Then it did, all at once, in a rush of gasps and rustling silk and one high, delighted whisper that Seraphina would hear in her sleep for years. Somebody near the pillars laughed outright. Somebody else shushed them, not out of kindness, but to hear better. She was still holding her hand in the air. She lowered it now. Slowly, as if it belonged to someone else. She folded it against her stomach with the other one and held them there, because if she let go of herself, she was not certain what would happen next. Do not cry. Not here. Not in front of them. She fixed her stare on the silver clasp of Kael's cloak and counted its tiny carved leaves. Seven. The clasp rose and fell with his breathing, and she hated that he was breathing at all, that his chest could still do something so ordinary. "The rejection must be spoken in full," the priestess said, in the thin voice of a woman reading from a script she wished she had never opened. "By the old law, before witnesses." "I know the law." Kael did not look at her. He did not look at Seraphina, either. He looked at the far wall, at a point somewhere above everyone's heads. "I, Kael Draven Blackthorn, king of the Lycans, refuse the bond offered by the Moon." Something tore. It happened inside Seraphina's chest, below the breastbone, a ripping like wet cloth. Her lungs locked. Her vision narrowed to a tunnel with a bright, pulsing edge. She felt the thread that had stretched between them, thin as spider silk, draw taut and then snap, and the two ends lashed back into her ribs like whips. She bent forward. She could not help it. Her fingers clawed at her gown, and the wool scratched against her palms, and the sound she made was small and cracked and horribly human. Across the hall, Kael flinched. Only a little. A twitch at the corner of his eye. His hand pressed once against his own sternum, so quickly that most of the court missed it, and then dropped away. Seraphina did not miss it. She straightened. Her knees shook so hard she felt the tremor travel up through her hips. She forced her spine into a line, one vertebra at a time, the way she had practiced in the Vale garden when nobody was looking. If they were going to watch, they would watch a woman standing. "Seraphina." Mira's voice, rough and close. Her friend had shoved through three rows of velvet to reach her. Her curls had come entirely loose, and the honey cake was a smear of yellow down her dress. She took Seraphina's arm in both hands, fiercely, as if someone might try to pull her away. "Look at me. Not him. Me." Seraphina looked. Mira's eyes were swimming. "I'm all right," Seraphina said. "You are a terrible liar." "I know." A dry cough sounded behind them. Rowan had arrived. He did not take Seraphina's other arm. He stood with his hands clasped at his belt and spoke through his teeth, quietly, with the court pressing close on every side. "Do not make a scene. Whatever you feel, you will keep it behind your face until we are home." Seraphina turned her head. Her uncle, who had given her a bed and a roof and, in nineteen years, not one word that had warmed her. His eyes slid away from hers. He was worried, she realized. Truly worried. Not for her. For the next invitation that would not come, the next alliance that would quietly dissolve, the name that would be whispered in the same breath as hers for the rest of his life. Something in her went very still. "Yes, Uncle," she said. Her own obedience made her want to scream. Around them, the court had begun to move again, the way water closes over a stone. Nobles drifted in clusters, murmuring behind fans. A few cast her open pity, which was worse than contempt. Lady Cassandra Wolfe had recovered her color. She stood with her chin lifted and her mouth curved in the faintest suggestion of triumph, and when her eyes met Seraphina's, she inclined her head, like a woman acknowledging a defeated opponent at cards. Kael had turned toward the dais. His shoulders were squared. He was speaking to the priestess in a low voice, giving orders, performing the next task on his list. He had already moved on. That was the cruelty of it. For him, the thing was done. "The ritual of severance," the priestess said, and her voice wavered. "Must be completed. The Moon's thread must be cut cleanly, or the bond will fester. Lord Rowan, as the girl's guardian, if you would stand witness." Rowan stepped forward without hesitation. The priestess lifted the silver bowl. Moonwater trembled at its rim, and in its surface the blue flames wavered, and something under the floor drew in a long, slow breath. Seraphina felt it. The hum in the marble returned, louder now, rising through the soles of her slippers, climbing her shins. It was not a sound anymore. It was pressure. It pressed on her ears and behind her eyes and into the hollow where the bond had been torn away. The water in the bowl shivered. "Hold it steady," the priestess muttered to her assistant, though no one had moved. A ripple crossed the surface, then another, spreading outward in perfect rings from a center that was not being touched. Nobody noticed at first. The court was still arranging its faces. But a boy near the doors lifted his head and sniffed, nostrils flaring. Then a girl beside him. Then a pack Alpha in the second row, who turned his whole body toward the great windows with the loose, stunned look of a man who has heard his name called from far away. Mira's grip tightened on Seraphina's arm. "Seraphina. The windows." Seraphina followed her gaze. Beyond the tall panes, the moon hung full and white over the keep, as it had all evening. The sky around it was cloudless, thick with stars. As she watched, a thin dark edge crept across the moon's face. Not a cloud. The edge simply appeared, a bite taken out of the light, widening slowly, patiently, as if something were drawing a curtain across it from the inside. The stars beside it went out. Beneath the floor, something began to laugh.
Chapter list
20 chapters total
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