Raya asked the Alpha King to marry her because she was drunk. But if the King had managed his kingdom properly, she would never have gotten drunk in the first place. So, in her mind, it was entirely his fault. As second-in-command of the palace guard, Raya was not much of a drinker, and she was even less of a talker.
But after ten drinks, her discipline had abandoned her. She wobbled on a chair, brandishing a tankard, convinced she was making excellent points. “I could run this palace better than the King himself,” she announced. “On his best day and my worst.
”
Her table erupted in cheers. Pike, the youngest guard, howled, “To the captain we deserve! ”
“I’m serious. One week with the run of the place, and I’d have it fixed,” she insisted.
“Fixed how? ” Brenna asked, grinning. Raya set her cup down carefully. “Supplies.
We requisition forty spears, we get twelve. We order grain for the East Barracks, and it goes where? Gone. The orders contradict each other.
The captain and I spend more hours sorting out who told who what than actually guarding anything. ”
“It sounds like rotten luck. ”
“It isn’t luck, it’s neglect. The man at the top hasn’t the faintest notion any of it’s happening.
He’s too busy with his banquets to notice the whole place is rotting from the floor up. ”
“Strong words,” said a dry voice from the next seat. Raya turned. She hadn’t noticed him sitting down, a man in a traveler’s cloak, hood up despite the heat.
A cup of dark ale in his hand he hadn’t touched. “Not strong. True. A king ought to know what goes on in his own house.
This one couldn’t find the storehouse with both hands and a map. ”
“The king,” the stranger said, “is young. New to the office. Perhaps no one’s told him that storehouses are in the habit of growing legs.
”
“Then no one’s doing their job, including him. He’s the king. Not knowing is the one thing he isn’t allowed to be. ”
“You’d say that to his face, would you?
”
Raya thumped the table. “I’d say worse to his face. You think he’s ever gone hungry because the grain delivery never came? He doesn’t know how the rest of us live.
And he doesn’t care to. ”
The stranger reached up, unhurried, and pushed back his hood. His face was one she knew well. It was on the coins she counted and the portrait she passed forty times a day on patrol.
The painters had captured the light brown hair and the jaw, but they had missed everything else. The lazy certainty. The pale blue eyes, far too sharp. The mouth already curving into a slow smile that seemed designed to dismantle sensible women.
Raya noted, with great clarity, that she would not have minded being kissed by that mouth. She was furious about it. “Fenris,” he said pleasantly, as though they were being introduced. “The King.
Charmed. And you are? ”
The laughter drained out of the room. The loudest thing in the tavern was the ringing in Raya’s ears.
Pike found his voice first, a strangled whisper. “Your Majesty. ”
Somewhere beneath the wine, Raya’s wolf understood she should stop talking. The wine had other plans.
“Huh. You’re shorter than the portraits. ”
“Am I? I’ll have the painters flogged.
”
“So you think I could learn something from you? ” the King asked. “I think you have no idea what it costs to do my job. If I were queen, I’d do a damned sight better than you,” Raya snapped.
He raised an eyebrow, then leaned in and said it like a dare. “If you were queen, my dear, then we’d have to be married. ”
A test. He expected her to back down, the way everyone did when a king raised an eyebrow at them.
Well, he had picked the wrong drunk woman. “Then marry me. I dare you. Marry me and come see how the rest of us live.
”
The tavern went entirely silent. The King blinked. Raya blinked back. Certain she had just won something, she lifted her chin.
“So what’ll it be? Will you marry me? ”
He opened his mouth to answer. The whole tavern leaned in with her.
She watched his lips part, the shape of the first word beginning to form. And then the room tilted sideways. Raya passed out cold before she heard a single word of it. Raya woke to the conviction that she had died in the night and this was hell.
Hell, it seemed, was extremely bright. At least she was in her own bunk. The night came back in pieces. The warmth of the tavern.
A hand of cards. She vaguely remembered there had been a man with a low voice and blue eyes. She filed the rest away under too much liquor and never again. “She lives.
”
She cracked one eye. Brenna stood in the doorway, arms folded. Behind her was Pike, and behind him, more heads she couldn’t bring into focus. “Go away.
”
“So, big night? ” Pike offered, careful. “Fine. I drank too much.
It won’t happen again. ” The admission cost her. She expected them to mock her. But nobody laughed.
They traded a look. “What? ”
“You really don’t remember? ” Brenna asked.
“I remember enough to be ashamed of. That’s the end of it. ”
“It’s really not,” said Pike. Then, with forced cheer, he added, “But it’ll be fine.
He’s not going to take a word from a guard that drunk seriously. ”
“Pike. ”
“What is everyone talking about? ” Raya asked.
Brenna crouched to her level. “You told the King he was shorter than his portraits. ”
Raya blinked. “The King?
”
“That’s right. ”
“You’re saying I told his royal majesty, King Fenris, that he was too short? ”
“Amongst other things. ”
And then it all came back.
The hood pushed back. The jaw, the blue eyes. She had called him a pup. She had insulted him to his face for ten minutes.
And then she had proposed to him. A guard, proposing to the most powerful alpha in the land. And worst of all, she had no idea how he had reacted. A messenger appeared at the barracks door.
“The captain wants you. Now. ”
Pike’s hopeful look folded away. Raya panicked the whole way to Dane’s office.
A king could not let a drunk guard mock him and walk away. He was going to punish her. The only question was how bad. She could lose her post, the only thing she had ever been good at.
