The chanting pounded in Dia’s ears like war drums. “Pick one. Pick one. Pick one.
”
She stared down at the two men kneeling on the auction stage, both bloodied from the guards’ rough handling. One would live. One would die. And she would be the one to choose.
Dia had managed to avoid the slave auctions for twenty-three years. Today, her luck had run out. Her father, the king, had forced her to attend, and her sister Fana had eagerly pushed her into the spotlight. “Go on, sister,” Fana had whispered, her green eyes bright with amusement.
“Pick one. ”
But then her father’s voice had turned her blood to ice. “I’ll spare one for you. But I will not keep a second in the palace.
Too much risk. So pick which one lives, daughter, and which one dies. ”
The dark-haired man with the striking blue eyes had been locked on her since the moment he was dragged onto the stage. His companion, golden-haired and built like a warrior, had spat curses in a language she didn’t understand.
Then the golden-haired one lifted his head and his voice carried across the silent hall. “It doesn’t matter which one of us dies today, human king. Your tyranny ends. ”
Her father’s face purpled.
Before he could speak, Fana laughed. “Oh, I like this one. I’d keep him. He’d be much more fun to break.
”
The king nodded slowly. “This one then,” he gestured to the golden-haired man. “Kill the other. ”
“No.
” The word tore from Dia’s throat before she could stop it. The hall fell silent. “I’ll take them both,” she said, forcing her voice cold as winter ice. “I’ve never been interested in breaking a man before, but I thought it might amuse me to break two beasts instead.
Surely that proves my strength better than one. ”
The crowd murmured, intrigued. Her father’s suspicion melted into something almost proud. “Very well.
Both slaves to the princess. ”
Relief flooded her so suddenly she felt dizzy. An attendant led her through the winding corridors beneath the auction house. When they reached the preparation chamber, both men were being bound by guards with weapons drawn.
The golden-haired one was still struggling. The dark-haired one stood beside him, and Dia’s breath caught. Something was wrong. There was a glassiness to his pale eyes, and when a guard jerked his chains, his balance wavered before he caught himself.
“Hector,” the golden-haired one said, low and urgent. “Brother, you need to—”
A guard backhanded him. “Silence. ”
When the dark-haired man’s gaze landed on Dia, she felt it like a touch.
But she could see the fever brightness in his eyes now, the tremor in his hands. He was ill. “What would you like us to do with them, Your Highness? ” an attendant asked.
Before she could answer, the dark-haired man swayed more noticeably. His hand shot to the wall, and then his eyes rolled back, and he collapsed. “Hector! ” the golden-haired one lunged, chains snapping taut.
Dia crossed the chamber without thinking. “Don’t touch him. I’ll take him to my chambers. I’ll use his wounds against him, and perhaps I’ll learn a thing or two about shifter constitution.
”
The golden-haired one’s voice cracked with fury and fear. “Get your hands off him, you monster. ”
Dia looked up, trying to convey with her eyes what she could not say: I’m going to help him. Please understand.
But he only looked more furious. “We’ll break this one for you in the meantime, princess,” a guard said. “No,” Dia stood. “It’s up to me to break him, not you.
”
Fana appeared in the doorway. “Don’t start with two at once. It’ll be too much for you. ” She turned to the guards.
“Take this one to the cells. ”
“Keep him locked up,” Dia said, forcing steel into her voice. “But don’t hurt him. ”
Fana raised an elegant eyebrow.
“I want to break him myself,” Dia scrambled. “I said I would. ”
Her sister softened at once. “That’s very brave of you.
”
As the guards dragged the golden-haired man out, he looked back at his fallen friend. “Hector, I’ll come for you. Just hold on. ”
Then he was gone.
Dia’s chambers felt different with an unconscious wolf shifter sprawled across the floor. The moment the door closed, she dropped to her knees beside him. His fever was dangerously high. She ran for water, lifted his head, got a few sips into him.
Then she began unlacing his torn trousers, her hands clumsy. She had never undressed a man before, but this was life and death. There, just beneath his ribs on the left, was a wound she had almost missed. Dark and seeping, the flesh around it angry and swollen.
“I’m no healer,” she told him, her voice breaking. “I’m sorry. I’ll do my best. ”
Hours passed.
Cool cloths, more water, fresh poultices. Nothing helped. If anything, he worsened. She was pressing a fresh cloth to his forehead when his hand shot up and caught her wrist.
His eyes had opened, striking blue, but unfocused now, glazed with fever. “Who are you? ” His voice was barely a whisper. “I’m trying to help you.
”
His eyes searched her face. Then something flickered there and his grip tightened, desperate. “I know you,” he breathed. “No,” she whispered, even as her hand covered his.
“We’ve never met. ”
But his thumb stroked across her cheekbone. “I know you. I’ve always known you.
”
Then his eyes rolled back, his hand fell away, and he was unconscious again. Dia did not sleep that night. By gray light, she had made her decision. She could not save him alone.
The wound had gone bad. She needed someone who had stood in battle beside this man, who would know what poison had been left in his side. She needed the golden-haired one. But the servants reported to her sister, and her sister had ordered him to the cells.
