The Alpha King's Tribute

rel

hey came for me, and I made them

he bed and braided it tight against my own skull while two of the King's men stood in my doorway and pretended the floor was very interesting. They'd expecte

between being ready and refusing to be dragged, and the

mountain, a child hauled back by a mother's hand on its collar. The bell pulled at the inside of my chest with every stroke, and under it, lower, was the other pull. The bond. Som

s that fine don't

saddle a lifetime ago, that I understood how many wolves answered to him. I had not. They ringed the floor in their pack-colours, lords and their seconds, the hig

of the floor

like air pretending. A boy in grey stood beside it holding a tray, and on the tray a short blade lay across a folded cloth. Marcus stood over both with his hands folded

everything else in the ro

came to me the second I crossed the threshold and they were not a shut door at all - they were that starving look, that thing I'd named in him before I had any right

grim, one hand resting too easy on t

d," Alaric said

rom the front rank in dove grey, hands open, and he managed

nd we have law for exactly this reason - so that what one man wants, even a king, even rightly, is weighed against what the land can survive." He turned, slow, taking in the gallery, gathering them up like a man gathering reins. "Mournhollow went dark this

d half the room was nodding, and I felt the floor of th

ightened

round. Alaric's brow rose, polite, i

untain." I let my eyes travel him the way the court had travelled me, head to boot, slow, and I watched two lords behind him decide very carefully not to smile. "I'm one girl with

someone laughed. Short,

gh, watching Alaric with eyes gone flat and cold - the first time I let myself believ

he King's bond. He had come for one thing only and we were all just weather between him and it. "The accused will give her bloo

the tray star

om felt them like a dropped stone. "No one in this hold lays hands on her. That much law

s head a bare inch

y me time, a delay, a technicality, and Alaric had moved the hour to dawn precisely to leave him nothing to spend. All my king had left to give me was of your own feet. The di

too

over. Past the boy, who flinched. I stood at the pale stone bowl and I looked down into water so clear it was ba

Marcus. "I've a low op

up the

notes. Don't let them hear it. They came without my leave, the way they always have when I'm afraid, pushing at the back of my teeth, and I clamped m

ist. A bright thin lin

red and round, and

ay, all three and the fall, soft as breath but I heard them and so did

limbing the inside of the bowl like something rising

rom the basin with his

in that room