Or worse. He could take her head, and not a soul in the realm could say a word against it. “Enter. ”
She tried to read Dane.
How much did he know? Maybe it wasn’t so dire. Maybe the King wanted the whole thing buried. “Tell me the whole palace has it wrong,” Dane said.
“Tell me you did not, in front of a tavern full of witnesses, ask the Alpha King to marry you. ”
Raya closed her eyes. “Sir. I can explain.
”
But there was nothing to explain, and they both knew it. Dane, who had stared down a prison riot without blinking, now looked simply afraid. “What did you say to him? ” he asked.
“Everything that left your mouth, Raya. ”
“It’s a blur. But he didn’t seem too mad. ”
“He’s the King.
He doesn’t need to get mad. He can do whatever he wants. Gods, we need to start building your defense. ”
Suddenly, the bell over the gate began to ring.
“That’s the gate. An official arrival. And no one cleared it with me. ” Dane’s frown deepened.
There was only one person in the realm who could do that. The King was coming. They both heard it under the next toll: footsteps. Not a detail sent for an arrest.
One man, unhurried, easy, coming this way. The door opened, and the King of all the land walked into the little gray office. Raya felt the air pull taut around a true alpha. Her own wolf came to attention beneath her skin.
Drunk, she had called him a pup. Standing here sober, she understood that she had been very, very stupid. “Ah. ” The King gave her a look.
“There’s my fiancée. ”
Raya froze. Her stomach dropped. He hadn’t come for an arrest.
He had come for sport. “Your Majesty,” Dane said. “Forgive me. My guard was gravely intoxicated last night.
If there’s discipline owed, let it be mine to give, and let it be quiet. ”
The King listened with his head tilted. Then he smiled. “Discipline?
Captain, I do hope you don’t mean to discipline my delicate bride yourself. I might take it personally. ”
“Your Majesty, please. Don’t jest.
Raya’s a good soldier. ”
“Yes. And there will be discipline. I’ll be seeing to it personally.
Once we’re wed. ” He winked at her. Raya’s jaw dropped. “Your Majesty,” Dane said carefully.
“You can’t actually mean to marry the girl. ”
The King’s hand flew to his chest. “And why not? She asked me, and I said yes.
” He turned to Raya, all innocence. “Didn’t I, sweetheart? ”
Raya genuinely could not remember. Her voice abandoned her entirely.
“I said yes,” Fenris repeated, beaming. “Right before you were sick all over my shoes. ”
“You vomited on the King,” Dane said faintly. “Don’t fuss, Captain.
I only found her all the more charming for it. ”
Dane dragged a hand down his face. “But why? Forgive me, Majesty.
Why would you agree to marry her? ”
The King spread his hands, easy as anything. “When a bond hits, it hits hard. ”
A bond?
Impossible. Raya would feel it. All she felt was the presence of a powerful alpha. Liar, she thought, with a certainty that startled her.
There was no bond. He knew it, she knew it. And he was inventing one anyway. “You’re saying she’s your mate?
” Dane said. “Of course she’s my mate. She’d hardly have dared ask the King of the realm to marry her otherwise, would she? Imagine the scandal, Captain.
”
Raya grimaced. She had been played. The mate bond was the only thing that made last night anything other than a hanging offense. Deny it, and she was just a drunk guard who belonged in a cell.
Allow it, and the whole mad business becomes fate. The question was, why would he pretend she was his mate knowing it wasn’t true? Dane nodded, defeated. “As you say, Majesty.
Then, while you’re here, I’d ask your leave to increase the palace watch. The business on the hunt last week has sat ill with me. ”
“An old strap and a nervous horse,” Fenris said lightly. “Don’t lose sleep over it.
It was only an accident. Though, increase the watch by all means if it eases you. ”
The King asked for a moment alone with his betrothed. Dane bowed and went.
The latch clicked, and Raya was alone with the King. “Your Majesty. Last night I was far out of line. I insulted you, and what I did after I have no excuse for.
I’ll take whatever discipline the captain sees fit. There’s no need to drag the crown into a farce. ”
Fenris dropped into the chair across the desk. “You’re terribly serious in the mornings.
”
“Your Majesty, please. ”
He watched her, a slow smile spreading across his face. “Tonight. I’ll send someone to bring you to dinner.
Wear what you like. Though I’m given to understand it’s customary to make an effort. ” He rose, pausing at the threshold. “You will make an effort, won’t you, Raya dearest?
I’m so looking forward to getting to know my bride sober. ”
He winked, and then he was gone. The apology she had built so carefully was still sitting in her mouth with nowhere to go. Dinner was laid in a small private room.
“Well, my dear,” Fenris said when he arrived. “Pink certainly suits you. ”
“You mock me, Your Majesty. ”
“Now, why would I do a thing like that?
” He lifted a decanter. “Wine? ”
The very word made her grimace. “Right, perhaps not.
I’d hate for you to be sick on me twice in as many days. ”
“Your Majesty—”
“Only because it pains me to see you so unwell, my darling. ”
He rolled his sleeves back at some point during the meal, and Raya found her attention snagging on his forearms. “You’ve gone quiet.
”
“I’m eating. ”
“No, you’re strategizing. I can see it. Go on.
Tell me the thing I shan’t like. ”
She hesitated. “Why am I here, Your Majesty? You can’t possibly want to marry me.