If Dia breathed the golden man’s name to an attendant, Fana would know. So she would not ask quietly. She would demand him in front of everyone. Her father sat ruddy with wine, Fana at his right.
When Dia entered, for once his eyes did not slide past her. “I find I am bored, father. My new pet has been a disappointment. But I bought two, and tonight I have an appetite for the other.
”
Her father barked a laugh. “There is the spirit I have waited twenty years to see. ”
They brought the golden-haired man in chains. Four guards, and even four did not make it look easy.
He came through the doors with his head high. Then his eyes found Dia, and the contempt turned to something far worse. *I am on your side*, she wanted to scream. *Please understand.
*
She lifted her chin and let her painted mouth curve. “There he is, my fierce one. ”
The guards forced him to his knees a few feet from her chair. She rose, took the chain at his collar, and wound it once around her hand.
“Touch me again,” he said very low, “and I will take your hand off at the wrist. ”
She made herself smile. “He still has some fight in him. I do prefer them with a little fight.
”
She tightened the chain, drawing his face up an inch, and lowered her voice. “Let us see how long it lasts. Kiss me. ”
Incredulity broke through his fury.
“What? ”
“You heard me. ”
She pulled the chain tighter and felt the absolute refusal in every line of him. He would die before he did it.
She leaned down close as though to murmur a last cruelty in his ear. “Please,” she murmured, “for your friend. He is alive, but I cannot save him alone. I am begging you.
”
She drew back. His eyes had changed, the fury still there, but behind it the first faint crack of doubt. And then he closed the distance and kissed her. It was careful and deliberate.
His mouth startlingly warm. His chained hands did not move. He kissed her in a way that looked to every watching soul like submission. It did not feel like submission.
Her eyes fell shut without her permission, heat rushing through her, sudden and shameful. The hall erupted in laughter and applause. “Well,” she turned to her father, amazed her voice worked. “I think I shall take this one to my chambers after all.
He shows promise. ”
Fana’s eyes flashed. For a long moment, Dia thought she would refuse. Then her sister smiled.
“As you wish, but do be careful. That one bites. ”
“I am counting on it,” Dia said, and led him out. She kept her spine straight all the way through the corridors, aware with every step of the enormous silent presence behind her.
She reached her chambers and drew him inside. “I am so sorry,” she said in a rush. “The kiss, the chain, the things I said. I had to.
I could not ask for you quietly. My sister had forbidden it. ”
He stared at her as though she had begun speaking a foreign tongue. Then his gaze moved past her to the man on the rug, dark hair clinging to a fevered brow.
Everything in his face changed. “Hector. ”
He was across the room before she could speak, dropping to his knees with a sound half a name and half a sob. “I’m here.
I’ve got you. ”
He pressed two fingers beneath Hector’s jaw, found the pulse, and his shoulders shuddered with relief and terror both. “It is a wound beneath his ribs,” she said. “It has gone bad.
I do not know what shifters need, what blade did this, whether there was poison. ” Her voice broke. “He woke once. Only once.
”
The golden-haired man looked at her across his dying friend’s body. “You truly are trying to save him,” he said. “Yes. I swear it.
Will you help me, please? ”
For a long moment, he simply looked at her. Then he turned to Hector, his hands going to the bandage with the swift, sure confidence of a man who had done this on a hundred battlefields. The poison had a name.
The golden one, whose name was Ajax, gave it to her. “Nightshade,” he said. “They’ve blooded their blades with it. We’re not saving him by draining the wound.
We’re only buying him time. ”
“Then what saves him? ”
“An antidote. Any alchemist worth the name would have it.
Of course, any alchemist in this palace would sooner spit on a dying wolf than cure one. ”
“I’ll get it,” Dia said. He studied her a long moment, then huffed something almost like a laugh and turned back to Hector. “Get some rest, princess.
I’ll watch him. ”
She did not rest. She woke to sunlight and a new problem. Two maids came each morning to tend her fire.
She sat bolt upright. “Ajax, the maids, they come in the mornings. They’ll be here any moment. ”
He raised a golden brow from where he sat against the bed.
“All right. ”
“And when a noble woman buys a slave like you, they assume you are not for breaking. That you are for… for her bed.
”
A slow, delighted grin spread across his face. “They think I’m your bed slave? ”
“And we have to make them go on thinking it. ”
“Yes,” she groaned.
“Will you stop enjoying this? ”
“No,” he said. His eyes traveled over her. “The question is whether you can pull it off.
Forgive me, but you don’t smell like a woman much acquainted with a good time. ”
“You cannot smell—”
“I’m a wolf. I can smell a racing heart. Yours is racing now.
And not because you’ve ever once had a man on his knees for you and meant it. ”
“I can do it,” she said. It came out high and fast. “Breathe, princess.
”
The latch rattled. Ajax moved, fluid and certain, sinking to his knees at her feet. His golden head bowed, one hand circling her ankle through her skirts. He turned his face up with such open, hungry devotion that her breath caught.
“My lady,” he murmured, his thumb stroking the bone of her ankle. “Tell me what you want. ”
The maids had frozen in the doorway. Dia found the laugh still under her skin and let it tilt her mouth into something almost smug.
