“Admit them to the courtyard,” Elena said, her nails digging into the rough timber table to steady her shaking hands.
Cassian stepped into her path, his grey beard bristling over his iron breastplate.
“You give no orders here, stray. You are an unmarked exile facing our council.”
“Marcus carries Tyler’s iron.” Elena did not drop her gaze.
“His letter threatens Mira’s mother and the two children. Turn those riders away and we lose the only men here who can carry an answer before sundown. You wanted proof of Tyler’s weakness. It waits outside.”
She remembered Mira slipping bread through the scullery hatch when Tyler locked the pantry.
Somewhere south of the river, the girl’s sick mother was lying on a kennel floor.
She was afraid the woman would not survive another night there.
Valerian stepped beside her, cutting off the draught.
Elena steadied herself against his sleeve, then took her hand away.
“Keep Marcus here until we have an answer.”
“Raise the portcullis,” Valerian commanded.
“Thirty archers on the inner ramparts. Close it once they are inside. Cassian, Kenneth, walk with me.”
Cassian grunted in disgust.
He stepped aside, his gauntlets scraping the hilt of his broadsword.
On the curving stairs, Elena kept one hand against the wall.
Each step pulled at the mate tether formed the previous night.
Nothing reached her of Tyler’s words or movements; there was only the pain, and the collar waiting below.
She pressed her palm harder against the stone and followed Valerian down.
The courtyard opened in a wide square of wet flagstones.
Forty Silvercrest warriors sat on sweat-stained warhorses near the center gate, their wool cloaks spattered with road mud.
At the front of the line sat Captain Marcus, gripping a white truce banner in his left hand.
In his right, he held an open iron collar lined with dull silver studs.
“Elena Evans,” Marcus shouted across the open yard.
“Alpha Tyler demands your surrender under the ancient right of pack recall.”
Elena stopped ten paces from the captain’s mount.
Northern spearmen lined the surrounding walls, shields braced together in silence.
Elena felt their cold scrutiny, but she kept her chin level.
“Tyler rejected me before two hundred wolves in the ritual clearing,” Elena answered.
“On my birthday evening. He cannot cast me out and then summon me back in irons.”
“The pack fed you for eighteen winters,” Marcus said, swinging down from his stirrup.
His heavy leather boots slammed hard against the flagstones.
“You belong to the Silvercrest soil by sworn debt.”
“My hands paid that debt through five winters in his kennels,” she said.
“Ask the people who watched me work.”
“Step forward and take the iron,” Marcus barked.
“Camilla has the kitchen girl locked up with her mother and the children. Put your neck in this collar, or they hang before dark.”
Mira had been hiding by the washhouse when Elena left her.
Marcus might be lying about the girl; the threat against her family matched Tyler’s letter.
Elena looked at the studs inside the collar.
Buckling it would put her beyond any northern blade that could reach the kennels.
“Send a rider to stop the hangings. Keep them alive while we speak. You stay here until he brings an answer.”
Marcus dropped the white truce banner straight into the mud.
“You do not set terms, wolfless filth.”
The captain stepped forward.
“Kneel!” Marcus bellowed.
Marcus’s shout carried Tyler’s Alpha Command.
Elena’s knees buckled; she caught herself with one boot sliding over the wet flags.
The pressure bore down through her shoulders, forcing her toward the ground.
She remembered this weight from the Silvercrest yard, long before the mate tether.
But Marcus’s borrowed voice had found the new wound, and beneath it something hot pushed back.
Elena braced her feet.
Blood filled her mouth as she drew breath through her teeth.
The pressure tightened until standing seemed impossible; she drove against it anyway, following its pull toward the man with the collar.
“No.”
Marcus jerked backward.
A crack sounded inside his chest, and his command broke off in a choking gasp.
He dropped to both knees, black blood spilling over his boots.
Elena remained standing, though she could no longer feel the tips of her fingers.
The Silvercrest riders shouted in terror, their horses rearing against the reins.
“The stones are crumbling to sand without you,” Marcus wheezed, clawing at the paving stones as blood bubbled from his lips.
