His hand guided me away from the balcony, back into the corridor, away from the gates and the Lawkeepers and the woman who’d killed me once and would kill me again if given the chance.
Lowen followed, his rattling purr filling the silence.
We walked in silence through the cold stone corridors past guards who bowed and servants who pressed themselves against walls to give us room. Past the great hall and the kitchens and all the spaces where the clan’s daily life continued, oblivious to the drama that had played out at the gates.
Cador didn’t speak until we’d reached his chambers. Until the heavy oak door had closed behind us and the lock had engaged and we were alone.
“Priestess of the Realm.” I turned to face him. “That’s not a real thing, is it.”
His smile was thin. Sharp. “It is now.”
“You made it up.”
“I invoked an old law that hasn’t been used in three hundred years. The elders won’t challenge me. Lowen stood beside you. The cat made the lie true. Your aunt can’t challenge me. She has no standing in our religious affairs.”
He crossed to the cabinet, poured something dark into two glasses. “By the time anyone thinks to question the precedent,you’ll be so thoroughly integrated into clan life that removing you would cause more problems than it solves.”
He handed me one of the glasses. The liquid inside was almost black, and it smelled like smoke and berries and something older.
“You lied,” I said. “To your own people. To protect me.”
“I bent the truth.” He raised his glass. “There are ageless texts about death-touched creatures being sacred to the void. The title ‘Priestess’ is my invention, but the concept exists. I simply... emphasized the religious protection angle.”
“Is there?”
He drank. I drank. The liquid burned going down, but it was a good burn, warm and spreading, settling into the heat he’d shared while the castle slept.
“She’ll come back,” I said. “She won’t give up.”
“No.” Cador set down his empty glass. “She won’t.”
“So what do we do?”
He looked at me. Those black eyes, that sharp-angled face, the king who had lied and schemed and invoked ancient laws to keep me at his side.
“We wait,” he said. “And when she makes her next move, we destroy her.”
OLWEN
The peace lasted another three days. Then they came for him at midday.
I heard them before I saw them: boots on stone, voices raised in argument, and the clatter of a door thrown open. From the window of Cador’s chambers, I watched the elders cross the courtyard in a tight knot of black robes, their faces set in expressions that promised nothing good.
It was the full council of six.
Cador had left an hour earlier, summoned by a messenger whose face had been carefully blank.
“Council business,” he’d said, and kissed my forehead, and told me to stay in the chambers until he returned.
I’d stayed. But I hadn’t stopped watching.
The elders disappeared into the east wing, to the war room I’d learned about from servants’ gossip. A chamber built into the mountain itself, its walls carved from living rock, its ceiling lost in shadows that no torch could reach.
The place where Raven Kings had made their most difficult decisions for a thousand years.
The place where they would decide what to do with me.
I flattened my palm against the cold glass of the window. My heartbeat was steady, a slow, synced rhythm that matched his and proved the blood tether was still holding.