“Later,” she said. “I am not finished with you yet. ”
One maid made a small sound. They busied themselves with the fire, cheeks pink, and within minutes they had fled, whispering.
The instant the door closed, Ajax looked up with the most enormous, wicked grin she had ever seen. “Later, I’m not finished with you yet,” he repeated, savoring it. “Not bad, princess. ”
“Do not,” she said, pressing cool hands to her burning face, “ever speak of this again.
”
Getting the tincture, Ajax decided, meant bargaining, not buying. “Find a maid who runs errands outside the palace. Offer her an evening with me. She fetches your tincture, no royal name attached.
”
“You would do that. ”
“I’d do considerably worse,” he said seriously, looking at his friend. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for him. Nothing.
” The grin flickered back, gentler. “Besides, I’m told I’m very charming. ”
They staged it for the afternoon maid, Pel. When they heard her footsteps, Ajax pulled Dia onto the bed, and then somehow she was straddling him, his huge, warm body bare to the waist beneath hers, the door opening.
“We have to make it believable,” he murmured, his hands settling at her waist. “Breathe. You’re doing fine. ”
She was acutely aware of the heat of him, the hard muscle under her hands.
He looked up with that hungry devotion. But they were close now, and somewhere in the looking, the performance and the thing itself blurred. His thumb moved against her waist. She did not think it was for the maid.
The door clicked shut. She started to climb off. “Wait,” he said. His hands held her.
“She’s still in the doorway. Stay a moment. ”
So she stayed and felt his heart beating under her palm, and she did not look at his face because she did not trust what her own would do. The tincture came two days later, and it worked.
They gave Hector the antidote at dusk. Ajax cradled his friend’s head in one massive arm with a gentleness that broke something open in Dia’s chest. “He’ll live,” Ajax said quietly. “Thanks to you.
”
“Thanks to us,” she said. And because there was nothing left to do but wait, they talked. “Why does your king hate us so much? ” Ajax asked.
“He was not always like this,” she said. “When I was small, he was kind. He read to me. He kept an injured fox we found in the gardens and told me a king’s first duty was mercy.
” Her voice wavered. “And then he changed so slowly I almost did not see it. It is as though something reached inside him and left a stranger wearing his face. ”
“We’re not what you’ve been told,” Ajax said after a moment.
He looked at Hector. “We’d die for the ones who are ours. Especially him. He carries the whole weight of our people and never asks to put it down.
” He stopped. “He nearly died coming here. My prin—”
Dia looked at him. *Prince*, she thought.
*He nearly said, Prince. *
“I know he is worth saving,” she said quietly. “Both of you. Which is why when he can run, I am going to get you both out of here.
”
Ajax went still. “You’d do that. ”
“I would. ”
He had shifted closer without her seeing.
“Most people know what’s right and do nothing because it’s hard. But you—” He leaned in. Her eyes drifted closed. His hand came to her cheek, his thumb brushing her jaw, and she tilted her face toward his.
“And what? ” said a voice like cracking ice. “What is happening here? ”
They sprang apart.
Hector was awake, his pale blue eyes moving between them with a cold, dawning fury. Ajax broke first, scrambling to Hector’s side. “You’re awake. You’re really awake.
Gods, Hector, you’ve been burning up for days, I thought—”
“I asked a question,” Hector said. “It’s not— she’s been helping us, Hector. You’d have been dead days ago if she hadn’t. ”
Hector turned his head and looked at Dia for the first time since he had woken.
There was nothing of the auction stage in it now, none of the confusion, none of the desperate, fevered tenderness. He looked at her the way her father looked at the things he meant to be rid of. “Are you feeling better? ” she asked.
“Does your wound still pain you? I could change the dressing—”
“What do you want? ” Hector interrupted. Dia blinked.
“What? ”
“What do you want? Ajax may believe you. He’s always been easily led by a pretty face, but I am not him.
No one does anything for nothing, especially not your kind. So tell me plainly, princess. What is it you want? ”
“Nothing,” she said.
“It just— it seemed like the right thing to do. ”
“The right thing,” Hector said, as though the words were absurd. “Enough,” Ajax said. He turned to Dia.
“Sweetheart, could we—” He stopped. “Could we have a moment? The two of us to talk alone. ”
“Of course,” Dia said, glancing between them.
“You’re going to leave two enemy shifters alone together in a room while neither of us is so much as bound? ”
Ajax’s grin came back. “She will,” he said. “Because she’s nice.
Have you heard of nice? It’s a thing some people are. ”
“You are entitled to your privacy,” Dia told Hector quietly. Hector’s gaze snapped back to her.
“And would you say we’re also entitled to our freedom, princess? ”
“Yes,” Dia said, “and I am going to give it to you. Both of you. ”
For just a moment, something flickered behind the ice in Hector’s eyes.
Then his jaw set. “Leave us. ”
Dia could hardly wander the palace at that hour, so she stepped into the adjoining dressing room. “Cannot believe you,” Hector said.
“I’m out for two seconds, and I wake to find you tangled up with the human princess like a lovesick pup. ”
“I was trying to save your life. You were dying, Hector. Do you understand that?
And Dia— she’s been bleeding herself dry to keep you alive. Why are you being like this? ”
“Why am I? Are you serious right now?
