Chapter 3

I didn't sleep that night.

I'd been the true hand steering this territory for nine years; if there was one thing I was never short on, it was the skill to dig up the truth. I pulled the altar records for the Bonding ceremony—the mountains of low-level documents not even the Elders bothered to read. I'd always signed them without a second glance. Now I read them line by line.

In a "Moon Mark Binding Agreement" from nine years ago, I found a word that had been altered again and again.

Not "Blessing."

The original text read "Sealing." Someone had changed it to "Blessing" when copying it out.

My breath caught. The binding of the moon mark had never been the Goddess granting me glory. Someone had taken advantage of my youth to seal something away inside me—and then, with a single phrase, "the only Luna the Moon Goddess acknowledges," coaxed me into wearing the shackle willingly, keeping their watch for nine years.

Did Kael know?

I stared at the row of seals at the bottom of the agreement. The mark of the Council of Elders. The seal of Kael's father. And one crest I'd never seen on any official document—a broken moon, bound in thorns.

Buzz. Buzz.

My phone shuddered in my palm, Kael's name flashing on the screen like a curse. I killed the call. It lit up again at once. On the third try, a text stretched across the middle of the screen:

"Evelyn, don't embarrass me. However unhappy you are today, you will be at that dinner on time. That's an order."

An order. Even now, in his conceited little logic, I was still just a child throwing a tantrum.

I was about to delete it when the screen lit again—an unknown, encrypted number, a single line:

"You've already found the 'Sealing,' haven't you? Clever. But don't breathe a word—the one in the Council who wears the thorned moon is waiting for you to slip. Leave before dawn. Take the old northern railway."

Someone was watching me. And more than one someone, at that.

I photographed the agreement for proof, tucked the letter and the photo away carefully, and threw the old box into the fireplace. In the firelight I lifted my suitcase.

The instant I opened the door, two guards I'd never seen stood in the shadows at either end of the hall—dressed in black.

"My lady." One of them blocked my path, his tone respectful but leaving no room for argument. "By the Alpha's order, for the seven days before the ceremony, for your 'safety,' you are not to leave the territory without word being sent ahead."

So Kael had thought even this far. He meant to keep me under house arrest until the day of the ceremony.

I lowered my eyes and smiled faintly. I had been the very order of this territory for nine years. No one knew better than I did where every crack in every wall was.

"I'm only going to the garden," I said lightly.

And the hidden garden door that led to the old railway had been built seven years ago—on my own signed approval.