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"Your wolf," the Councillor said quietly to his son. "In her."

He let the words sit between them for a moment, his smile unchanged.

Then he said, "Explain."

14

Chapter 14

Kaelen

My father sent for me at nine, though he did not need to. I had been expecting the summons since the Pit.

The Council always used the rooms in the east wing when envoys came to the island. On her first morning here, I had looked up at those same windows from the courtyard before crossing the flagstones and saying the cruelest thing I had ever said to another person. Even then, I had been checking to see who was watching.

Someone always was.

The study they had given my father was warm, with a low fire burning in the grate and two leather chairs angled toward it. A decanter and two glasses sat on a small table between them. When I entered, he was standing at the window with his back to me, one hand curled around a glass of brandy.

He did not turn around.

"Sit down, Kaelen."

I remained standing.

He allowed it without comment. He had always been good at ignoring small acts of defiance, because acknowledging them would have given them more importance than he believed they deserved.

"Drink?"

"No."

"Your mother never drank either," he said, still facing the window. "She said it made her say things she meant."

I gave him nothing in return. There was nothing I could say about my mother in that room that he would not find some way to use.

Then he turned.

I saw what was lying on his desk, and my entire body went still.

It was a rose, dark red with petals nearly black along the edges. The stem had been cut cleanly, and every thorn remained intact. It rested on the leather blotter beside his papers with such deliberate neatness that there could be no question why it was there.

My father followed my gaze.

"Pretty, isn't it?" he said. "Liane's roses. I'd forgotten she planted them here. I'd also forgotten you'd kept them alive." He reached down and brushed one petal with the tip of his finger. "Apparently someone has been leaving them on a doorstep in the north tower. Once a week, according to the porter. Regularly enough that even he noticed."

The wolf surged so hard against my ribs that I tasted blood where my teeth caught the inside of my cheek.

Of course he knew.

Every rose had been a risk, and I had known that when I left it. I had told myself that hardly anyone climbed the north tower, that the porter had more important things to pay attention to, and that a single flower left outside a door in the dark could not possibly amount to anything.

I had known those excuses were worthless even while I was making them.

The truth was simpler. Once a week, the bond tightened until leaving something at her door became the only thing that stopped me from going inside. I knew better every time I did it, and every time I did it anyway.

I kept my expression blank. I had been learning how to hide what I felt in front of this man since I was four years old, and by now there was very little he could read unless I allowed him to.

"I don't know anything about that."