Have you forgotten why we’re here? ”
“Of course I haven’t forgotten,” Ajax said, quieter now, almost stung. “Then keep your focus and stop messing around with the first warm body that smiles at you. It’s beneath you.
”
When Ajax spoke again, the swagger had drained entirely out of him. “Yes, Alpha. ” Then, recovering some of himself, “And you’re welcome, by the way. ”
“Ajax.
”
“No, truly, your gratitude is as always overwhelming. ”
“Fine. I’m grateful. Are you content?
”
“You don’t sound grateful. ”
“What? ”
“It was difficult getting that antidote. Required a great deal of personal sacrifice on my part.
”
There was a beat of silence. “You slept with some maid in exchange for it, didn’t you? ”
“No,” Ajax said immediately. A pause.
“Well. Maybe. ”
The silence that followed was so complete that Dia held her breath. Then, finally, stripped of all the ice, all the disdain, came a tone that she suspected very few people had ever been allowed to hear.
“Thank you. ”
“You’re welcome,” Ajax said softly. A pause. “Now.
Thank Dia. She’s obviously listening at the door. She’s far too nice to actually leave. ”
Dia clapped both hands over her mouth.
The days that followed were, Dia decided, the strangest of her entire life. She was a princess of the realm with two enormous wolf shifters living in her bedchamber. And there was the tension between the two wolves. Hector and Ajax circled each other with a low, constant friction.
Hector cold and withholding, Ajax needling him one second and going quiet and wounded the next. “You stare at him a great deal,” Ajax observed one evening. Dia startled. “I— no.
I am only checking whether the wound is healing well. ”
“Hmm. ” Ajax grinned. “Well enough for what, though, sweetheart?
Well enough to be your next bed slave? ”
Across the room, Hector’s head came up. His pale eyes found Dia’s and held them. The worst part was that she could not look away.
“No,” she croaked. “For the escape. So I know when he is strong enough to run. ”
“The escape?
” Ajax repeated, delighted. “Enough,” Hector growled low. Ajax’s grin widened. “I do not understand the two of you at all,” Dia said.
“No,” Ajax agreed cheerfully. “You don’t. ”
She woke that night with a dry throat. The room was washed in thin blue moonlight.
Ajax was asleep in the far corner, sprawled and dead to the world. She stepped around him toward the table where the water stood. She did not hear Hector move. One moment she was reaching for the carafe.
The next there was a hand around her wrist, her back met the wall, and Hector was there caging her. “What do you want? ” he said. “No performance, no audience, just you and me.
What do you really want from us? ”
“Nothing. I want to help you. ”
“Why?
”
“Because it is wrong, what is being done to your people. ” She lifted her chin. “Because I have watched it for years and hated it and been too frightened to do anything. And for once I can do something.
That is all. ”
Hector frowned. His pale eyes kept dropping against his will from her eyes to her mouth and back again. “Stop it,” he said.
“Stop what? ”
His thumb brushed across her lower lip, slow, disbelieving, as though his hand had stopped taking orders from the cold and furious part of him. Dia’s whole body went still and warm and trembling at once. For one suspended moment, they stood there.
He swayed toward her, and Dia’s eyes drifted closed. Then he wrenched himself back as though she had burned him. He let go of her wrist, stepped away. “Stay away from him,” Hector said.
“From who? ”
“Ajax. Whatever you’re playing at with him. Stop it.
I mean it, princess. ”
Then he turned, went back to his place on the floor, and lay down with his back to her. Dia stood against the wall for a long time. Dia had spent two days trying to think of a way to get them out.
The outer gates were locked at sundown, and two enormous men, however cleverly hooded, would be marked by every farmer and patrol from here to the border. Wolves, on the other hand, could run. “It is the collars,” she said. “Everything else I can imagine a way around.
If you could shift, you could be gone in a night. ”
“But the king keeps the key,” Hector said. “How would you know that? ”
“Because that is where I would keep it, if I were a tyrant who wanted no man to free his wolves.
”
“So we need the key off my father’s belt. Which means getting close to him,” Ajax said. Dia pressed her fingers against her eyelids. She did not know how.
Luckily, Fana swept into her chambers an hour later with an opportunity. “Sister,” she pressed a cool kiss to Dia’s cheek. “One begins to wonder if she has lost you to her new amusements. ”
“You were the one who told me a new slave required attention.
”
“I suppose so. ” Fana tilted her head. “Tell me something. Your golden pet spent an evening last week with a chambermaid named Pel.
And on that same day, little Pel paid a visit to the apothecary by the south gate and purchased the specific antidote to a particular blade poison. If I did not know you better, sister, I would think you were healing that wolf. ”
Dia’s mouth was very dry. “I wanted him alive.
He will die in his own time when I am done with him, not before. ”
Fana studied her for a long moment. “How very practical of you,” she murmured. “But this gossip cannot stand, my love.
Tonight we dine with father. You will bring both your slaves to court and let the whole hall see that their princess has not gone soft on her new amusements. ”
This was a test. If Dia flinched even once, Fana would know.
“Of course,” she said, and made it warm. “I would be delighted. ”
They got ready for dinner. They dressed her like a queen, the wolves in their collars.
