Chapter 3

Vianca Ironridge moved into the stone fortress the next day.

I stood at the window and watched Cyrus walk to the stone steps at the settlement gate himself and carry her luggage down from the pack horse. When he bent over, Vianca reached out and smoothed his wind-tousled hair, her fingertips trailing lightly across his temple.

What a beautiful scene.

Vianca was the daughter of the second-in-command of the neighboring Ironridge Clan — an Omega. The two clans had been negotiating this alliance for a full six months.

She was very beautiful. When she talked, she always wore a sweet smile that made it hard to feel any hostility toward her. Standing beside Cyrus, they really did look right for each other.

Such a lovely picture. So why did seeing it make my chest hurt so badly?

On the first night after she moved in, Vianca tied on an apron and stood in the stone fortress's kitchen.

"Aelia, let me make you something good to eat!"

When she said this, her eyes curved into two crescent moons.

I had no reason to refuse.

An hour later, the stone table was covered with dishes.

The garlic-roasted deer ribs were heaped with spice ground from Silver Fir pollen. The bone broth was floating with Silver Fir leaf fragments. Even the flatbreads were spread with a Silver Fir honey glaze.

A full table. All Silver Fir.

I looked at that table, and my heart dropped.

I had a severe allergy to Silver Fir pollen. Cyrus knew this better than anyone.

When I was fourteen, at a clan feast, I had accidentally eaten dried meat dusted with Silver Fir powder. Within ten minutes, my whole body was convulsing violently, my breathing failing, and I collapsed to the ground in seizures. Cyrus had been handling a border conflict when word reached him. He returned with blood still on his hide armor — someone's blood, I never knew whose — and nearly knocked over an apprentice healer at the entrance to the medicine tent.

After that day, he had Silver Fir antidote vials stocked in every corner of the stone fortress. On the kitchen wall, carved by his own hand in letters cut deeply into the stone, were the words: AELIA — NO SILVER FIR.

Were those words still on the wall?

I didn't know.

"Come sit down," Vianca called to me, her face full of expectant warmth.

Cyrus sat beside her and glanced at the dishes on the table. "You worked hard," he said to Vianca, approval clear in his voice.

Then he looked at me.

"Aelia. Sit down and eat."

"I—" I opened my mouth.

"Don't make a scene," he cut me off, a faint trace of impatience creasing his brow. "Vianca spent all afternoon on this. Don't waste her effort."

I looked at him.

He had actually forgotten.

Or maybe he hadn't forgotten. Maybe, with Vianca there, my allergy was simply no longer worth remembering.

Vianca cheerfully piled a piece of deer rib coated in Silver Fir spice into my bowl. "Try this — it's my specialty."

I picked up the piece of meat and looked at it. Its charred, browned surface was coated in a fine layer of Silver Fir pollen that glimmered faintly in the torchlight.

Then I put it in my mouth.

About three or four minutes later, my throat began to swell.

My hands instinctively clamped around the edge of the stone table. Everything in front of me started to blur. Beneath my skin surged an uncontrollable impulse to shift — like molten iron running wild through my veins.

"Aelia!"

Cyrus's voice.

He rushed to my side. One hand cradled the back of my neck, the other pried open my mouth to check.

"Silver Fir allergy — she's allergic to Silver Fir!" he bellowed.

He scooped me up and rushed into the inner room, dug the antidote vials from the deepest shelf of a hidden stone alcove — his hands shaking, but every step precise, practiced — tore off the wax seal, pulled the cap, jabbed the needle into the outside of my thigh.

When I woke, the bitter smell of medicinal herbs filled the medicine tent.

I turned my head to look.

Cyrus was sitting on a stone stool beside the tent.

He was holding Vianca's hands in both of his.

Vianca's eyes were swollen red from crying, her shoulders heaving in hitches, her voice breaking: "It's all my fault… I didn't know she was allergic… if I'd known, I would never have—"

"Shh," Cyrus said softly, his thumb sweeping across the back of her hand. "It's not your fault. Aelia should have told you beforehand. This is on her."

I stared at the top of the medicine tent and felt a sudden burning behind my eyes.

I had almost died.

The person he comforted first was Vianca.

That night, I went back to my stone room, locked the door, and sat at the window, staring at nothing.

In the space of two weeks, Vianca's presence had seeped into every corner of the stone fortress.

Two ceramic bowls had appeared side by side on the kitchen counter — one engraved with the first character of his name, one with hers. The hide curtain on his bedroom door had been replaced with a new one, embroidered with two wolves walking shoulder to shoulder.

The most tormenting part was the nights.

My stone room shared a wall with Cyrus's bedroom.

The faint creak of the hide bed frame. Vianca's suppressed laughter. Occasional half-formed murmurs. Those sounds were amplified a hundredfold in the depths of every night, needling their way into my ears.

I started smoking.

The fortress window faced the watchtower of the settlement. The night watchman could see where I was. I didn't care.

A girl crouching at a window in the middle of the night, smoking — that was probably the least noteworthy thing anyone could record.

One night, word came from the Elder Council Hall: the Dusk Abyss vampire court had submitted a marriage alliance request to the Silver Moon Clan. To formalize peace between their two peoples, they required a werewolf woman to wed into the blood clan. The elders were considering suitable candidates.

From the bottom of my heart, I grieved for whichever girl was going to be sent to the blood clan. After all, to werewolves, vampire territory was no different from hell.