I’m a guard. I’m tall and plain, and I’m… ” She stopped. “It doesn’t make sense.
”
He set his chin on his hand and regarded her with an expression of wounded innocence. “Why not you, Raya? When the bond hits, it doesn’t consult a list. ”
“I’d feel it if we shared a bond.
I’d feel something at least, and I don’t. ”
“You feel nothing for me at all? ”
“I feel as though I’m walking on eggshells trying to work out what you want from me. ”
He was quiet for a moment.
“You asked me to come and see how the rest of the kingdom lives. To learn what difficulty truly is. Perhaps that’s what this is. ”
“And how are you learning anything sitting here being fed pheasant?
If you’ve the time and leisure to wine and dine whatever woman you fancy making fun of, then I don’t think you’ve got the first idea what difficulty actually is. ”
Fenris sat back. She had said too much to the King. Again.
“I apologize, Your Majesty. You have every right to mock me, of course, after how I—”
“You’re right,” he interrupted. She gaped. “I am?
”
“Yes. I’ve never once stood where you stand. So show me. Show me your side of it, and we’ll find out whether it’s as easy as I think.
” The mischief had gone out of his eyes. What was left was steady and direct. “Your Majesty, you don’t have to do that. You’re the—”
“I want to.
”
So she showed him. The moment she stepped into the armory, something in her loosened. “Forty spears requisitioned,” she explained. “Twelve delivered.
Same with mail, with boot leather, with lamp oil. Every month. ”
Fenris ran his hand along the empty pegs, frowning. “Where does the rest go?
”
“That’s the question, isn’t it? The captain flagged it. But it goes up the chain and dies there. No one upstream has ever cared how a barracks actually runs.
”
She waited for royal platitudes. Instead, he said, “Show me the duty roster. ”
She blinked. “What?
”
“The duty roster. You have one, don’t you? ” He held out his hand, expectant. “You said, ‘Show me.
‘ I’m being shown. ”
Raya pulled the battered ledger from the shelf and handed it over. When his thumb stopped on the third line, she said, before she could help herself, “No. There.
The East Gate doubling. Two men where one would do because the order came twice and nobody canceled the first. ”
“So, cancel it. ”
“I’m second in command.
I flag it. I can’t just—”
“Why not? ”
“Because I don’t have the authority—”
“You have it now. Consider this your official royal permission to cancel any order that’s wasting resources.
”
She stared at him. “You can’t possibly mean that. ”
“Of course I do. ” He reached past her for the duty roster, and she felt the brush of his sleeve against her arm.
Something warm and dangerous unfurled in her chest. “Who gives the orders when Dane’s away? ”
“Whoever’s nearest the seal and feeling important. ”
He laughed, a real one, surprised out of him.
“Let me guess,” he said, leaning against the weapon rack. “Three contradictory orders, all marked urgent, all technically correct, all absolutely useless when applied together? ”
“Last month, someone ordered the night watch doubled, the night watch halved, and the night watch rotated to days. All in the same week.
”
“What did you do? ”
“Kept them where they were and hoped no one noticed. ”
“Did anyone? ”
“Not yet.
But when they do, it’ll be my head, not theirs. ”
His smile faded. “Thank you,” he said softly. “For trusting me with this.
”
“It’s your kingdom. You should know what happens in it. ”
“Yes,” he agreed. “I should.
”
They crossed the yard in the dark. Raya heard it first. A scrape. Stone on leather.
She stopped. “Problem? ” Fenris said. “Quiet.
” Her eyes swept the dark. Something was wrong. There. By the woodpile.
A shadow moved. “You’ve gone all tense. Is this the part where you confess you find me irresist—”
She yanked him sideways. A crossbow bolt punched through the air where his head had been and buried itself in the wood pile.
“Was I just shot at? ” Fenris asked. “Stay behind me. ” She shoved him to the wall.
They came out of the dark all at once. Four of them. Blades out. Faces wrapped.
Raya tore the pink gown straight up the side, and her blade was in her hand. The first one came fast. She caught his blade, turned it, stepped inside his reach and stomped down hard. The second man hit the ground, and Fenris stood over him.
“You—” she started, stunned. “Behind you. ”
She dropped. A blade hissed over her head.
She came up fast, elbow into throat. The third man folded. The fourth went wide, straight for Fenris. She threw herself across the space, and the blade caught her forearm, but she was already moving, twisting, and his wrist snapped under her hand.
A whistle cut the dark. The two still standing broke off as one. A disciplined retreat. Silence crashed back.
“Well,” Fenris said, “you do know how to show a man a memorable evening. ”
She stared. “You’re not even surprised. Someone just tried to put a bolt through your skull, and you’re not— Were you expecting this?
” And then it clicked. The hunt last week. The business Dane had wanted the extra watch for. “This isn’t the first time, is it?
Your Majesty, is someone after your life? ”
For half a second, something real flickered behind his eyes. Then, “You’re bleeding. Let’s see to that arm.
”
She didn’t take his hand. A king playing fool, or a fool she kept mistaking for a king? She didn’t know, but she was keeping score. And the list of things that didn’t add up was getting long.
For the better part of a month, Raya tried to work out what the King was hiding. Someone wanted Fenris dead. She knew it. So she did what she was good at.
She watched. She gathered. Was the engagement a shield? A guard at his side he could keep close without explaining why?