She had to clip the chains to their throats herself and look them in the eyes while she did it. Ajax led her without comment, going to one knee and tilting his chin obediently. Hector was harder. He stood very still while she approached with the leash, his pale eyes never leaving her face.
He did not kneel. He waited, made her come to him, made her reach up to his throat to clip the lead in place, and his eyes the whole time were burning. “Princess,” he said, very low. Dia’s hands shook so badly she nearly dropped the chain.
“Don’t. Don’t make this harder than it has to be. ”
His jaw worked. Then he went slowly to his knees.
It looked like a king holding still beneath a coronation. The hall was full to the rafters by the time they entered. Word had spread: the princess and her two beasts at the king’s table. Dia walked between her wolves with the leashes wound around her hands, her face perfectly cold.
Her father waited at the high table with a cup in his hand and Fana at his right. “My daughter, how magnificent you look. Come, show me what you have brought. ”
She sat at his left.
Ajax knelt easily beside her chair. Hector knelt on her other side. When Hector shifted just slightly, his shoulder brushing her knee, the heat of him burned straight through her velvet skirts. Dia made herself smile at something her father said.
She settled her fingers in Hector’s dark hair and combed them slowly through the strands at his nape, and felt a long shudder move through him. His head tipped back barely into her hand. Heat bloomed low in her belly, sudden and shocking. “He has gone tame for you,” her father observed.
“After all that snarling at the auction. Remarkable. ”
“He has learned what pleases me,” Dia said, though it sounded breathless. Hector’s chained hand moved.
Slowly, hidden by the slope of the table, his fingers came to rest against her ankle, heavy and warm. She drew her fingers slowly from his hair and rested her hand against the side of his throat above the collar. She felt him swallow against her palm. Somewhere behind her, Fana had crossed to Ajax’s kneeling form.
“So, you’re the one keeping our chambermaids awake at night. ”
Ajax’s grin tipped up. “Famous, am I? ”
Her pale fingers brushed his chained ones.
“I should like to know what the kitchen maids find so compelling. ”
“Whenever Her Highness pleases. ”
There was something happening there, Fana’s silver voice and Ajax’s easy boldness. But Dia did not have the spare attention to track it, because Hector’s hand was moving up her leg.
“Dia,” her father said. She turned. He was looking at her strangely. The expansive warmth had drained from his face.
His eyes had gone flat and glassy. She had seen this before—him staring at nothing, lips moving around words not his own. The episodes never lasted long. “Father,” she said softly.
“Father, are you well? ”
Hector shifted, a small deliberate movement, his shoulder brushing her father’s chair. Her father’s glassy gaze drifted toward the movement. *Now.
*
She leaned in, pressing the cup gently into her father’s hand, her hip brushing his side, and her fingers, under cover of pouring, passed briefly against the second ring at his belt. The key was small, cold. It slid free with a softness that astonished her. “Drink, father, please.
”
She made her excuse and rose and led her pets off the dais and across the great hall with every eye in the kingdom on her back. Hidden in the folds of her skirt was a small, cold iron key. Dia pressed her hand on the panel behind her father’s library, and the wall swung inward on hidden hinges. Her father had shown her the passage once when she was nine.
“Well,” Ajax murmured, “you’re full of surprises. ”
“After you,” Dia said. The passage went down past the cellars. She stumbled on the uneven steps.
Hector’s hand caught her elbow. Then the moment her foot landed, he let go. They came up into the old orchard through a hatch beneath an apple tree. This was goodbye.
“Go,” Dia whispered. Ajax turned to her. Hector did not. He had already moved into the shadow of the trees.
“Hector,” her voice cracked on his name. He didn’t turn. “Hey. ” A warm hand came to her cheek, turning her face away from him.
“Thank you,” Ajax said softly. “There are not many like you in the world, Dia. ”
Her eyes filled. The tears spilled anyway.
“And you are not what they say you are either,” she whispered. “I see that now. I wish I could do more. ”
“You have done more than enough.
”
Then he kissed her, slow and warm and achingly real. And Dia let herself have it. Let herself pretend just for these stolen seconds that she wasn’t losing them both. She pulled her mouth from Ajax’s with a shocked sound and turned her head.
Hector stood at the edge of the trees, his expression carefully neutral, but his hands were clenched into fists, and something in his pale eyes blazed. In her chest, in that opened door place, the hurt was deafening, as though she were feeling his emotions, impossible as that was. “Ajax,” Hector said, too calm. “We are leaving now.
”
Ajax let her go, stepping back reluctantly. “Right. Sorry, Alpha. ” He looked at her one last time.
“Take care of yourself, sweetheart. ”
Then they were gone. She didn’t remember climbing back down through the passage. When she closed the door to her chambers, the room felt enormous.
She sank onto the edge of the bed and pressed a hand to that place in her chest where the pain had bloomed. *What was that? *
A scream cut the air. Her head jerked up.
Then another, closer, and beneath it, the long rolling note of the alarm horn. She crossed to the window on legs that felt like water. Down on the southern terrace, fire bloomed against the dark. By its light, she saw guards scrambling in disarray, and among them, something larger.
Several somethings larger. Wolves. Dia ran. Bodies littered the floor.
