Anwen
The tears on Estrella's cheeks catch the late morning light like diamonds, and I know I'm already too fucking late.
This is what I get for following my head, letting it lead me away from my mate. Baz's first call to the tower was fine. But as soon as I saw Harper's broken body at the base, I should've run to her. I should've seen what was coming and gotten out ahead of it. Instead, I let old loyalties distract me. I trudged through rescues and meetings and discussions like I didn't know exactly what was happening the second I smelled the old blood.
The smell sticks in my mind. So pungent, I caught it from the top of the tower, and Baz has three times the nose I do. Maybe I'm just looking for any kind of excuse, but I don't know how the corpse could've sat there for damn near two weeks without anyone picking up the scent.
All that flashes through my mind in the time it takes to blink, and then I'm rushing across the third dining room toward her. I can't see, can't focus on anything else.
Cold steel bites the flesh of my neck, more promise than injury, and I dodge back into a roll that leaves me on my knees. Castor stands between her and I. Pure, undiluted hatred fills his gray eyes.
"Stand and fight!" he bellows. "Defend whatever shit-stained honor you have left."
I hold up my hands again. "I'm unarmed. Shit, I'm in my fucking pajamas. I can't fight."
"Coward!" His sword slashes out, and a line of bright pain burns across my palm.
I don't wince. I don't even move. I just look at Estrella, my mate, staring past me as she cries. The pain in my hand is nothing compared to the searing in my chest.
A small, selfish part of me tries to calculate whether this hurts more or less than the nightmare that woke me.
"I know how this looks," I say as calmly as I can. "But if you just let me explain-"
"What could you possibly explain?" Dowager Luna Suniva rises from her seat, looking more like a queen than she has since her husband's death. "You lied to our queen. She was telling us of your successful interrogation, the proof it yielded, just as this news arrived." She flips her hand at a corner of the room that hasn't drawn my eye yet.
I glance over there, no idea what I'll find, but I'm certainly not expecting Floyd fucking Winters. Abruptly, I'm sure they've been presented the news in the worst possible light. The Lonely Sea connects to the Sapphire River, a direct shot into Snowcrest territory. The worse we look, the more likely Alpha King Andri gains a new ally of his own.
"Everything." I direct my words to Estrella. "If you'll just listen, I promise it all makes sense."
Castor tips my head up with the point of his blade. My temper rages, but I clench down on it. Let it burn my insides. Tears still steam down her face, sparkling like her eyes when she laughs. She still stares past me, almost blankly, but I can feel the pain ricocheting around her rib cage. Castor pushes the tip of his curved sword into the flesh of my neck. I swallow against it and feel a bead of blood run down my skin. No one else in the world could treat me like this, but for her, I'll do anything, say anything.
"You have one chance," he snarls like he's not half my size and two years younger.
That's all I need.
"I lied," I tell Estrella, "but not about this. Not like this."
"I told you!" Floyd crows.
"Shut up," I spit.
The blade bites harder. I wince.
Candace, Finn, and I used to play a game when we were too young to understand the suits and values on cards. We'd lean the tough little sheets against each other, one at a time, higher and higher, until we had a whole house of nothing more than paper. The slightest tap of the table sent the whole thing tumbling down.
When I decided to hide Harper's disappearance, I placed my first card. Now, I'm standing in a pile of paper I don't understand, wondering who tapped the table.
"I didn't tell you about Harper because I thought his disappearance looked bad but meant nothing," I say, hoping they'll understand the ring of truth in my words. "It was because of Harper that I couldn't prove Kieran wasn't responsible, but fuck, he'd never do anything like this. I don't know how, but it's a trick. I just know it."
Dowager Luna Suniva wraps an arm around Estrella's frozen shoulders. "Is that truly all you have to say for yourself? That we ought to trust your instincts?"
Yes. "No." I push myself forward, onto Castor's blade, trying to catch Estrella's eye. Still, there's nothing. My heart hammers. Take the hard path. "A month ago, I was a monster. My father's son."
Estrella shivers like she's been shocked, but she still doesn't look at me.
"And Kieran"-I swallow-"he's the reason I changed. He figured out what Father was doing and exposed him first to the men following and suffering under his orders. To those who needed the information most. That man, the one who tasted his own father's blood because that was what it took to rid the world of that cruelty, would never do this." I stare at Estrella, lower my voice. "I hid things, but only because I knew they would lead you astray."
"More pretty lies." Castor sneers down at me. "I've heard my fill."
The forge of my temper ignites. Someday, he'll pay for this.
Estrella makes a soft, hollow sound, and I tamp out the flames. Castor is a son, grieving a father he loved. Maybe, for her, I can make one exception. I just need her to look at me.
"Please." My voice breaks on the word. "Please, Estrella, trust the bo-"
She breaks her mother's hold, storms the distance between us, and backhands me with a sharp crack.
I sit back on my heels as my head snaps to the side. The hit is more noise than pain. I've taken worse, and anything she could dole out would be barely noticeable through the lightning storm in my chest. But the message is clear. She heard the word bond on my lips, and that was the one thing she couldn't tolerate. Not Floyd accusing me, not her mother demeaning our night together, not her brother threatening my life. The very idea anyone else might know what we are to each other. It hurts worse than a million slaps.
Estrella draws herself up to her full height and stares down her nose at me. Her mother steps up on her right, and Castor on her left. They still look like a puzzle missing a piece, but royal command oozes off them. Just like it used to Father.
I shrink. I know Floyd's here, and that fucking stings, but what the hell else can I do? My plan to get through a few days of their visit and live with the bite alone has never seemed stupider. When she goes... I don't know what'll be left.
"I, Luna Queen Estrella Sollabella of Sundrop Gem, formally revoke all alliances made with Dun's Crossing and anyone bearing the name Solberg before three witnesses and the Goddess herself." Her face is unreadable, whatever's going on in her eyes blotted out by the shine of the late-morning sun. "There are no bonds between us any longer."
There's no mistaking her emphasis. My mark burns like a brand, worse even than the pain in my chest. It's never been this bad before. Fuck, it feels like the wolfsbane.
"Envoy Winters, if you would be so kind as to send a messenger to the docks and inform the captain of The Lady Suniva that we'll be leaving in an hour's time, I'd be honored to consider a diplomatic visit to Snowcrest Canyon in the near future," she says.
The political dig sails over my head. So does Floyd's fucking response. My temper seizes onto him. He ruined this, made it so much worse than it had to be. The evidence against Kieran is circumstantial. I left out one detail. But the fucking worm had to make me look like the murderer somehow, and for that, he'll die. I'll make sure of it.
Estrella takes a step away from me. "Inform the Alpha King and Luna Queen of our departure, if you must."
"You can't leave." I toss the sentence like a lifeline.
She barks a laugh. "I said that I would stay until I was satisfied with the investigation. I didn't realize I was wasting my time when I said it, staring at the perpetrator all along, but you may consider me, Your Highness, satisfied."
Her first real sentence to me, not to the crown prince. It hangs from her lips like icicles.
"If anyone"-she looks pointedly at me, and her gray eyes are colder than the snow she's never seen-"attempts to halt or even delay our departure, I'll consider it an act of war."
She sweeps out of the room with her family and Floyd in tow, leaving me weeping blood on the floor.
Harper wasn't my first card. What the fuck was I thinking? The very first card, the first misstep, was in the tent that first day, when I told her we had to hide our marks. I should've marched out into the dawn, bare-ass naked, with her hand in mine. I should've told everyone what a fucking prize I won the second I realized it.
I always lost at the house of cards game. I always realized I was about to hit the table too damn late.