But the King did not cooperate. She’d ask a sharp question, and he’d answer with a joke. She’d press, and he’d flirt, sliding the conversation sideways so smoothly she wouldn’t notice until it was three topics gone. He gave her nothing she could use, and a great deal she didn’t know what to do with.
Because the longer she watched him for danger, the more she found herself simply watching him. And worst, somewhere in those long blurred days, Raya stopped wanting him to go away. It crept up on her like a fever. He came to the east wall at the cold edge of a night watch with two cups of cocoa, and when he handed hers over, his fingers brushed the backs of hers and her whole arm lit up to the shoulder.
He smiled into his cocoa like a man who’d won something. She did not know which man she was falling for, but she lay in her narrow bunk after the late watches with her body humming, and her traitor mind went straight to him. And so it came to a one-on-one late in the armory. He sat on the bench across from her like he’d done it a hundred times.
“What do you want? ” she snapped. It came out raw. “No.
I’m at the end of it. Every day you won’t say what you’re after, and you won’t leave me be, and I can’t keep doing this. Tell me it’s a scheme. Tell me you need a sword you can trust.
Tell me anything that makes sense, because I am not built to want things I can’t have, and you are making me want—”
“Want what? ”
“Don’t. You know what. You’ve known for days.
You’ve been enjoying it. ”
He stood and came round the bench slow, the way you approach something that might bolt. “What if I simply want you? ”
He was close now.
Close enough that she had to tip her chin to hold his eyes. “Men like you don’t want women like me. ” It came out as a whisper. “You don’t believe me.
So tell me to stop, and I’ll go. Right now. I’ll walk out and never trouble you again. ” His voice dropped to almost nothing.
“Or ask me to prove it. ”
The armory was very quiet. Her pulse was very loud. “Prove it.
”
He kissed her. And every careful thing in Raya’s head went white and silent at once. His hand slid into her hair, and his mouth was warm and certain and thorough. She made a sound against his mouth she would have been mortified by if she’d had a single thought left.
Then her nose caught up with the rest of her. His want. Unmistakable, rolling off him in a hot, dark wave. The scent of a man who wanted her badly.
Raya had been wanted for her sword, for her watch. She had never in her life stood in the path of a man’s plain, helpless desire aimed at her. She let her hands find him. Up under the edge of his shirt to the hard, flat plane of his stomach.
The rough groan that broke against her mouth. She fisted her other hand in his collar and kissed him like she’d been thinking about it for a fortnight. Because she had. His hand spanned her waist, slid to the small of her back, pressed her against the long, warm length of him.
“Raya. ” His voice had gone ragged. She pulled back just enough to meet his eyes. They were dark, blown.
“I’m sure,” she said. There was nothing else but him, and the coiled tight ache inside her finally easing into something sweet and devastating. This was not a scheme. This was not a strategy.
This was just a man wanting her for no reason but wanting. And gods help her, she wanted him back. Raya had stood guard at a hundred balls. She had never once been a guest at one.
Now here she was in blue silk, feeling exposed. She caught Fenris’s eye across the room, and he smiled. Slow, private. “You look devastating,” he murmured against her skin.
“I look like I’m playing dress-up. ”
“You look like you’re mine. And I’m the luckiest bastard in the kingdom. ”
He took her out onto a colonnade where the music thinned and the night air went cool.
“You hate this,” she said, watching him. She could tell when he was and wasn’t enjoying himself. “I’ve been doing this since I was nineteen. The smiling, the performing, the being what they need me to be so they don’t look too closely at what I’m not.
And I can’t decide if that makes me clever or just—” He stopped, shook his head, smiled. It was thin, defensive. She reached up and touched his face. His breath caught.
The false smile crumbled. “You’re not what they think you are. You’re so much more than some performance. And the man underneath—” She paused.
“I like him. A lot. ”
Something cracked open behind his eyes. “Raya,” he said, voice rough.
Then he kissed her, fierce and grateful and something close to desperate. It wasn’t the heat. She knew the heat, the wanting. This was something else entirely.
A warmth that poured in through the place where they touched, and it wasn’t hers. She could feel him, his emotions, distinct and clear and utterly foreign. Raya jerked back with a gasp. “Did you—” he started.
“Raya, I think that was—” He took another step toward her, and she saw it in his face. The want, the desperate aching need to close the distance between them and touch her again. “It was just a kiss,” she heard herself say. Fenris froze.
“A kiss,” he repeated. His face shuttered. “Right. You’re right.
Probably nothing. ” But his voice had changed, gone careful and distant. A servant appeared at the edge of the colonnade with a silver tray. “Your Majesty,” the servant murmured, and offered two cups of wine, dark as blood in the moonlight.
Fenris reached for the wine, and Raya’s wolf snarled. Every instinct she had screamed wrong. She didn’t think. Her hand shot out and knocked the cup from his fingers.
Glass shattered on stone. “Don’t. Don’t touch it. ” She was already dropping to a crouch.
“The smell. Underneath the wine. Do you smell it? ”
His nostrils flared as he caught it.
The bitter edge beneath the fruit and oak. “Nightshade. Or something close enough. ” She looked at him, kneeling beside her in the moonlight.
“This was meant to incapacitate you. Perhaps even kill you. ”
The color drained out of his face. She could hear her own pulse in her ears, and the thought that if she’d been distracted for even a moment, he would be dead.
“Raya. ” His free hand came up to cover hers. “You will tell no one. ”
She stared at him.