She ducked behind a tapestry in the long gallery. Through the fabric, she could hear the wolves coming closer. They didn’t need to see her. They could smell her.
The tapestry was wrenched aside. Dia’s scream died in her throat as a hand fisted in her hair. “Little human. ” The accent bent her own tongue into something feral.
“Do you know what your father did to my sister? ”
“Please,” she whispered. “I didn’t do anything. ”
His grip tightened, forcing her head back until her neck was exposed.
She felt his breath against her throat, the scrape of teeth against her skin. A snarl tore through the corridor. It was not a sound a man made. Deep and resonant and absolutely furious.
The shifter froze. Then something enormous slammed into him from the side. He was gone, torn off her. She crumpled to the floor.
When she forced her eyes open, Hector had the shifter by the throat, pinned against the wall with one hand. His pale eyes blazed with a fury so cold it burned. And when his lips pulled back, Dia saw fangs. “Vakran,” he said, low and terrible.
“Alpha,” the man choked. “Alpha, I did not know. ”
“Look at her. Look at what you have done.
”
Vakran sagged, his head dropping. “My prince, forgive me. I did not know she was yours. ”
“On your knees.
” Vakran went down in a way Dia had never seen a grown man go down. “She is to be unharmed. If one of you even looks at her wrong, I will have your throat myself. Do you understand?
”
“Yes, my prince. ”
“Go. ”
Vakran went on all fours, his body rippling and reforming midstride. Then Hector turned to her, dropping to his knees, his hands hovering just shy of touching.
“Dia, look at me. ”
She was shaking so hard her teeth knocked together. “Where did he hurt you? ”
She couldn’t reply.
His thumb came up and traced feather-light the place on her scalp where Vakran’s hand had been. “I am sorry. No one touches you again tonight. I will kill them first.
”
Something in her chest loosened. “You came,” she said. It came out very small. His eyes closed for a heartbeat.
“Did you think I could walk away and leave you here? The moment the attack started, I felt your fear. ”
“How? ” Dia whispered.
“I cannot explain it. ” He breathed. “But I would burn this kingdom to ash before I let anyone hurt you. Do you understand?
”
He brought her to the lower council chamber. Inside was her father, bound to a chair, his crown on the table beside him. His face was empty, glassy, slack. His lips moved faintly around words she could not hear.
“Father. ” She broke from Hector and ran to him. “Father, please look at me. ”
Footsteps behind her.
The wolves dropped to one knee in unison. The man who entered was tall and lean and dark-haired, with the same pale eyes and hard jaw as Hector. Ajax came in behind him. “My son,” the older man said, clasping Hector’s shoulder.
“Thanks to that passage, we took the inner walls without losing a wolf. ”
Dia’s stomach went out from under her. Through the passage from her childhood, she had saved them and opened her father’s house to an army. “Addis.
” The alpha king turned to her father. “Look at me. ” Her father’s lips moved. No sound came.
“Do you know me, brother? Twenty winters ago, we rode against the snakes together. You stood as godfather to my son. And then one spring you closed your gates against us, and the next you took the first of my wolves in chains.
And you never once told me what we did to deserve it. ” His voice cracked. “Speak, Addis. Tell me why.
”
Her father did not speak. The alpha king looked down at him. Then he drew his sword. “Please,” Dia screamed.
“He is not even here. He cannot answer you. ”
“Your father has signed the death warrants of seven thousand of my people. Whatever has been done to him does not undo what his hand has done.
”
Ajax’s arms came around her from behind. He lifted her gently away. “Close your eyes, sweetheart. ”
She closed her eyes.
She heard the sword. A single clean stroke. Dia made a sound she did not recognize. Her knees gave out, and Ajax took her weight without a word.
She wept for her dead father and for the father she had lost a very long time before him. Dia awoke with her hands bound. The sash of one of her own scarves had been wound around her wrists with a careful tightness that did not bite the skin. Another, looser, kept her ankles to the bedpost.
A third had been pulled across her mouth. The palace seemed very quiet. Then the latch clicked, and Ajax came in. “Hey, sweetheart.
” He closed the door behind him and crossed to the bed. She turned her face away. “I know. I’d be furious with me, too.
” He did not untie her. “I had orders. The bindings, the gag— that’s the alpha king’s order, not mine. Not Hector’s.
”
There’s something else I owe you the truth on. He drew a slow breath. “Hector and I let ourselves be taken at the auction. The whole point was to learn the palace from the inside out, to find a way for the army to come through.
”
Dia closed her eyes. She had known. Of course, she had known. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” Ajax said.
The door opened. The Alpha King came in. Hector came in behind him. Hector’s eyes went to her at once—to the bindings, to the gag, to the wet on her face.
The Alpha King’s voice was mild. “The girl is a prisoner of war. ”
He crossed to the foot of her bed. “Your sister has declared herself queen of your kingdom.
As of dawn this morning, she has raised an army out of the southern provinces, and she has sent terms north on a fast rider. She wants you back. ”
Dia’s eyes widened. “Why are you surprised?
” the Alpha King asked. “I am not,” she replied. The Alpha King broke the silence. “Tell me about her.
