Elena pressed her thumb against the broken wax, feeling the sharp ridge of the pine needle bite into her skin.
“Then we start with your council,” she said.
Valerian climbed the fractured trail.
Elena followed, the new bond pulling taut as the distance opened between them.
Her calves burned.
She lengthened her stride until she reached his shoulder.
“A lord with gold to burn,” he said.
“Or someone willing to use his seal.”
“Tyler is greedy, but he is lazy. Someone put coin in his hand and promised him Camilla’s dowry.” She could still see his face on the platform, pleased with the choice that had torn her open.
“We will find him.”
“I will find him.” Her boot slipped; she caught her footing before continuing.
“You owe me a roof and a closed door. The rest belongs to me.”
They climbed until Elena’s knees would carry her no farther.
Valerian halted his guards beneath an overhang.
She accepted bread, water, and a blanket, then let Vane bind her arm while she held the cloth against it.
Sleep came in short stretches, broken by the pull beneath her ribs.
At first light Vane rode south with a truce banner; Elena resumed the climb after eating.
By midmorning, iron hooves struck the trail above.
Vane appeared at the switchback, leading two warhorses.
The dark mare was lathered and scarred across its flanks.
The commander dismounted before her own beast had fully stopped, a flat metal cylinder in her left gauntlet.
“Border riders brought down a hawk from the south.” She offered it to Valerian.
“Silvercrest?” He broke the cylinder’s lead seal with his thumbnail.
The folded letter inside bore a leaping stag in dark wax across its inner fold.
“Alpha Tyler Vance. He names her a pack thief.” Vane glanced at Elena’s torn sleeve.
Elena tightened her grip on the purse.
“What does he say I took?”
“Five thousand silver marks from the vault. Three sacred relics carried south during the Great Truce. He demands you back in chains, or he treats our borders as broken.”
“Five thousand?” Elena gave a rough laugh.
“His storehouse had six empty bins when I left. The tribute chest had two broken hinges. He could not buy winter grain. Where does he claim he found silver to lose?”
“He seeks a lawful pretext to hunt you,” Valerian said.
“He seeks an excuse to kill Mira.”
Elena pictured the girl behind the washhouse, waiting for it to be safe to leave the root cellar.
She remembered the empty gathering basket clutched against Mira’s chest in the ring.
She was afraid Mira would leave cover too soon, thinking the pack would forget a servant once Elena was gone.
Tyler knew who had fed her and who she had fed in return.
A missing vault fortune would give him a question to ask at the whipping post.
“He will torture her to prove the theft.”
Valerian crushed the letter in his fist.
“No southern rider crosses my line alive.”
“Your line does not protect the people I left behind.” She stepped into his path.
“You want the traitor at your table. I have the surviving wax. You may have it if you send five riders to the washhouse approach. They contact the workers and get them out if Tyler moves against them.”
“You spend your only leverage on an Omega servant.”
“On the person who gave me bread while your lords were buying my execution.” Elena held the purse between them.
“Tell me where the riders will go.”
A hard edge entered his jaw.
“Three scouts. One watches the river; two cover the washhouse approach, contact its workers, and find a way to take them out if guards come. Vane, give them fresh mounts.”
“Three, with that task,” Elena said.
Vane acknowledged the order and turned to the waiting riders.
Elena placed the purse in Valerian’s open hand.
“Keep the wax intact.” He closed the flap without disturbing it and tucked the purse inside his coat.
She watched the scouts depart.
Her bargaining piece was gone from her hands.
In return, three riders were going toward the people she had left behind; she would still need word that they reached them.
“Mount the horse,” Valerian said.
“I walk.”
“The grade rises two thousand feet before the outer wall. You took poisoned iron last night.”
“My legs work. Let them see me walk through your gates.”
She turned toward the pass before he answered.
The bandage dragged at her arm, and the climb soon reduced her world to the next place she could set a boot.
Valerian’s nearness brought a warmth she could distinguish from the pain.
Falling two paces behind thinned it; her legs kept shaking either way.
He shortened his stride.
When she slipped, she caught a rock with her wrapped hand before his reached her.
Blood spotted the cloth.
Elena stopped to retie it, holding the knot between her teeth while he waited.
By late afternoon, the outer ramparts of the Black Citadel rose out of the mountain crest.
The fortress rose from the ridge itself, rough stone crowded between two watchtowers.
Armored warriors flanked its open gates.
Their eyes followed Elena over the final rise.
“Wolfless,” a sentry muttered.
“A southern stray.”
She brought her trembling knees straight beneath her and crossed beside Valerian.
Dirt had stiffened her palms; dried blood pulled at her collar whenever she turned her head.
She kept looking ahead.
Beyond the yard, the Great Hall’s timber doors swung inward.
Four fire baskets lit the central aisle, with more than forty northern lords standing in rows on either side.
Wool brushed mail as they turned toward their king.
The hall went quiet.
Then their attention moved to her.
Elena recognized that inspection.
They looked at her ragged clothes first, then at the place where the pack crest had been cut away.
Nothing she had carried up the pass would be visible to them unless she made it so.
“A southern runaway in the high hall,” an elder sneered from the left.
Elena closed her hands at her sides.
Then the bond flared.
Heat ran into her arms, tightening the skin as silver lines emerged from wrist to elbow.
Their geometric patterns shone through the frayed sleeves.
Two lords near the aisle stepped back.
“The markings,” Vane murmured behind her.
Elena turned her wrists.
This was the heat that had driven poison from her wound, rising from her own blood.
She could feel it under the cloth even when she drew her arms closer to her body.
At the end of the aisle, two stone chairs stood on the upper tier.
Battle runes covered the jagged black seat.
Beside it, the white chair stood empty.
She stepped toward the platform.
A low vibration reached her through the floor; each pulse matched her heartbeat.
Heat rippled above the white stone.
Elena took another step toward it.
A massive warrior stepped out from the base of the platform, blocking her path entirely.
Lord Cassian stood broad as an ox, his grey beard bound with wire against a battered iron breastplate.
A thick patch of scarred leather covered his left eye, fastened to his skull with iron studs.
His good eye was pale, cold, and locked squarely on Elena’s face.
“The southern bird spoke the truth,” Cassian said, his voice grinding like stone on metal.
Valerian did not slow.
“Clear the aisle, Cassian.”
“I stand where the law commands, King Thorne,” the old general replied, resting a calloused hand on the hilt of his heavy broadsword.
“Silvercrest does not merely accuse this girl of empty theft. Alpha Tyler sent an iron token stamped from your own armory, claiming she stole the royal treaty blade your father gave him ten winters ago.”