“Elder Harlan says our whole valley will cave in. Camilla will kill them all.”
“Touch that collar again and die,” a low voice rumbled from behind Elena.
Valerian passed her and planted a boot on the fallen truce cloth.
He took the collar from Marcus’s trembling hand without reaching for his knife.
The band bent between his bare fingers.
Marcus tried to pull away as the hinges tore; silver studs struck the flags around his knees.
Valerian twisted once more until the collar came apart, then dropped both pieces into the captain’s lap.
“Tyler Vance has ten days to pull his hunters out of the valley gap,” Valerian said.
“After the tenth day, any rider he sends across the gorge brings my army to his hall. That does not give him ten days to answer for those prisoners.”
Marcus coughed into his sleeve.
“The hanging detail waits at the boundary trees. An hour’s ride from your lower gate.”
“Then your rider can reach it,” Elena said.
“Write the stay.”
Vane brought a writing board.
With shaking fingers Marcus ordered the detail to leave the prisoners in the kennels, alive, pending Tyler’s answer to the King.
Valerian added his demand beneath it.
A Silvercrest rider took the sheet through the opened gate with one of Vane’s scouts beside him.
Two northern spearmen lifted Marcus from the stones and held him under the archway.
Elena stayed in the yard.
Vane brought her a stool; she sat when her knees began to shake.
The other southern riders waited beneath the archers while the light thinned over the walls.
At last the scout returned beside the courier.
He handed Vane the order, now bearing the execution officer’s signed acknowledgment.
“I watched the detail take down its ropes. The prisoners are to stay in the kennels. The officer sent his men back with the stay.” Enjoying the story? Read on at g.com.
Marcus read the added hand and nodded, blood drying on his chin.
“He will hold them. He will not free them.”
“Neither will I free you yet,” Valerian said.
He dismissed the remaining riders with the military warning and ordered Marcus kept under guard for the negotiations.
The portcullis crashed down after the troop departed.
Elena rose to ask who would watch the kennels, but the question caught as the yard tilted.
The ropes were down; the doors were still locked.
She reached for Vane’s stool and missed it.
Each pulse dragged at the tether the rebound had failed to break.
Wetness reached her upper lip.
She wiped it with her cuff and found silver spread across the linen, luminous against the coarse weave.
Kitchen cuts had always bled red.
This blood still held the heat of the force that had answered Marcus.
Kenneth stopped on the rampart stairs, his hand arrested at his sword.
“Her blood is silver.”
Cassian crossed the yard.
His single eye followed the stain.
“The first dynasty. The Council of Fangs holds custody over royal bloodlines. Take her to the high tower until the warlords convene.”
Elena opened her mouth to answer him.
Her knees gave way before a word came.
Valerian caught her beneath the shoulders and knees.
His chest plate scraped her cheek as he lifted her; she clutched the edge of his tunic, unable to hold her head up.
He turned her face against him, away from Cassian and the watching garrison.
“Call the healers,” Kenneth shouted, running toward them.
“Stay back,” Valerian snarled, his wolf flashing near the surface of his skin.
Cassian drew his short blade half an inch from its sheath, blocking the inner archway.
“King Thorne, our council law is absolute. If a true bloodline walks through these gates, she belongs to the realm. Deliver her to the tower healers.”
“Draw that blade another inch, Cassian, and I will rip your throat out through your collar,” Valerian said.
The old warlord looked at the King’s face and slowly stepped back.
Valerian carried her through the timber doors.
The warlords’ shouts followed until he turned away from the council chamber and descended the spiral stair beneath the solar.
Her cheek slipped against his shoulder armor with every stride.
Silver drops struck his tunic.
She tried to count the turns, but the torchlight kept disappearing between them; they were going farther below the fortress than she had ever been.
“Where are we going?” she whispered.
“The Moonwell,” Valerian answered, his long strides taking the stone steps three at a time.
“Can the healers not cure this?”
“You are still bleeding,” Valerian said, kicking open the cavern door.
Black water steamed beyond it.
“The Moonwell may strip the command out of that wound. The tower healers cannot do it before you lose more blood.”