WREN POV
I did not sleep in the car.
I tried. I pressed my forehead against the cold window and watched the dark trees blur past and told myself to close my eyes. My brain refused. It kept replaying the clearing on a loop. Callum's hand reaching for Sable. My uncle's grip on my arm. Killian's voice. I will take her. The thing that moved in the dark between the trees before Killian's men appeared from nowhere and handled it so quickly and quietly that I still don't know what it was.
I asked, in the car. Killian said, "A scout. Not ours." Then he said nothing else and stared out his own window and somehow that non-answer was more frightening than any explanation would have been.
So no. I did not sleep.
The Lycan Court looks like something out of a history book.
I step out of the car and tilt my head back and just stare. It is enormous. Old stone buildings, towers, walls that look like they grew out of the ground instead of being built on it. Everything is lit by pale lights that make it look silver in the dark. It smells like pine and cold air and something underneath both of those things, ancient and deep, like the ground here remembers things that happened before any of us were born.
Around me, people move. Killian's people. Guards, staff, wolves of every rank going about their business with the quiet efficiency of those who have never had to prove their worth to anyone. Nobody stares at me. Nobody whispers. Two people nod to Killian as he passes and then go back to what they were doing.
At home, when the Alpha walked through the clearing, everyone stopped and performed attention at him. Here, the King walks in and his people simply continue, calm and steady, like his presence is just a fact of the world rather than something to react to.
I file that away too.
Killian stops at the main doors and turns to me. He does not ask if I am okay. He does not give me a speech. He says, "Your rooms are on the east wing. Third floor. Mira will show you." A pause. "You are a guest here. Not a prisoner. Every door in this court is open to you."
Then he walks away.
I stand there for a second. Something about the plainness of it, the total absence of performance, does something unexpected to the tightness in my chest. Like a knot loosening one single thread.
Mira Voss finds me before I find her.
She comes around a corner like she was already on her way and happens to end up exactly where I am, which I suspect is not an accident. She is tall like her brother, dark-haired, with quick brown eyes that take me apart and put me back together in about four seconds. She looks me up and down once, and whatever she sees, she seems to make a decision about it immediately.
"You look terrible," she says. "Not insultingly. Just factually."
"Thank you," I say.
"When did you last eat?"
I think about it. "Lunch. Yesterday."
She makes a face. "Right. Rooms first. Food second. Feelings third, because the feelings are not going anywhere and they are much easier to deal with when you are not running on empty." She turns and walks like she expects me to follow.
I follow.
She shows me the east wing, the third floor, my rooms. I was expecting something cold and formal. What I get is warm light and a wide window and a bed that looks like it could fit four people. A small fire in the corner fireplace. A bookshelf someone stocked, and not randomly, it has exactly the kind of books I like, quiet stories and complicated histories, which is either a coincidence or something that makes the hair on my arms stand up.
I do not mention the bookshelf.
Mira plants herself in the chair by the fireplace like she belongs there, which she probably does, and watches me stand in the middle of the room and not know what to do with my hands.
"Sit down," she says. "You are making me anxious."
I sit on the edge of the bed. "How long have you known your brother was going to do that tonight?"
"About forty minutes before it happened. He doesn't exactly run his plans past me." She tilts her head. "Were you expecting someone more terrifying?"
"I was expecting someone colder."
"He is cold. With everyone else." She says it simply, no drama. "With you he was careful. Did you notice?"
I did notice. I didn't want to talk about it yet. "Why?"
Mira is quiet for a moment, turning something over. Then she says, "My brother has not looked at anyone the way he looked at you in fifteen years. Maybe longer. I have watched powerful people try to get his attention for a decade." She meets my eyes. "You had it from the moment he walked through those doors. He just hadn't found you yet."
The words sit in the air between us.
"He killed my parents," I say. Flat. Factual. Seeing how it sounds out loud.
"I know," she says, just as flat, just as factual. "And I suspect you are going to want to ask him about that."
"I already started."
Her eyebrows go up slightly. "What did he say?"
"He said yes, he was there." I swallow. "Then something came out of the trees and he told me to get behind him and that was the end of the conversation."
Mira is quiet for a moment. Something moves behind her eyes, careful and private. "Ask him again," she says finally. "When it is just the two of you. Ask him and make him finish the answer."
Before I can respond, a staff member appears at the door with a tray of food. Real food. Warm bread and soup and something that smells so good after thirty hours of nothing that my stomach makes an embarrassing sound.
Mira stands up looking deeply satisfied. "Eat. Sleep. The court will still be complicated in the morning." She moves toward the door, then stops. "For what it's worth, you are the first person I have ever seen throw a question at him and not look away while waiting for the answer. He noticed that too."
She leaves.
I eat every single thing on the tray.
I find the newspaper clipping when I pull back the pillow.
Old paper, soft at the folds like it has been opened and closed many times. A photograph, black and white, slightly blurred. Two people standing together, smiling at whoever is holding the camera. A man and a woman, young, happy, completely unaware of what is coming.
I know their faces. I have one photograph of them at home, small and creased, kept in the bottom of a drawer. I have looked at it so many times I have memorized the details.
These are my parents.
My hands are shaking. I turn the clipping over. On the back, in handwriting I don't recognize, small and careful and very controlled, are four words.
I am sorry, Wren.
The fire crackles in the corner. The court is quiet around me. And somewhere in this ancient building, the Lycan King who killed my parents has been carrying this clipping long enough for the folds to go soft.
I sit with that for a long, long time.