His face had gone hard. Not afraid, but calculating. “Not Dane, not the watch, no one. Do you understand me?
”
“No. No, I don’t. ”
“We have a foreign king fifty feet away, and his daughter too. If word gets out that someone tried to poison me under my own roof at my own ball, I will have a war before midnight.
”
“So what? You just pretend nothing happened? ”
“Yes. ”
“Fenris, this is the third time in a month someone’s tried to kill you.
You’re in danger. I can’t protect you if you won’t let me. ”
“Raya. I need you to trust me.
Just this once. I know what I’m doing. ”
“Do you? ” The fear was making her mean.
His expression crumbled. He closed the distance and pulled her against his chest. “Hey. I’m here.
I’m fine. You saved me. This time. ”
“And the next,” he said, “because you’re brilliant and you see everything and you’re the best guard I’ve ever had.
” He framed her face with his hands. “Right now, though, I need you to let me handle this my way. Can you do that? Can you trust me?
”
Every part of her that was still a guard said no. But she could still feel the ghost of his emotions against her skin. “All right. I promise.
”
Relief flooded his face. He pressed his mouth to her forehead, quick, grateful. And she felt it again, that rush of warmth through contact. Then he stepped back, and the mask slid back into place.
The charming smile. The king who had everything under control. “I’ll be back soon. Wait for me.
”
She nodded because her voice had stopped working. He kissed her once more, and then he was gone. She gave him a thirty count. Then she followed.
She watched him smile and nod and deflect questions with practiced ease. Watched him step through a side door, and how the moment he was out of sight, the smile dropped from his face. She followed him down two flights of stairs toward Dane’s office. The door clicked shut behind him.
For a moment she stood in the dark and could not make her legs work. Then very quietly she crossed to the door and opened it. Fenris was behind her captain’s desk. The drawers were open.
“What are you doing? ”
He looked up. For a long, airless moment, neither of them moved. “Raya.
” His voice was very calm. “This isn’t what it looks like. ”
Fenris never paused. He always had the answer before you’d finished the question.
But now he stood behind Dane’s desk with a sheaf of papers in one hand, and he paused. “Someone just tried to put poison in your cup. You told me to say nothing. And then you come straight down here in the dark to go through my captain’s private papers.
So tell me, Fenris, what is going on? ”
He set the papers down. “I’ve been investigating Dane. ”
The words wouldn’t resolve into meaning.
“Dane, your captain. Embezzlement, sabotage. The supplies that never come. The orders that contradict each other.
All of it deliberate. Bleeding the coin meant for the watch into House Revel. And I think the men who’ve tried to kill me have been carrying his money. ”
The floor went out from under her.
“No. That’s not— Dane wouldn’t. You don’t know him. He’s not—”
She stopped.
Because underneath the noise of not Dane, never Dane, something cold and quiet had started assembling itself. “You needed someone close to him,” she heard herself say. “Someone he trusted. That’s why you said yes in the tavern.
You’d been hunting a way to get close to him, and a drunk fool stood up on a chair and handed you one. ”
He said nothing. He held her eyes and did not deny it. “Say I’m wrong.
Fenris, say I’m wrong. ”
He looked at her for a long moment. He didn’t say she was wrong. “All of it,” she whispered.
“It was all a lie? ”
“Not all of it. Raya, please listen to me. I won’t pretend the engagement didn’t start as cover, but it stopped being—”
“Why didn’t you just ask?
If you suspected him, why not haul him in? You’re the King. ”
“Being king doesn’t make me untouchable. Dane holds the army.
An old name, powerful friends, the loyalty of every soldier in this city. If I’d arrested him on a hunch with no proof, there’d have been blood in the streets by dawn. I had to be certain. I couldn’t move on him until I had something not one man alive could argue with.
”
It was a good answer. That was the worst of it. It was a good answer, and she hated that too. “You’re wrong about him,” she snapped.
He picked the papers up and held them out to her. “Read it yourself. He’s bleeding the watch dry. Your watch.
The exhausted men you stood on a chair and defended. ”
She would not look. Dane was the one thing in her whole life that had never once been a lie. He had hauled her out of the dirt.
He had seen something in a plain girl with a sword. “Not everyone is like you. Some people are simply what they say they are. ” The tears spilled over.
“Is that why you didn’t tell me? Because you thought we’d both been conspiring against you. ”
“No, gods, Raya. If anything, you’re the one person in this palace I cleared instantly.
”
That stopped her. “Why? ”
“Because you were drunk. Drunk people don’t dissemble.
They just say the true thing. And the true thing you said up on that chair was that everything wrong with this kingdom was my fault. Half my court believes exactly that. Not one of them would ever say it to my face.
But you did. That’s how I knew you weren’t part of anything. ”
She could hear it now. Dane, across a hundred late nights, grinding his teeth over the supply lines.
“He’s too busy with his nobles to notice. ” “A king ought to know what goes on in his own house. ” Her words in the tavern. His words first.
She had carried his grievances in her own mouth for years and never once noticed they were not hers. “You should have told me. You knew I was innocent. You watched me put my own body between you and a blade twice.
I bled for you in that yard. I let you into my bed, and in all of it you never once told me the truth. Why not me, Fenris? ”
He looked at her, and when the answer came, it was barely above a breath.
“Because I didn’t think you’d believe me. I didn’t think you’d trust me enough to change your mind about the captain. And I was right. Wasn’t I?
