5

I spent two days waiting for something to come of the guard writing in his little book, and nothing did, which was somehow worse than if something had. Nothing happening meant whatever he'd written had gone somewhere I couldn't see, into a file or a report or a conversation behind a closed door I would never be invited into. Kai found me twice in the dining hall those two days and both times I told him I was fine, and both times he looked at me like he didn't believe a word of it, which I appreciated more than I let on.

The announcement came on the third morning, posted on the notice boards outside the great hall before most students were even awake, and I only knew because Sable came pounding on my door before sunrise with the paper still in her hand.

Sable Rourke was the closest thing I had to a friend at the Academy, a Beta's daughter from a pack too small to matter in the politics, which was exactly why she'd never had a reason to be cruel to me the way the bigger pack heirs did. She had a loud laugh and a mouth that got her in trouble at least once a week and she'd decided, somewhere in our first month rooming near each other, that I was worth defending, which nobody had ever decided about me before.

"You need to see this," she said, and shoved the paper at me before I'd even opened my eyes all the way.

I read it twice before it made sense. The Vane throne announces with joy the betrothal of Alpha Prince Cassian Vane to Lady Elowen Castellan, to be formalized at the Midwinter Court in accordance with the alliance long favored between our houses. The Founding Moon's blessing notwithstanding, His Highness has chosen the union that best serves the strength of the North.

The founding moon's blessing notwithstanding. They hadn't even bothered leaving my name out of it entirely. They'd made sure everyone reading it understood exactly what was being set aside to make room for Lady Elowen.

"He told you he'd do this," I said out loud, mostly to myself, and Sable's face went carefully blank in the way it did when she wanted to ask something and knew better than to push.

"Told you what."

"Nothing." I folded the paper in half so I didn't have to look at it anymore. "It doesn't matter."

It did matter. It mattered enough that I sat on the edge of my cot for a long minute with my hands pressed flat against my knees, breathing through the tight ugly thing climbing up my throat, because some stupid, hopeful part of me had let Cassian's midnight visit talk me into believing there was a version of this where things ended differently. He'd told me the rejection was a performance to keep me alive. He hadn't told me the performance would keep going, formalized in ink, announced to the whole kingdom with a date attached.

I went to classes anyway. I have found, in the time since, that going to class anyway is one of the only skills that actually matters in a life like mine, the ability to keep moving through a day that has just handed you a reason to stop.

Ivy found me at lunch, predictably delighted. "Did you see the notice? I heard Lady Elowen is stunning. Genuinely, they say she's the most beautiful woman in three kingdoms." She let that land, watching my face for the reaction she wanted. "It's for the best, honestly. Can you imagine trying to be a future Queen? You can barely carry a tray without breaking something these days."

I didn't answer her. I had learned a long time ago that answering Ivy only fed whatever she was hunting for, and I had also, somewhere in the last three days, started noticing that the coil under my ribs didn't like it when she talked to me like that anymore. It used to just sit there and absorb the insults the way I did. Now it pushed back, low and hot, a pressure behind my eyes that made me want to say something I would regret, and I had to actively fight it down instead of just letting it pass through me the way I used to.

That frightened me more than the betrothal notice did, honestly. Whatever was waking up in me wasn't patient the way I'd trained myself to be.

I found Soren Blackwood waiting for me outside the library that evening, which was unusual enough on its own that I nearly walked past him before I registered he was standing there on purpose.

I didn't know Soren well. He was quiet in the way people mistake for cold, heir to the Blackwood pack, one of the oldest and most private bloodlines in the North, and he'd never once, in nineteen years of shared classrooms, said more than a handful of words to me directly.

"Walk with me," he said. Not a question.

"Why."

"Because if I talk to you here, someone will report it, and I'd rather choose when that report gets written." He was already moving, and something about the flat certainty of his voice made me follow instead of arguing.

We walked the long way around the library gardens, far enough from the main paths that the evening crowd thinned to nothing, and Soren didn't speak again until we were well clear of anyone who might overhear.

"You're being watched," he said finally.

"I noticed. There was a guard at dueling practice writing things down."

"There have been three since then. Different faces, same uniform, always somewhere you can see them if you're paying attention and mostly invisible if you're not." Soren's eyes, gray and steady, cut sideways to check the path behind us before he continued. "My father sits on the Vane Council. I hear things I'm not supposed to hear, and one of them is that Lady Rosalind requested a full account of your history. Your birth pack. Your parents. Where you came from before the Thorne pack took you in."

Something cold settled in my stomach. "Why would she care about that."

"I don't know yet. But I know that request went out the same night as the ceremony, before your name meant anything to anyone in that room except as a joke." He stopped walking, turning to face me fully, and for the first time I saw something under the quiet composure that looked almost like worry. "That's not the behavior of a woman annoyed that her stepson got embarrassed on a stage. That's the behavior of someone confirming an identity she already suspected."

"Suspected what."

"I don't know," he said again, and it sounded like the truth, which was somehow more unsettling than if he'd claimed to have all the answers. "But I've read enough old Council records to know what kind of bloodlines get that sort of quiet, careful attention. It's not attention paid to nobodies. It's attention paid to threats."

"I'm not a threat to anyone. I've never even shifted."

"You put Kai Draven on his back three days ago with a grip Reyes couldn't explain," Soren said. "You're not what you think you are, Calloway. I don't know what you are yet either. But I'd start being very careful about what you let people see, because whatever's circling you right now isn't circling out of curiosity."

I stood there in the last gray light of the garden path, my hands cold despite the warm evening, and thought about Cassian's voice in my doorway three nights ago, telling me the same thing in different words. Stay hidden. Don't let anyone see what you're becoming.

"Why are you telling me this," I asked. "You barely know me."

Soren was quiet for a moment, choosing his words the way I imagined he chose everything, carefully, with the weight of a pack that had survived three hundred years by never speaking without purpose. "Because my father taught me that when the Vane Council starts quietly digging into an orphan's bloodline, the orphan usually ends up dead within the year, and I would rather not watch that happen to someone in my own year at this Academy if I have any way to prevent it."

"That's not exactly reassuring."

"It wasn't meant to be reassuring. It was meant to be true." A ghost of something almost like a smile crossed his face, gone as fast as it came. "Learn to control whatever you're hiding. Fast. And watch Lady Rosalind more carefully than you're watching the betrothal notice, because I promise you, the wedding date is the least dangerous thing that's happened this week."

He turned to leave, and I called after him before I could stop myself. "Soren. Why does the betrothal matter less than Rosalind, if the Council thinks I'm some kind of threat?"

He looked back at me over his shoulder, and this time there was no trace of a smile at all.

"Because a betrothal is a piece of paper," he said. "Lady Rosalind doesn't deal in paper. She deals in bodies."

He walked away before I could ask him what that meant, and I stood alone in the dark garden with the betrothal notice still folded in my pocket and a new, colder fear settling in beside the old familiar humiliation. I had spent my whole life being invisible on purpose. Now I was visible to exactly the wrong people, for reasons nobody would fully explain to me, and the one person who might have had answers was about to be formally promised to somebody else in front of the entire North.

I walked back toward the servants' wing in the dark, and I was three steps from my own door when a shape detached itself from the shadow of the courtyard wall and stepped directly into my path.

It wasn't Cassian. It wasn't Soren.

It was one of Lady Rosalind's personal guard, the black and silver unmistakable even in the dark, and he held out a folded piece of parchment sealed with wax I recognized from the betrothal notice itself.

"Lady Rosalind requests your presence," he said. "Tonight. Alone."