The new queen. ”
“Small,” Dia said. “Very beautiful. ”
“Very cunning,” Ajax cut in.
“Subdued,” Hector added. “It is as though she does not smell like anything. ”
The Alpha King was silent a beat too long. “Princess.
Your father only had one daughter the last time I came to this palace, and your mother had already passed by then. ” A frown gathered between his pale brows. “This would make your new queen a bastard child. ”
Dia’s chin lifted before she could stop it.
“Fana is not a bastard. My father adopted her officially. She is my sister. ”
“Adopted?
Some random child. Why would he do that? ”
“My father loved her. ”
“Child.
” The Alpha King interrupted. “Your father was a king. A king knows the intricacies of succession. He would not have adopted some random orphan, made her a ward of the crown, yes.
Taken her in, yes. But to put her in the line of inheritance, to make her your equal in his will— that is not a thing a king does for love. ”
He began to pace. “It makes sense she was adopted, though.
They do not look very much alike. ”
He pointed to a painting on the back wall—the two of them, Fana and Dia, side by side in a garden. “Is that her? ” he asked.
“The sister. ”
“Yes,” Hector said. The Alpha King said a word in another tongue—a short, low, ugly word. He turned and looked at Dia, and there was a kind of grim, sorrowful comprehension on his face.
“Yours have hunted mine,” he said quietly. “And yet your father adopts a shifter child. ”
Dia stared at him for a heartbeat. “Fana isn’t— of course she is,” the Alpha King said.
“I knew her mother. She looks exactly like her, down to the green of the eye. ”
“I do not understand,” Dia whispered. “Your father was a good man,” the Alpha King said.
“But the line between good and broken is thinner than most men know. ” He straightened. “Hector. Ajax.
With me. Now. ”
“Father,” Hector said, looking at Dia. “Now, my son.
We have miscounted the board badly. The girl on this bed is not the prize. She is the bait. The new queen is not riding north to rescue her sister.
She is riding north to draw us out where she can finish what her mother started. ”
“Is that clear? ”
“Yes, Alpha,” Hector said, very low. He looked at Dia the way he had looked at her across the orchard last night when the door in her chest had opened.
“I will come back,” he said. It was barely audible. Then he was gone, and Ajax was gone, and the door closed behind them with a small dry click. They brought her to the throne room at dusk.
It was her father’s throne room, and it was not. The banners were torn down. Wolves lined the walls, and her father’s great carved chair stood empty. “Princess,” the alpha king’s voice carried.
“You asked me this morning what you did not understand. I will tell you. “Twenty years ago, there was a clan of snake shifters in the south. Their queens were born with a gift in the blood.
Influence. They could not force a man to act against his will. But they could lean on him—a whisper here, a doubt there, drop upon drop—until he could no longer tell which thoughts were his own. ” His pale eyes were steady.
“We went to war with them. Your father rode beside me. We scattered them. We believed we had ended the line.
We were wrong. “The queen had a daughter. She survived. She found her way north to the one house best placed to take her revenge.
The house of the human king who had helped destroy her people. ”
Dia gaped. “She came to him as a tragic motherless child. And he took her in.
And then slowly, drop upon drop, she began to lean. ” His voice did not rise. “The paranoia, the cruelty, the war on my people, who had been your father’s allies— none of it was his. It was hers, worn on his face.
“I asked him last night to look at me and name me, and he could not, because there was almost nothing of him left to do it. ” He sighed. “The glassy eyes, the empty repeating— that was not illness, child. That was the working showing through the cracks.
”
Dia closed her eyes. *He did not stop loving me*, she whispered silently. She bent over her bound hands and wept silently, the tears falling on cold stone. The Alpha King let her have a moment.
Only a moment. “Which brings us to the war riding toward us. Your sister has named herself queen and demanded you back. She wants the war.
The cleanest way I have to deny it to her is to send her back your head. If you are dead, she has no banner. ” He drew breath. “I do not enjoy it, but I am a king.
I am sorry, child. ”
“No. ” It was Ajax. He stepped from the line and went to one knee on the steps.
“Sire, give her to me. Let me claim her. A claimed mate of the Betal line is not a prisoner of war. She is Pack under our protection.
”
“No,” the Alpha King said. “You are fond of her. You would die for her, I don’t doubt. But fondness is not a fated bond.
”
“Enough,” Hector said, coming down the steps past his father. He knelt beside Dia and took her bound wrists in both his hands, beginning to work the knot loose with his thumbs. “Hector,” the Alpha King said, “what are you doing? ”
“Killing her is the small move.
Dia is not a pretext. She is the true heir— the only trueborn child of King Addis. You have the rightful queen of the south standing against the usurper who poisoned her father. ”
“She will see it coming.
The instant we name your princess our ally, Fana names her a traitor. A wolf-bewitched puppet who opened her own father’s gates to the enemy. ”
Dia flinched. Hector did not let go of her hands.
“Then we make it more than an alliance,” he said. The room went quiet. “A claim is not a banner she can tear down with a clever word. A claim is sacred.
Dia is mine, and I am hers. And there is not a wolf or man or snake alive who can say otherwise. ”
“No, I suppose not,” the Alpha King said softly. “If it is true.