”
It hit her like a slap because it wasn’t wrong. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “That first night at dinner, men like you don’t see women like me as anything but useful. And you sat there and let me believe I was wrong.
”
“It is wrong, Raya. ” His hand came up, reaching for her face. “Don’t. ” She jerked back hard enough that her spine hit the wall.
He froze, the touch ungiven. “Don’t say that. Not when the only reason you’re saying any of it is that I walked through the wrong door at the wrong moment. ”
For a long moment, neither of them moved.
His face was open and stricken. She turned for the door. “Raya. Please.
There’s a poison loose in this palace and a foreign king downstairs, and I— I need you. Please. ”
Even now. Even with her whole heart in pieces.
I need you. Not I’m sorry. Not I can’t lose you. “Good night, Your Majesty.
”
She walked out into the dark of the corridor. It was all a lie. She pressed the heels of both hands to her eyes hard enough to see stars. Gods, she was stupid.
“Raya. ”
She found Dane standing ten paces down the corridor, like he’d been waiting. And before she could think better of it, she was moving toward him. He had pulled her out of the dirt when she was thirteen and made her into someone who could stand on her own.
His hands came down on her shoulders. “What happened? You’re white as a sheet. ”
And because it hurt too much to hold in, she told him.
“It was a lie, Captain. Fenris never wanted me. He used me. I was just—”
Dane’s face softened.
“I know. I hoped to spare you this. I’m sorry, Raya. But I didn’t know how to tell you that he’s been bedding the princess.
”
Raya’s head snapped up. “And I’m afraid it’s even worse than you think. The visiting king’s daughter. She wasn’t willing, Raya.
He drugged her. Compromised her. Made sure she’d be found ruined so her father would have no choice but to sign the alliance. I saw it myself.
Not an hour ago. ”
Raya took a step back. Fenris was a liar, yes. But she knew, the way she knew her own heartbeat, he would never do such a thing.
Never. Her mind raced. Dane said he’d seen it an hour ago. The timeline was wrong.
The story was wrong. None of it added up, which meant Dane was lying. The man who’d pulled her out of the dirt. He was lying to her face right now.
Fenris had told the truth. The stolen funds. The men who’d tried to kill him carrying Dane’s coin. Her hand twitched toward her sword.
Old instinct. But not yet. Not when she was one woman against a captain who commanded every soldier in this building. Dane expected her to be hurt and angry and willing to believe the worst.
“What do we do? ” she asked, making her face crumple. Dane’s eyes sharpened. “We go to the foreign king before Fenris can twist it.
A king who’d drug a man’s daughter isn’t fit to rule. He’ll fall. And there are good houses ready to steady the realm after he’s gone. House Revel among them.
”
She made herself nod. “But it can’t come from me. I’m a captain. They’ll say I’m grabbing for power.
It has to come from someone they’ll believe. ” His voice went soft, almost kind. “It has to come from you. The king’s own intended.
If you tell the foreign king you saw Fenris take his daughter, no one in that room will doubt a word. ”
They walked, and it was the longest walk of her life. She had to get into that room and flip Dane’s trap back on him, and she had nothing but her word. And one wrong word could end the kingdom in war.
The foreign king had taken a council room in the east wing. Fenris was with him. He looked up when she came in behind Dane, and for half a second his whole face lit. Then he saw who she walked in with, and the light went out.
“Your Majesty,” Dane bowed. “It grieves me to bring this, but your daughter has been wronged by the man at your right hand. ” He laid it out. The drug, the alliance bought with her shame.
“That’s a lie,” Fenris said. “Every word of it is his. ”
“He’d say that. Of course he would.
But the king’s own bride was there. ” He turned. The whole room turned with him, to Raya, silent by the door. “It’s plain to all that Raya loves the king.
She has every reason to protect the man she’s to marry. But ask her. Raya, tell his majesty what you saw. ”
Every face in the room swung to her.
The foreign king leaning forward, desperate. The advisers. Dane, sure of her, already counting it won. And Fenris, who thought she’d come to bury him.
She looked at him. I’m sorry, she told him with no words at all. I should have believed you. Then she turned to the foreign king.
“I saw nothing of the sort. Because it never happened. Captain Dane is lying to you. ”
The room snapped tight as a drawn bow.
Dane went rigid beside her. “He says it happened within the hour, but an hour ago the king was at his own ball with me. He never went near the princess. ” She faced the foreign king directly.
“And there have been three attempts on King Fenris’s life. There was poison in his wine tonight. I knocked it from his hand. ” Her chin came up.
“Search the captain’s quarters. Now, while he’s standing here and can’t reach them. See whether you find proof of a wronged princess or a paymaster’s ledger and poison that could kill an alpha king. ”
“This is hysteria.
She’s distraught. ”
“Then a search costs you nothing,” said the foreign king quietly. He nodded to his guards. And Dane’s face changed.
The grave, honest captain was gone. What was left was cornered. He ran, straight at her. She saw the knife slide out of his sleeve half a beat before he reached her.
“Raya! ” Fenris’s voice, raw with terror. But this was the one thing in the whole night she knew how to do. She turned into him, caught the knife arm at the wrist, wrenched, and used his own weight to put him face down on the stone.
Her knee dropped between his shoulders. “You trained me,” she said low. “You should have remembered what I’m good at. ”
Then the guards had him, and they hauled him up and dragged him out.
