Chapter 2

No one noticed that I'd stopped preparing for the Bonding.

Because in everyone's minds, all the tedious work—the council agendas, the winter supply lines, the border negotiations, the great festival—was like air. It ran itself; no one needed to tend it.

No one knew that for nine years, it was my every night and every morning that had built the order of this territory.

That afternoon, Kael pushed my door open without knocking and dropped onto the familiar sofa. His eyes passed over the half-packed suitcase by my bed, and his brow only creased a little—curiosity, not concern.

"Going somewhere?"

I folded the last dress into the case. "Mm."

He relaxed, plainly. He didn't even ask where. He just spoke, in that suffocating tone of a man who assumes: "There's a council dinner tonight. You'll go with Selene—let her get used to it early. You're the seasoned one. You can help her handle the old men."

Before the words had fully left him, light footsteps came from the doorway. Selene leaned against the frame, and the moon mark that should have been mine glowed softly at her wrist in the lamplight. She smiled, gentle and innocent, her voice sweet as honey. "Evelyn, you understand all of this so much better than I ever could."

She tilted her head, and something faintly taunting slid through her eyes. "You'll teach me… won't you?"

I lifted my gaze to Kael, waiting for him to say something—anything, even just, "Selene, that's not necessary."

But he only picked up his teacup, eyes lowered, as if he hadn't heard a word.

It was the loudest answer of all: consent.

A woman wearing my moon mark, standing in my room, asking me to "teach" her how to be my replacement. And the man who had once sworn to protect me for the rest of my life couldn't even be bothered to raise his eyes.

My hands stilled over the folded clothes. I didn't look at Selene. I only looked at Kael, and said, one word at a time, "And if I refuse?"

He froze. There was no anger in his face—only a pure, almost physical bewilderment, as if he'd heard something insane. "Why would you refuse?"

In that instant, the fog that had clouded me for nine years lifted completely. He had never loved me. He was simply used to having me—used to dumping every damned burden on me so he could enjoy his power with a clear conscience.

He came to me, bent down, and pressed a kiss to my forehead—one that smelled of cedar, the same "comfort" he'd given me countless times over nine years. "Stop this, Evelyn. Once the ceremony's over, everything goes back to normal."

The door closed. The crisp click of the lock was like a chasm splitting one lifetime from the next. And I noticed he'd taken the communication token from my desk on his way out—one of the keys I used to command the territory's systems.

He was guarding against me. His mouth said "back to normal," but his hands had already begun quietly taking back what he'd given me. So he'd planned for this all along.

I crouched and pulled an old, dust-caked wooden box from under the bed—the only thing my mother had left me. A line was carved into the inside of the lid: "Open this when you finally learn that love and loyalty are two different things."

I broke the wax seal. Inside was a single sheet of yellowed letter paper. But as I drew it out, the pad of my finger caught on a faint ridge at the bottom of the box.

I pressed it. With a soft click, a hidden compartment sprang open.

Inside lay a silver moon crest I'd never seen—cold, ancient, the same hand carved on its back as on the parchment from the raven. And half of a scorched old photograph. In it, my mother stood young before a white stone keep, beside a black-robed man I didn't recognize—and on my mother's wrist was not any crescent, but a full ring of slowly turning silver light.

On the letter, my mother's writing was sharp as a knife:

"Do not complete the Bonding. Destroy all of it—or he will devour your soul along with everything else. The answer you're looking for is where this photograph was taken."

I turned the photo over. Along its charred edge, only two legible characters remained:

The North.