"Mate?"

The word left my mouth before I could stop it.

Adrian's guards were descending through the fog behind him, but he seemed to hear only me.

"Yes."

"That is impossible."

"So is a human stopping the Silver Rot with one touch."

"I am wolfless."

His gaze dropped to the blood on my hand. "You keep saying that as if your body believes it."

The world tilted before I could answer.

The last thing I felt was Adrian tightening his hold as darkness took me.

I woke beneath a stone ceiling.

My ribs were tightly bound. My shoulder sat in a sling. Someone had cleaned the claw marks across my back and stitched the worst of them. A narrow cot stood against one wall of a windowless chamber, and a single iron door guarded the other.

Dungeon was the first word that came to mind.

The second was captive.

I pushed myself upright as the lock turned.

Adrian entered in a black shirt and dark trousers, no chain on his ankle now. The change should have made him look less dangerous.

It did not.

"Where am I?"

"The lower royal wing."

"With an iron door."

"The upper wing has windows. You tried to crawl off a cliff yesterday. I considered the risk."

"I was pushed off it."

"Details."

I stared at him. "Open the door."

"Answer my questions."

"No."

"Then we may be here a while."

He leaned against the foot of the cot, watching me with the patience of a predator who knew there was nowhere for prey to run.

"Who sent you into the gorge?"

"No one."

"Why were Blood Moon rogues chasing you?"

"They were hungry."

"Why did you smell like coronation incense?"

I went still.

Adrian noticed.

Of course he did.

"You are a terrible liar," he said.

"I have had a difficult week."

"You have had a difficult life. Those are different things."

His eyes moved to the black crescent on my cheek, then to the bruises on my wrists from Lucas's guards.

I hated that he saw too much.

"I was banished," I said at last. "That is all you need to know."

"By Lucas Thorne."

My pulse jumped.

Adrian's mouth hardened. "There it is."

"You already knew."

"I knew his scent was on your dress. I wanted to know whether you would tell me."

"Why does it matter?"

"Because five years ago Lucas petitioned the crown for permission to absorb the southern woodlands if the general's line died out. The petition was rejected. Yesterday, the general's daughter fell into my prison bleeding."

Cold traveled down my spine.

"You knew my father?"

"By reputation. Elias was inconveniently honorable."

"That is the nicest insult anyone has ever given him."

"He refused two royal appointments because he said the south needed a commander more than the capital needed another uniform at dinner. Men like that become legends or corpses. Sometimes both."

The simple respect in Adrian's voice tightened my throat. Lucas had spent years reducing my father to a convenient dead soldier. Hearing someone remember the man rather than the assets he left behind made the room feel briefly less hostile.

Despite myself, I almost smiled.

"That sounds like him."

Adrian stepped closer. "Now tell me why Lucas wanted you dead."

I told him about the treaty. Not everything. Not the humiliations or Serena. Just the land, the broken agreement, and the banishment.

His expression did not change until I said Lucas had torn the document apart.

Then the air in the room became heavier.

"He destroyed a witnessed blood treaty?"

"In front of the pack."

"Idiot."

"Thief."

"Both can be true."

He reached for my wrist.

I pulled back. "Do not touch me without asking."

He stopped immediately.

That surprised me more than it should have.

"May I?" he asked.

I hesitated, then held out my hand.

His fingers closed lightly around my pulse.

Heat rushed between us again.

Adrian's shoulders loosened. A faint tremor I had not noticed in his hand disappeared.

He looked down at our joined skin.

"My blood is quiet."

"Your curse?"

"It never sleeps. Not until you touch me."

I tried to pull away. His fingers tightened just enough to keep contact, then released when I glared at him.

"High mages have died trying to do what you do by accident," he said. "Do you understand why I cannot simply let you walk out?"

"Because you want medicine."

"Because someone tried to kill the one person who can stand beside me without dying."

The distinction unsettled me.

A knock sounded at the door.

"Your Majesty," a man's voice called. "Captain Marcus Ward. We found Blood Moon tracks above the gorge. Fresh."

Adrian's face went still.

"How many?"

"At least twelve scouts. They are searching the ridge."

Lucas was looking for my body.

Or making sure there was one.

Adrian turned toward the door. "Seal the lower wing. No servant speaks of her. If anyone asks whether a woman came out of the gorge, the answer is no."

"Understood."

I threw the blanket aside. "You cannot keep me here."

"You cannot cross a room without reopening your stitches."

"Then give me a healer and let me leave when I can."

"No healer touches you until I know what your blood does to magic."

"That is not your decision."

His black eyes met mine.

"Then make it a negotiation."

I stilled.

Adrian folded his arms. "You need somewhere Lucas cannot reach. I need a way to control the Rot while I find out why you can stop it."

The bargain formed before pride could kill it.

"Protection," I said. "For as long as his trackers hunt me. Access to your archives about the southern woodlands. And freedom to leave once I am healed."

"In return?"

"I help anchor your shifts. Voluntarily. You ask before you touch me."

His mouth twitched. "You negotiate well for a woman in a dungeon."

"I learned from thieves."

"Careful."

"Do we have a deal?"

He reached into his pocket and produced the brass key.

For one tense second I expected him to lock the door from the outside again.

Instead, he turned the key, opened the iron door wide, and stepped aside.