The foreign king went to his daughter first, safe, asleep, and never touched. The advisers hurried off in tight clusters. And then it was just the two of them. Fenris hadn’t moved.
He was staring at her like he’d never seen her before. “You saved my life. Even after everything, you still—”
“I came to stop a traitor. That’s all.
”
The light in his face flickered. “Raya. The bond—it’s real. You felt it tonight.
I know you—”
“It doesn’t matter if it’s real. I saved you because it was my duty and because Dane was a traitor. Not one second of it was forgiveness. You used me, Fenris.
”
“Raya. I love you. I don’t care how it started. That doesn’t change what it became.
You’re the truest thing I’ve ever—”
“Don’t. ” She stepped back. “You can say mate like it fixes everything. You looked me in the eye for weeks and used me.
A bond doesn’t undo that. ”
He flinched. “I’m sorry. ”
“I don’t want your apology.
” She turned for the door. “I’m glad you’re alive. You’ll be a good king. ” A beat.
“But I can’t trust you anymore. I don’t know if I ever will again. ”
She saw it in his eyes. The realization that he had broken something that would never be whole again.
“Raya, please. I’ll do anything. I’ll—”
She walked out. She had been captain of the guard for six months, and she was good at it.
She had always known she would be. The palace was a different place now. Dane sat in a cell beneath the old fort. The rot he had worked into the guard for years was cut out clean.
The King had done all of that, and the city had started to love him for it. He had made her captain. He had also spent the last five of those six months trying to win her back. The flowers arrived a month in.
She came off a dawn watch and found the entire barracks yard full of them. Her own people grinning like idiots. “Send them to the infirmary. And the temple.
”
He tried the council chamber next. He’d catch her eye, and his whole face would do something hopeful and uncertain. She would look back down at the troop numbers. After, he’d find a reason to linger by the door.
“Captain. Could I have a moment? ”
She always walked out anyway. The bond didn’t help.
Leave a bond open, and it deepens. Deepens, and it sets. So she kept it closed and hoped it would wither from neglect and let her go. Fenris wrote to her.
His letters came two and three a week in his own hand. Some were short. Some ran for pages. One read, “I keep writing the same word a hundred ways.
Sorry. It’s a small, stupid word for what I did, and I don’t have a bigger one, so I’ll just keep sending it. ”
Another: “You said I felt close enough to take you to bed and not close enough to tell you the truth. You were right.
Instead of earning your trust, I just spent it. It’s the worst thing I’ve done. ”
And one near the bottom of a long page she had sworn she wouldn’t finish: “I don’t want you back because you’re useful. I want you back because none of this matters if you’re not with me.
”
Pike and Brenna always had opinions. “Good,” said Brenna in the early weeks. “Make him sweat. You don’t owe that man a thing.
”
A month or two on, the line had moved. “He sorted the back pay,” Pike said one evening. “And he’s written you what, forty letters? ”
“Forty-three,” said Brenna, who apparently counted.
By the fifth month, they had given up subtlety entirely. “Captain, with respect, talk to the man. ”
“There’s nothing to talk about. ”
“You’re miserable.
He’s miserable. And the rest of us have to stand here and watch. ”
“I was used. I’m not queuing up for another turn.
I’m a good captain, the guard runs well, and I’d like to be left in peace to do my job. ”
One night in the sixth month, a letter came that was different. “Raya, I’m sorry. You deserved better.
You’ve made yourself clear, and I’ll respect it. I’ll stop now. ”
She read it twice. This was what she’d wanted.
So why did it feel like losing? He kept his word. No more letters, no more flowers. When she passed him in corridors, he’d nod.
“Captain. ” Even and polite. Just done. “This is what you wanted,” she told herself the first week.
She did her job. She did it well. And every night, the warm, patient thread under her ribs stayed exactly where it was, refusing to fade. Until the knock.
Pike came into her office, Brenna at his shoulder, both of them the particular gray color of people who have made a very large mistake. “What did you do? ”
“He’s gone. The king.
Off the grounds. Not in his chambers, not anywhere. ” Brenna swallowed. “No one’s seen him since the tenth bell.
”
“Is this a joke? ” Raya asked, knowing very well it wasn’t. “What do we do, Captain? ”
She was on her feet without deciding to be.
“When was he last seen? And by whom? Where was he headed? ” She was already pulling on her sword belt.
“Wake the trackers. His scent off his chambers and every gate. Quietly. No bells, no alarm.
If word gets out, we’ll have a panic by dawn. ”
The trackers caught his scent and lost it at the east postern, where it simply stopped. The way a scent stops when a man is being careful. Or when a man is being carried.
Raya stood in the courtyard with the pre-dawn wind cutting through her uniform. There was one way left to find him. She’d known it from the second Brenna had said gone. She pressed a hand to her chest over the bond she’d been trying to smother for half a year.
It’s duty, she told herself. He’s the king. Finding him is my job. It was not all this was.
She opened the bond. It hit her like a door blown open in a storm. Sadness first. Deep and bottomless.
Then anger turned inward, then despair, raw and suffocating. And underneath it all, confusion. Slow. Swimming.
Drowsy. His thoughts coming loose and drifting. He’s been drugged. She was moving before she finished the thought, out at a dead run, following the pull of him like a rope hauling her forward.
The bond pulled her down through the lower city into narrow streets. She came to a tavern. Warm light at the windows. She hit the door low and ready, hand on her hilt, braced for a back room, a blade, a body—and stopped.
