Eryx
The bed is too soft. That is the first thing I notice when the guards leave me alone in this room and the door clicks shut behind them. I sit on the edge of it for a moment, pressing my palms into the mattress, feeling how it gives under my weight in a way that dungeon floors never do. The blanket folded at the foot is thick wool, dark blue, the kind that keeps you warm through winter nights. I run my fingers over it once before standing up because sitting on soft things makes me think too much about all the years I went without them.
I move to the window instead, dropping into the chair in front of it and resting my arms across my knees. The wood creaks under me, solid and worn smooth from use. Someone sat in this chair before me, probably many someones, guests of the palace who came and went with their business finished and their lives unchanged.
The moon is high and full tonight, bright enough to light the whole courtyard below in pale silver. Shadows stretch long from the stone pillars that line the walkways. A pair of guards moves across the far side on patrol, their armor catching the moonlight in brief flashes before they disappear around the corner. I have slept under this same moon in forest clearings, in abandoned barns, in ditches when things got bad enough that ditches were the best option available. I have never slept behind iron bars, not until the dungeon, not until Caelan's palace, but these bars on the window are thinner than the dungeon ones and the room behind me smells like candle wax and clean linen instead of damp stone.
It is still a cage. It is just a prettier one.
I lean my head back against the chair and close my eyes for a moment, listening to the quiet. The palace makes sounds even at night, the kind you only notice when you stop moving long enough to hear them. Wood settling. Wind pushing against stone. Somewhere far below a door closes and voices echo up through the corridors before fading again.
I think about the look on Caelan's face when he pulled his wrist free from my hand and walked out of this room earlier. He moved fast, like a man trying to outrun something that was already inside him, and I know that feeling well enough to recognize it even on a king. The way your heart speeds up when you realize you want something you are not supposed to want. The way your hands shake when you step toward it anyway.
Years of running teach you that.
I open my eyes and look back at the moon. My wolf is quiet tonight, settled in a way it has not been since I was brought here in chains. That should worry me. Wolves do not settle in dangerous places. They stay alert, ready, because survival depends on it. But something about this room, about being here instead of down in the dark with stone pressing in on all sides, makes my wolf calm.
I do not trust it. Not yet.
I am still watching the courtyard when I hear footsteps in the corridor outside. Not heavy like a guard's, not the flat even rhythm of someone on patrol. These are lighter, deliberate, moving close to the wall the way people move when they do not want to be heard. I get out of the chair without making a sound and put my back to the wall beside the door, angling myself so that whatever comes through it will not see me immediately. My muscles tense. My breathing slows. If this is another assassin I will be ready this time.
The door opens slowly. No knock. Whoever this is either has a key or picked the lock, which means they planned this visit before they arrived. The hinges are well oiled and do not make a sound.
A woman steps inside wearing a dark cloak with the hood still up. She pulls the door shut behind her and turns the lock herself, which tells me she does not want the guards in the corridor to hear what happens next. Then she pushes the hood back and looks around the room until she finds me standing against the wall.
Her eyes are not what I expected. I have heard about Isolde in passing, the fated mate, the future queen, beautiful and graceful and everything a she-wolf of noble blood is supposed to be. All of that might be true. Her hair falls in a dark braid over one shoulder. Her face is the kind artists paint when they want to show what noble blood looks like. But what I notice first is that her eyes are angry in the specific way of someone who has been hurt badly enough that the hurt has turned into something harder.
She looks at me for a moment without speaking and I look back at her and neither of us pretends the situation is comfortable.
"So you are the rogue," she says finally. Her voice is controlled, steady, the way people sound when they have practiced what they are going to say before they say it.
"That is what the chains suggested," I say.
She does not smile. She moves a few steps closer and stops when there is still enough distance between us that she is not in reach, which tells me she is smart on top of everything else. Her hands stay visible at her sides, not reaching for anything, not threatening, just careful. "I want to know why," she says. "Why does he risk everything for you. Why does the king of this entire realm move a criminal into his guest wing and threaten his council over someone who broke crown law. Tell me what you said to him."
"I did not say anything special," I tell her, keeping my voice even. "I just talked to him like he was a person instead of a title."
Something moves across her face, quick and painful, like I hit something she was trying to protect. She looks away for just a second before she pulls herself back together. "He is a person," she says quietly. "He is also my fated mate. The Moon bound us. That bond is real. I feel it every time he is in the same room and I feel it going cold every time he looks somewhere else."
I do not say anything because she is not finished. Her hands curl into fists at her sides and then relax again.
"He is supposed to marry me," she says, and her voice stays steady but her jaw is tight. "The whole kingdom is preparing for it. There are laws built around it. There is stability that depends on it. There are people, real people in villages and packs across this realm, who are counting on that wedding happening because the bond between a king and his fated mate is what keeps the Moon's protection over us all." She looks back at me and her eyes are direct now, all the hurt pushed back behind something colder. "So I need you to understand what is actually at stake here. This is not a story about a king finding himself. This is a kingdom. It is crops growing in fields. It is children being born safe. It is wolves living without fear of the Moon withdrawing its blessing and leaving us exposed to everything that wants us dead."
"I know what it is," I say.
"Then explain yourself." She takes another step forward, close enough now that I could reach her if I wanted to. "Explain to me how you sleep at night knowing you are destroying something that took centuries to build. Explain how you look at him and do not see what you are taking away."
I push off the wall and move to the center of the room, stopping far enough away that she does not step back. "What do you want me to explain. That I came here in chains and did not ask for any of this. That I did not walk into his throne room and decide to turn his life over. He made every choice himself, every single one of them, and they were already in him before I arrived." I watch her face. "You know that. That is why you are here talking to me instead of him."
Her mouth presses into a thin line. She looks at me like she is trying to find something in my face that will prove me wrong.
"He finally feels something real," I say. "That is your answer. You asked why he risks things for me, and that is why. Not because of anything I did. Because for maybe the first time since he put that crown on, something in his life belongs to him instead of to the Moon or the council or the laws his father taught him before he was old enough to question them."
The anger in her face does not disappear but something underneath it shifts, cracks slightly, the way stone cracks when the thing pressing against it has been pressing for too long.