"Deal," Adrian said. "But you are not in my dungeon anymore, Elena."

I paused at the threshold.

"Then where am I?"

His gaze settled on me with unnerving certainty.

"Under the protection of the Lycan crown."

Three weeks later, I could lift my left arm without seeing stars.

That counted as progress.

Captain Marcus Ward allowed me into the royal herb garden for one hour each morning, provided I remained inside the ward stones and carried the brass alarm whistle he had hung around my neck.

The privilege had taken three arguments, one medical clearance, and a wager with Adrian. He had insisted I could not cross the courtyard without stopping to catch my breath. I had made it across purely out of spite, then spent five minutes pretending the bench near the fountain was part of my plan. He never mentioned the shaking in my knees. Instead, he brought me a map of the southern borders that evening and marked the locations where his scouts had found Blood Moon tracks.

"They are not searching randomly," he had said. "Someone gave them your likely route out of the gorge."

I had traced the marks with one finger. "Lucas knows I would head south if I escaped."

"Lucas also believes you are alone. Let him keep believing that."

That was why I had agreed to stay inside the wards. Not because I enjoyed being guarded, but because surviving long enough to reclaim my father's land had become a better revenge than dying to prove I was free.

"The old ruins are outside the inner barrier," he reminded me that morning. "Do not go past the wolf statues."

"You have told me every day."

"And every day you look like you are considering ignoring me."

"That is because I am."

Marcus sighed. "I see why the King likes you."

"The King finds me medically convenient."

"If that is what you need to tell yourself."

He left before I could throw a bundle of bitterroot at him.

I spent the next half hour cutting wintermint and checking the frost damage to the southern beds. The work steadied me. It also let me avoid thinking about Adrian.

Our arrangement had become strangely domestic. When the Rot began to pull at him, he found me. Sometimes I held his wrist until the tremor passed. Sometimes I sat across a table while he worked through state reports, close enough that my presence alone eased the pressure behind his eyes.

He had kept every term of our bargain.

He never touched me without asking.

That should not have mattered as much as it did.

A branch cracked near the outer wall.

I straightened.

The wind shifted.

Polished leather. Weapon oil. Southern pine.

Blood Moon.

Five masked figures slipped through the trees beyond the ward stones. They wore black field armor marked with a nearly invisible red crescent at the shoulder.

Lucas's elite trackers.

The tallest man stepped over a bed of lavender.

"You survived the gorge."

I tightened my grip on the pruning sickle. "You crossed onto royal ground. That is a very short path to execution."

"Only if the King knows we are here."

My thumb found the alarm whistle at my chest.

A throwing knife flashed.

It struck the cord and pinned the whistle to the wooden trellis behind me.

So much for that plan.

"Lucas sends his regards," the leader said.

"He can keep them."

"He heard a border scout saw a dark-haired woman being carried into the royal valley. He became concerned."

"About my health?"

"About your head."

The men spread out.

I backed toward the drying racks, mapping the garden in my mind. Nightshade to my left. Empty glass jars on a cart. Stone wall behind the rose beds. The iron gate was thirty yards away.

"He cannot claim the southern woodlands while the legal heir breathes," I said.

"Exactly."

The leader drew a silver-coated knife.

"Take her alive if you can. We need proof."

I threw the sickle at his face.

He swatted it aside.

I ran.

Boots thundered behind me.

I ripped a tray of dried nightshade from the rack and flung it backward. Powder burst into the face of the nearest tracker. He shouted, clawing at his eyes, and crashed into the glass cart.

Jars shattered across the stones.

A second man vaulted the wreckage.

I kicked the broken cart into his path. He cleared it, but the movement forced him toward the irrigation trench. I swept a clay pot off the wall and smashed it against the stone at his feet. Wet soil and shards scattered beneath his boots. He slipped, caught himself, and gave me the two seconds I needed to reach for the emergency bell rope hanging beside the gate.

A knife struck the post inches above my hand and severed the rope.

"Prepared for everything, weren't you?" I panted.

"Lucas paid extra for preparation."

I grabbed the iron watering can and swung it into his jaw.

The blow staggered him but did not drop him.

He caught the handle and ripped it from my hands.

"Enough."

His fist struck my healing ribs.

Pain folded me.

I stumbled over the low garden wall and hit the gravel on one knee.

The leader seized my hair from behind.

"Still fighting," he muttered. "Lucas said you never knew when to kneel."

I drove my elbow backward into his stomach.

He swore and slammed me face-first into the dirt.

My cheek scraped over stone. Warm blood opened along the edge of the black crescent.

The leader planted a knee between my shoulder blades.

"Where is your King now?"

"Probably deciding which wall to hang your head from."

He laughed and pressed the flat of the silver blade against my throat.

Cold burned into my skin.

My vision sharpened with fear.

"He is not your King," the tracker said. "You are still Blood Moon property."

"I was never Lucas's property."

"Tell him that when you see him in the afterlife."

A shout came from somewhere beyond the inner gate.

The tracker glanced up.

I tried to buck him off.

His knee drove harder into my spine.

"No more games."

The knife turned. The edge kissed my skin.

"Lucas gave me one message to deliver before I cut your head off."

I went perfectly still.

The tracker bent close enough that his breath warmed my ear.

"He said you always were too stubborn to die."

The blade began to press down.