“Then bring your rope.” Elena held Cassian’s stare.
Behind her, Tyler coughed against the wall.
The tether pulled with each heave, disturbing the bandage at her side.
Valerian stepped between her and Cassian, blocking the sconce light.
His hand rested on his sheathed blade.
“The council does not hang anyone under my roof without my seal.”
“The council sits at dawn,” Cassian replied, keeping the paper raised.
“Parley protects Vance from your claws. It does not give her sanctuary if she refuses to complete the release before the elders.”
Elena looked past Valerian at Tyler’s bandage.
Completing the rite would stop the flow into the wards.
Tyler said they would fall without it; no one had offered a way to keep the valley alive through morning.
Cassian’s rope waited for her refusal.
“Unchain him,” Elena told the guards.
Cassian’s mouth thinned.
“You do not command northern soldiers.”
“Do as she says,” Valerian commanded.
The guards opened Tyler’s cuffs.
His knees gave way, but they caught him beneath the arms before his injured side struck the floor.
One kept a hand against the rib binding while the other supported his weight.
Elena spent the remaining hours in the guarded room above the cells.
She drank the healer’s broth, sat with her back against the wall and slept in scraps.
Each time she woke, the tether was still pulling.
When the guards came for them, she rose slowly and turned toward the stairs.
At dawn, thirty lords and clan commanders crowded the tiered benches around the Solstice dais.
The twelve council lords occupied the front row.
An execution table stood at the center, a cleaver flat across its bare wood.
The first bell sounded through the soles of Elena’s boots.
The guards dumped Tyler beside the block.
He caught himself badly, wheezing, his skin yellow and clammy with bond fever.
The shock pulled at Elena’s bandage.
She steadied her breathing while Asteria snarled within her, then looked from him to the blade laid ready on the table.
Elder Kenneth rose from the center bench.
“The standing judgment protects her until the final rite. Lord Cassian has also brought a charge of aiding an armed foreign pack. It is heard here before any sentence. A refusal is not a conviction.”
“Elena Evans,” Kenneth called.
“You stand before the Council of Fangs. Will you speak acceptance of Vance’s rejection and permit him to complete the life-release?”
Cassian walked to the table and laid his palm on the cleaver.
“Give your answer,” he said.
“Vance bares his arm, the blade opens it, and he speaks the verse. No southern claim will feed on you afterward. Prove your loyalty.”
The second bell boomed.
A ward messenger brought Kenneth the follow-up tally.
“All twenty remain alive,” the elder told the benches.
Tyler raised his head.
“Elena, accept it,” he rasped.
“I will give the verse. Let it end.”
Elena watched him struggle to lift his head.
In the birthday clearing, firelight had caught his cheek as he turned toward Camilla.
He had left Elena to carry the unfinished rite into the dark.
Now its pain had become unbearable to him, and he asked for the answer before she had reached his stones.
Kitchen girls had slipped her bread when he stripped her rank.
Herd boys slept in the outer barns.
None had chosen the rejection; none could call a beast to shelter them when frost entered the valley.
“No,” Elena said.
A roar of outrage erupted from the council benches.
Cassian lifted the cleaver three inches from the wood.
“You refuse the oath? Guards, take her to the rampart line!”
Valerian stepped forward, his boots hitting the flags with a dull, heavy ring.
“Touch her and your heads roll across these stones before the third bell strikes.” Kenneth struck the table with his tally rod.
“She has the floor. The charge is heard, not judged. Put the cleaver down.”
The warlords reached for their axes, but no man crossed the king’s path.
Elena passed Valerian’s arm.
Cassian kept the cleaver raised.
On the benches sat the men who bought timber, paid patrols and counted grain through winter.
She addressed them.
“You think severing this bond protects your border. Break the wards before anyone repairs them, and you will lose more than a southern pack. You are fools.”
“Mind your words, girl,” Kenneth said.
“Vance admitted Camilla used the unfinished rite to draw my blood into his wards. You want my acceptance and his bleeding verse here, before anyone has repaired those stones.” Elena looked along the front bench.
“You have heard what he says will happen. Which of you has inspected the valley and proved him wrong?”
“Let them fall,” Cassian said.
“Let the southern dogs rot without walls.”
“Four hundred valley omegas may freeze in their beds. Silvercrest families will have no food, no shelter and nothing to lose. What do starving wolves do, Lord Cassian?”
His fingers tightened around the cleaver.
“They raid. Your timber camps are nearer than the next southern valley. So are your herds. You could spend ten years hunting desperate wolves in the hills because you wanted an execution before breakfast.”
The lords began speaking to one another.
Kenneth leaned forward.
“Leave the tether open, and your blood keeps feeding their failing wards. What do you offer instead?”
“Let me use that cord to put Silvercrest under your heel.”
“Elena, be silent.” Valerian had turned toward her.
She kept her attention on Kenneth.
Going south meant Camilla’s gates and the stones that were already taking her strength.
She could ask for an escort now, before these men decided whether to give her a rope.
Tyler choked on a gasp, his fingers clawing at the dirt.
“You want to return?” Kenneth asked, his brow furrowing.
“Not as an exile,” Elena said.
“I ride as Obsidian’s envoy, with twenty outriders. I will repair the outer wardstones with my blood and stop the frost advancing. The tether stays until those people can survive its release. In return, Tyler Vance signs northern vassalage.”
Tyler stared up from the flags, his jaw slack.
“Elena… you cannot do that.”
“You will sign, Tyler.” She turned back to the benches.
“Half Silvercrest’s winter stores, logging rights on the western ridge, and an annual tribute of iron tools and medicine. I bring back the signed treaty and dispatch orders. Put the delivery dates in the treaty, so neither Alpha can pretend a promise was a wagon.”
The hall fell dead silent.
Valerian came close enough for his shoulder to warm hers.
“Camilla will poison your cup before you reach the stones.”
“Then give me the escort I asked for. Vane commands it. Twenty riders, and no one takes their weapons at the gate.”
He looked toward Tyler, then back at her.
“Mira’s mother. Toby. The little girl. You named them in the cell, and I answered you about Vance. I mistook whom you were protecting.” His hand settled on his sword hilt.
“Vane takes twenty. If the southern guards bar the kennels, she opens them.”
Elena rested her palm briefly on his forearm.
He had withdrawn it when she asked in the hall; now she chose to touch him.
She had thought he would answer her again with the name Vance.
He had named Toby instead.
She remembered Toby counting bread crusts on his fingers so his little sister would get the larger half.
She let her palm remain for one more breath.
“Have the healer check her ribs before she mounts.”
“I will.” He faced the benches.
“The King accepts. My outriders ride under her envoy’s authority. Silvercrest signs the treaty and sends the stores.”
Cassian set down the cleaver.
“And if she brings back neither treaty nor tribute before the Blood Moon, she hangs when she returns.”
“She brings the signed terms and dispatch orders on her return,” Kenneth said, taking up his pen.
“Delivery follows the dates written in them. Silvercrest answers for a delayed wagon. Deliberate betrayal comes before this council.”
Hands rose along the front bench.
Kenneth recorded them.
“The loyalty rite is answered by this undertaking. On that undertaking, the charge of aiding an armed enemy is not sustained. The terms are sealed.”
The third bell tolled above the execution table.
The cleaver remained on the wood.
Two northern guards lifted Tyler.
He staggered between them, coughing blood as they took him past the table.
At Elena’s side he reached out and caught the frayed wool of her sleeve.
“Then come home.”
She pulled her arm free.
His fingers stayed curled where the cloth had been.
“I’m coming to your territory, Alpha. It isn’t my home.”