Then, my voice raised in challenge, echoing across the ring as I called for Vixor Rae to fight me, to be my mate. I remembered the way the crowd had parted for him. How he’d strode furiously across the sand to meet me, furious because this was not the plan he’d made. No, this was my plan, a new plan.
A plan to save him.
I remembered his eyes, black as midnight, his neck flushed with anger as he removed his silver mask and tossed it to the sand. He’d lifted his sword, knocked mine aside, and made a single, shallow cut across my left shoulder.
My fingers met the bandage there, and I remembered the slide of red blood across the white of my skin as he’d made the cut that ended the fight.
I was married. I was mate to the Silver Wolf, favorite of the Alpha and most fearsome Sworn in the land.
My Kassian.
Are you happy with this Chosen girl as mate? the Alpha had asked him.
He’d barely glanced at me. When it came to them, I was nothing.
She will do, he’d said.
As if I were a cloak. A pair of shoes.
I am your devoted servant, he’d assured the Alpha.
And then—
After.
The carriage ride. The silence cold enough to freeze blood. I’d prefer that you call me Vixor.
Had I miscalculated? I’d risked everything because I believed he was still Kassian, and because I believed, deep down, he still loved me.
Was I wrong?
Kassian had wanted me to escape the capital after defeating Kryf. He’d claimed I’d be safer elsewhere.
He was wrong. I hadn’t been safe since the Sworn tore him away from me. I’d been living a ragged existence ever since, bereft of my father, mother, and best friend. My father was dead, and my mother had rejected me. I couldn’t go back to my village now that they knew of the mark on my arm.
Right now, Kassian was all I had.
I wasn’t about to let him go. Not that easily.
He was my childhood best friend, the person who’d gotten me through every terrible thing that had ever happened to me. He’d been stolen from me, tormented and isolated, and made into the man that he was against his will.
But he wasn’t alone anymore. We’d found each other again, against all odds, and I wasn’t going to let the Alpha have him.
A knock came at the door, and I gathered the blankets to my chest.
“Yes?”
Kassian stepped inside. He was dressed all in black, and his face was marked with shadows as if he hadn’t slept all night, wherever he’d chosen to make his bed.
“You’re awake,” he said. “Good.”
We looked at each other for a long time. My heart jumped in my chest when I met his eyes—even in his anger, he stirred something inside me.
“We must talk,” Kassian said. His jaw flexed, and I could see a vein beating in his neck. He was agitated.
I waited.
His eyes cut to the windows. “Unfortunately, the escape we had planned before you took matters into your own hands is no longer going to be possible.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, shocked.
“I mean that unless you can think of another way out, you’re stuck here inside the city for the time being.”
A tiny tendril of panic climbed my spine even as I told myself this was a good thing. It bought me more time to convince Kassian that he should leave with me.
Foolishly, when I called for him to take me as his mate, I’d thought maybe he would have left with me tonight. Maybe he would have seen the truth—that we needed to be together, far away from here.
“I… Thank you for telling me,” I said.
“Of course.” He was frosty, remote. Almost as if we were strangers.
Was this how it was to be from now on?
“That is all I came to say,” he said.
When he left, I lay back down on the bed and put my hands over my eyes.
I’d have to find some way to get in touch with Snow.
If anyone could help me, she could.
CHAPTER TWO
I TRIED TO sleep again as dawn crept through the windows and illuminated the cavernous bedroom, but my mind was too beleaguered with worries and plans to let me rest. Still, I stayed beneath the covers as long as I could, curled up in a fetal position, trying to drum hope into my aching heart.
Finally, when my stomach was growling with hunger, I sat up and pushed the heavy, luxurious blankets aside.
The door to the bedroom opened. My pulse stumbled.
Kassian again? Perhaps returned to apologize for his cold fury?
No.
As it turned out, the arrival wasn’t my new mate, but a Sworn my father’s age who walked with a limp.
“Ollan,” I said.
He bowed. “My lady. I hope you slept well?”
The full import of what I’d done was only now beginning to hit me. I hadn’t married Kassian; I’d married Vixor Rae, the dread Silver Wolf. I was now the wife of the most fearsome Sworn in the kingdom.
Ollan seemed to take my silence as confusion.
“My lady,” he said. “I am here to assist you this morning in any way that I can, and to inform you that Lord Vixor has been called away unexpectedly.”
“Called away?”
But Kassian had been with here only hours previously. He hadn’t said anything…
But of course not. He was furious with me.
“A mission for the Alpha,” Ollan explained.
A hollow place opened up inside me.
Gone.
I had been successful last night, but I’d increased my number of enemies, and there couldn’t be a Sworn in the city who hadn’t heard of me by now. I’d humiliated Kryf, enraged Mother Shade. And now, I must walk the tightrope that was my false marriage to the Silver Wolf, lest the Alpha suspect me for what I was. All while I persuaded Kassian to come with me.
I laid that aside. One thing at a time.
“Where is Dog?”
“Your pet will be brought to you today. She has been well cared for and is forming friendships with the kitchen boys as we speak, I think. They were all eager to rub her belly and feed her treats this morning.”
I nodded. My thoughts strayed back to Kassian.
“How can I be of assistance to you, my lady?” Ollan’s voice was soft, empathetic.
I wasn’t sure exactly how much I could trust him. Kassian obviously did—Ollan had been part of our secret practice sessions, orchestrating the bringing of food for me, and other things—but I didn’t know what he knew about me, or Kassian, or how loyal he was to the Sworn and the Alpha.
“Who exactly are you?” I asked, studying him.
Ollan’s mouth slid upwards. “A fair question. I am Vixor’s personal man-servant. He trusts me completely,” he added. “As can you.”
“But… why are you not a soldier? If I’m allowed to ask,” I added. I hoped I wasn’t being rude.
Ollan’s smiled again, but there was bitterness in it. “My leg, which you must have noticed by now, has disqualified me. I was not supposed to have been allowed to turn, even, and I did so against my father’s wishes. He disowned me for it.”
I didn’t understand the intricacies of Sworn culture when it came to such matters, but it sounded like a painful situation for him. “I’m sorry,” I said, and I meant it.
“Vixor and I became friends when he was barely more than a boy,” he said. “When I was disowned, he found a place for me. He always has. I would die for him.”