I bowed just enough to be polite. “Mistress. I trust the moon finds you well.”
She snorted, then flicked her gaze to the leather satchel I carried. “You’re not here for pleasantries.”
“Nor are you.” I took a seat across from her, ignoring the way the chair seemed to crawl under my weight. “We can skip the dance if you like.”
“Not yet.” She poured a drink from a glass decanter—something black and viscous. She didn’t offer me any. “Word is your daughter’s made quite a mess of things.”
“Word is correct.” I let the satchel fall to the table between us with a thud. “But that’s not why I’m here.”
She eyed the bag, then me. “What do you want?”
“A moment of candor.” I reached into the satchel and drew out the diary. Small, battered, bound in leather so old it was almost gray. I set it on the table, fingers never leaving the cover. “This was hard to come by. Imagine my surprise when it turned up in the hands of a southern informant, of all places.”
Her body went still, except for a tremor at the corner of her mouth. “You’ve read it?”
“Cover to cover.” I flipped it open, careful to keep the ink facing her. The pages were crammed with months of entries regarding a secret. A daughter—no, a changeling; she’d kept hidden all these years.
She was silent, but her fingers dug into the feathers at her collar. “You don’t understand what that means.”
“I understand enough. I understand that if these notes ever reached the Supreme Council, the resulting inquisition would burn Gloamreach to the ground.” I closed the journal, let the silence hang. “But I’m not interested in arson.”
She wet her lips, the kohl-lined eye never blinking. “You want something.”
“A single favor. A vote.” I leaned forward, voice low. “Tomorrow, when the Council meets, you will oppose the mate bond between Savannah Calloway and the Iron Valor dog. You will say it’s against natural law, or tradition, or whatever fiction you need. I don’t care what words you use.”
She barked a laugh, harsh and ugly. “You’d blackmail your own daughter out of happiness?”
“She made her choices.” My voice was granite. “Now I’m making mine.”
She looked away, toward a glass sphere on a shelf that pulsed with a dim blue light. I watched her reflection in it, the way her jaw clenched, the faint panic behind her mask. “If I refuse?”
I slid the journal back into the satchel. “You won’t.”
A long moment. Then she slumped in her chair, every inch of defiance gone. “This is the last time, Declan. The last time you get to pull my strings.”
“We’ll see.” I stood, brushing the moss from my trousers. “Thank you for your time, Mistress.”
She didn’t rise. She didn’t even watch me go. I left her there, shadowed and small in her own kingdom, the taste of victory sweet and fungal on my tongue.
Outside, the path had changed. The dead wolves were gone, replaced by a tangle of black flowers blooming in the night. A sign, maybe, or just another reminder that in this world, nothing stayed buried for long.
Two votes in hand. Three to go.
I set my course for the next, already thinking ahead to the flavor of blood and fire.
Chapter 20
Savannah
The Council chamber spat us out like bones from a feast, leaving the four of us to gather our dignity in the long, echoing corridor beyond. I felt the blood hammering in my ears, the tremor in my own hands, the unslakable need crawling under my skin—none of it dulled by the judgment of a dozen monsters on their thrones. Beside me, Menace towered, jaw set so hard the muscles corded beneath his skin, the mate mark on his neck livid and pulsing.
Bronc and Juliet walked just ahead, their hands brushing as if they’d never known a world where touching was forbidden. Bronc’s suit was rumpled, a wet sheen still clinging to his hairline. Juliet’s heels were a metronome on the marble; each click a countdown to something neither of us could name. I felt their glances flick back over us, measuring the distance, calculating the violence it would take to pry us apart.
“Elevators this way,” Bronc said, voice flat and barely reined in. I followed, my body electric, Menace’s fingers ghosting over the small of my back as if he needed the reassurance that I was real and not another hallucination conjured by need and deprivation.
We moved as a unit, guards flanking us but offering no resistance. It was theater, and everyone knew it. The real threat wasinside me, inside Menace, inside every wolf forced to behave in polite company.
The elevator was a coffin lined in gold. Bronc and Juliet slid in first, then Menace and me. The doors snicked shut, and with them the last illusion of safety.
