She was patient and confident.
She knew how this worked. She knew that monsters, for all their power, were bound by the same political realities as everyone else.
Start a conflict with the Lawkeepers, and the fragile peace between human and monster territories would crack. Other clans would get involved. Trade routes would close. The Raven Lands would find themselves isolated, cut off, under siege from enemies who’d been waiting for exactly this kind of excuse.
All for one death-touched bride who shouldn’t exist anyway.
The math was simple. The elders would hand me over. Of course they would.
And then…they did.
The female elder raised her hand. A signal. Two guards at the gate moved to the heavy iron bars, preparing to swing them wide.
“Wait.” My voice came out thin. Desperate. No one heard me. No one was listening. “Wait, you can’t listen to her.”
The guards gripped the bars. The hinges groaned.
A sound came from behind me.
Low. Rattling. The scrape of claws on stone.
I turned.
Lowen emerged from the shadows of the corridor.
The skeletal cat moved differently now, not the slow, painful shuffle I’d seen in the West Tower, but something closer to a prowl. His patchy fur had filled in slightly. His ribs were still visible, but less prominent. His eyes burned that same pale green, but brighter. More alert.
The blood feeding. The anchor that bound me to Cador had affected Lowen too.
He crossed the balcony to where I stood and pressed his bony flank against my legs. The purr that rose from his chest was stronger than before, still that rattling, dice-in-a-cup sound, but louder. More insistent.
Then he turned toward the railing.
Toward the courtyard below.
Toward Mabyn.
And he hissed.
Not a cat’s hiss. Not that sharp, startled sound of a frightened animal. A sound that seemed to come from the void itself, from the space between life and death where creatures like Lowen and I existed.
The hiss echoed off the stone walls, impossibly loud, and every head in the courtyard turned toward the balcony.
Toward us.
Toward the death-touched cat pressed against my legs, his green eyes fixed on my aunt with a hatred that transcended species.
Mabyn’s face went white.
She could see what Lowen was. And she could see the way he stood beside me. Protective, possessive, loyal.
Kin recognizing kin.
“A familiar.” It was the female elder, her voice carrying across the sudden silence. “The old Queen’s familiar. It bonded to the human girl.”
More murmurs. These sounded different. Uncertain, yes, but also... awed? The clan members below were staring up at the balcony with expressions I couldn’t quite read.
Cador stepped forward.