”
Hector turned and looked at Dia. “It’s true. ” His pale eyes were bare. Everything he had spent a fortnight burying was simply there in them, naked and unguarded.
“I felt it the moment I saw her in chains. I told myself she was the enemy, that it was a trick. I walked out on her without looking at her because I did not trust myself to look. ” His voice roughened.
“And then I felt her in danger from half a palace away, and I knew— she is my mate. There is no part of it that is a lie. ”
Dia’s breath shook out of her. She felt him—the terror and the want—and she felt how true it was.
It poured through her, warm and undeniable. “I claim you, Dia,” he said. “If you’ll have me. ”
As though there had ever been a choice.
As though her body had not turned toward his in the dark every night this past week without her leave. As though she had not felt, since the moment their eyes met across a stinking auction floor, like a compass needle that had finally found its north. “Yes,” she said. Her eyes went just once, helplessly, to Ajax kneeling on the steps.
He gave her the smallest nod. “Go on, sweetheart. ”
She turned back to Hector and smiled. “Yes.
I will have you. ”
The door in her chest and the door in his swung wide in the same instant, and something passed between them that had no words. The Alpha King let out a long breath. “A bond cannot be denied.
Not by me. ” He looked at the two of them. “It legitimizes her. It puts the true queen of the south on our side by sacred law.
You have given me my better move, Hector. I will take it. ”
And on the cold floor of her father’s ruined throne room, Hector drew Dia up into his arms and held her the way he had held her in the corridor—hard, both arms, his face in her hair. Ajax watched them, and the look on his face was glad and grieving at once.
Glad for his brother and grieving for himself. Dia, her cheek against Hector’s hammering heart, reached one hand toward him. He came. He folded his big hand around hers and did not let go.
And the three of them stood together in the wreckage. Dia awoke to a cold hand stroking her hair. For one warm, half-dreaming moment, she thought it was Hector. Then she smelled something sweet that did not belong in their tent, and her eyes flew open.
Fana sat on the edge of the cot. “There you are. I have been so frightened. I have not slept since they took you.
I raised half the South in a fortnight, Dia. ”
Dia’s throat closed. Then she noticed that beside her, Hector did not stir. He lay deep and still, his breathing slow.
Cold dread closed over her heart. “What did you do to him, Fana? ”
“Nothing he will not wake from. ” Fana’s hand found Dia’s face.
“Come home with me. I have a horse, a clear road south, a kingdom that is yours. ” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I cannot lose you too.
I have lost everyone. Mother, father— everyone I have ever loved. ”
Dia took her sister’s shaking hand in both of hers. “I cannot,” she whispered.
Fana flinched. “Because of them? They are monsters, Dia. They killed our father.
”
“Our father was gone long before they came. ” She made herself say it. “I know what you did to him, Fana. I know what you are.
I know about your mother and the war. ”
She watched her sister go white. “He destroyed my people,” Fana implored. “I was five.
I watched them burn. The wolves did that, Dia. ”
“They are not monsters,” Dia said. “I know it is the hardest thing in the world for you to hear, but it does not have to be war.
” She pressed her sister’s hand to her wet cheek. “You loved father— the real one, the one who took you in, who read to us, who was kind before either of us understood what your powers did to him. I know you loved him and his kindness. Stop chasing war, Fana, and choose kindness instead.
”
For a long moment, her sister was utterly still. And behind the green of her eyes, Dia saw the frightened child who had decided revenge was the only safe thing left. “At least talk to me,” Dia said. “Meet with me.
Let us see if there is a way to peace. Please. I am still your sister. ”
Fana looked at her a long time.
Then her gaze drifted past her to the sleeping man on the cot and the way Dia’s body curved protectively in front of him. “You love him? ” she said. “Yes.
” It was the easiest word Dia had ever spoken. “With everything I am. I love him. He is mine.
”
Something in Fana’s face went soft and sad and almost glad. Then it changed. All at once, the grief tucked away like a blade going back in its sheath. She tilted her head, and her red-rimmed eyes lit with something almost playful.
“And the other one? ” she asked, light as anything, as though they were girls again, trading secrets behind a curtain. “What of him? ”
Dia frowned.
“What other one? ”
“The golden one, unconscious by your tent. ” Fana’s smile curved. “Don’t be coy, sister.
I have eyes. ”
Dia’s stomach dropped. “Ajax— did you hurt him? Fana, did you hurt him?
”
“Well, I did have to get past him, didn’t I? ” Fana snorted. “Relax. He sleeps.
He is far too pretty to kill quickly, that one. ”
“The meeting,” Dia pressed. “Will you come? ”
Fana rose and drew her cloak around her.
“For you,” she said very low. “I will come. ”
Then she was gone, and Dia stood in the empty tent with her face wet and her heart in pieces, grieving her sister. She went out.
Ajax lay sprawled in the grass, fast asleep, entirely unharmed. She dropped down beside him and pressed her hand to his warm cheek and breathed. Neither he nor Hector would wake for hours, so she sat between them in the gray hour before dawn and waited. There was still a war.
Still the old wound behind Fana’s eyes. But there was hope. And for the first time in her life, Dia did not feel alone. Some bonds were fated.
Some were chosen. Hers were only beginning.