There was just the king, slumped half across the bar at the far end of the room, collar open, hair a complete disaster, one hand wrapped loose around a cup, talking earnestly and at great length to a deeply uncomfortable barman. Brenna arrived breathing hard. “Is he drunk? ”
Raya looked at the way he was holding onto the bar instead of the other way round, at how when he gestured, the whole top half of him swayed after his hand.
“Dear gods. He is. ”
Relief hit Raya first, bright and hot, because he was alive. He was safe.
Then the fury came right behind it. She was going to kill him. She got close enough to hear what he was saying. “Of course I’ve tried apologizing.
For months I have apologized in every conceivable way. She won’t hear a word of it. ”
The barman made a noncommittal noise. “Letters.
I wrote letters. Did I mention the letters? ”
“You did. ”
“And she closed our bond.
” He raised his cup, found it empty. “Another. ”
“The thing is, there’s nothing left for me to do but give up, is there? But how do you give up on your mate?
” He paused. “Did I tell you she was my mate? ”
“Extensively. ”
“She’s so stubborn, won’t hear me, won’t do anything but work.
” He made a wide gesture that nearly took his cup off the bar. “And she’s very beautiful while she works. Very competent. But she was also beautiful and competent when we—”
Raya reached the bar and plucked the cup clean out of his hand.
“That’s enough. ”
“I was drinking that. ” Then his eyes found her face and stuck. He blinked.
His whole ruined, miserable expression cracked wide open into something so delighted it hurt to look at. “Raya. ”
Through the still-open bond, she felt it slam into him. Joy and relief and disbelief.
“What were you thinking? Vanishing like that. No guard, no word, no—”
“Relax. I’ll be back before anyone notices I’ve gone.
”
“The entire guard has noticed you’ve gone. ”
He swayed slightly. “Oh. ”
“Come on.
Let’s go. ”
“I’m not going. ” He tried to pull away and nearly fell off the stool. “I’m very happy here.
”
“You’re nearly passed out on a bar stool. ”
“What do you have against this stool? It’s a perfectly good stool. ”
“Nothing.
It’s you I’m annoyed with. ” She hauled him upright. He stumbled into her, all warm dead weight, and the scent she’d been trying not to think about for six months. “Yes, he mumbled into her shoulder.
“I’ve noticed. You’re very angry with me. You’ll never forgive me. ”
“You betrayed me.
I didn’t know you. ” He pulled back to look at her blearily. “And then I did know you. And I loved you.
And I was afraid of losing you. ”
Raya stopped breathing. She could feel the frustration and sorrow and fear of it pouring straight through the bond, unguarded. “I knew you’d be angry.
You were so certain I couldn’t possibly want to court you, but I happen to very much enjoy courting you. ” It was just true, sitting there in him, warm and plain and utterly without artifice. “But it was so obvious the captain had you eating out of his palm. He spent years making you believe the only thing you’re good for is serving his guard.
And you believe it still. ”
It was, perhaps, a little bit true. “That doesn’t change the fact that you should have told me. ”
“Yes.
I was a coward. ”
She nodded back, vindicated. “Just like you’re being a coward now. ” He added, making her gasp.
“What? You’d rather strangle our bond, a connection between our actual souls, than risk getting hurt twice. ” His finger wobbled. “You are a coward.
”
“I am not a coward. ”
“Prove it. ” His eyes were sliding half shut. “Marry me.
”
The world stopped. “What did you just say? ”
“Marry me. I dare you.
”
She looked at him, caught between wanting to throttle him and wanting to hold him up as he listed slowly toward the floor. “Marry me. Please. ” The bravado fell away, and what was left was raw and small and utterly undefended.
“I’m a wreck without you. I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to you. I swear it. ” He ran out of words and dropped his head into his hand.
The sincerity of it, the love, the missing her so much it felt like dying—all of it poured through the bond. No mask, no angle. The man who hid everything hiding nothing at all. “I won’t ask again.
I’m sorry. I said I’d stop. I’ll stop asking. I’ll leave you alone.
I’ll—”
“Ask me again when you’re sober. Ask me again tomorrow, when you can actually remember asking. ”
His eyes cracked open. “And you’ll say yes?
”
She opened her mouth to answer, and then the King of all the land passed out cold against her shoulder. His head lolled against her neck, his breath warm and even and smelling powerfully of strong liquor. And Raya stood there and felt herself smile for the first time in six months. She pressed a kiss to his forehead.
“Ask me tomorrow and find out. ”
In the end, it took him four months. Four months of asking. Every single day, sober, in every way a man could think of and a few no sane man should.
He asked across the war table until Brenna threatened to resign in writing. He asked on the east wall with cocoa going cold in his hands. He asked badly, and beautifully. And once with so many flowers the barracks smelled like a funeral for a week.
And every day, Raya told him to ask again tomorrow. Until one perfectly ordinary morning, she looked at the man grinning hopefully at her over breakfast and said yes. The whole city came out for it. The boy king nobody had taken seriously, and the plain guard who’d seen the man behind the smile before anyone else bothered to look.
He cried during the vows. She’d known he would. “You’re stuck with me now,” he murmured when it was done. “No taking it back.
”
“Why would I take it back? ”
“I’m the one who proposed to you first, if you recall. ”
“Drunk. On a chair.
”
“Best decision you ever made. ”
She kissed him. For once, she didn’t argue.
