Chapter 1 Chapter 1

Isolde POV

Oath Night at Thornwick Keep smelled of woodsmoke and wet wool. The hall had been built for three hundred people and held closer to five. I knew because I had seen the order for the extra benches, and the order for the extra ale, and I had checked both against the guest list.

I stood at the foot of the oath stone in the grey betrothal gown Stillwater House had issued that morning. Matron Hale had pinned the cord around my wrist herself. Red wool, knotted twice. She told me to keep my hands in front of me and my eyes down. I had been doing both for eight years.

The old alpha, Osric Halvard, was on a litter by the hearth under three furs. His skin had gone the color of tallow. Alaric Thorne stood beside him with one hand on the litter's frame, and when anyone approached Osric, they spoke to Alaric first.

Alaric was forty and looked it only around the eyes. He wore black, with no sword, because he did not need one in a room where he already had everything. I had been betrothed to him since I was sixteen. In that time, he had spoken to me eleven times. I had a list.

The lore-keeper rapped his staff on the stone. "The houses are gathered. Let the oaths be witnessed."

The heads of the houses came forward one at a time to confirm their alliances for the winter. Casimir. Voronin. Gale. The Gale delegation was small, four men in salt-stained coats, and they stood near the door as if they were waiting for something to be delivered.

Then it was our turn. Alaric walked down from the dais and stopped in front of me. The hall went quiet in a way that told me everyone already knew what would happen. I looked at the red cord on my wrist and understood that I was the only person in the room who did not.

"Isolde of Stillwater," he said. "Before the houses, I end this betrothal."

He took a knife from his belt and cut the cord. It dropped on the stone. A servant picked it up and carried it off.

"She is ash-blood," Alaric said to the hall. "Born with no wolf, and nothing to bring to a house that needs strength. I will not have my name tied to it."

I heard someone laugh. It was brief. It stopped when he turned his head.

"In her place, I name Mirela Casimir."

Mirela was already walking toward him. She was nineteen, red-haired, and she did not look at me as she passed. Her father was nodding. Her mother had a cup in her hand and was drinking from it too quickly.

I thought: They had arranged this before the meal. The seating chart had Mirela at the high table. I had seen the chart on Tuesday and assumed it was a courtesy.

"There is the matter of the levy," Alaric said, still facing the hall. "Lord Gale has held the northern salt road for this valley at his own cost for two winters. The debt is real, and the house of Thorne pays what it owes. Stillwater's daughter will be delivered to him in five days as settlement."

Ferrant Gale stepped forward from the door. He was in his fifties, broad, gray-bearded, with a nose that had been broken more than once. He looked at me the way a man looks at a delivery he has already counted.

Gale had buried two wives. Everyone in the valley knew it, and no one said so, and no one said it now.

I did the only thing I could think of. I priced myself. One veiled daughter, eight years of upkeep, a debt settled. If I had been a line in the Stillwater books, I would have been entered as a loss written off against a larger gain.

"The alpha will sign," Alaric said.

The litter was brought forward. A clerk laid the paper on Osric's lap. Osric's hand was shaking, and his eyes were on the fire, not the page. Alaric placed the pen between his fingers and guided his hand across the line.

I watched the ink dry. Nobody else did.

The hall drank. The houses moved on to the next order of business, which was grain, and then the passes, and then who would host the spring council. Mirela took my place on the oath stone, and the lore-keeper tied a new cord around her wrist, a white one. Alaric did not look at me again.

Nobody told me I could leave. I stood there for an hour. Eventually Matron Hale appeared at my side, took my elbow, and walked me through the servants' door.

---

Stillwater House was a long stone building a mile from the Keep, and it had no locks on the outside. The valley believed a wolfless woman had nowhere to go. In the dark the road looked like it led to nowhere, and I had walked it enough times to know it did.

My room was at the back, on the north side. Bed, desk, chest, a window set too high to see out of. I took off the grey gown and folded it. Then I sat down and did nothing for a while.

At the ninth bell, Matron Hale brought the tea.

It was the same cup, chipped on the rim, and the same dark brown, with the same bitter smell of bark. Every night for as long as I could remember, I had been told to drink it for my nerves. I drank it. Then I handed her the cup, and she left, and I was alone.

I waited until her steps went down the hall. Then I knelt, pulled up the loose board under the bed, and took out the ledger.

It was not the house ledger. It was my copy, kept in my own hand for seven years. Every order that passed through my desk was in it: grain, linen, candles, the silver wire the physician used. And two lines I had started tracking in the third year, because they did not match.

Stillroot, the bitter bark in the tea. Silver, in sheets, delivered under the physician's name.

Both had gone up every quarter. Over the same seven years, the count of veiled daughters at Stillwater had gone from thirty-one to nineteen. I had written the dates beside each missing name. Each time, the matron had said the girl was ill, then transferred, then that it was not my business to ask.

I had never said any of it out loud. I told myself it was bookkeeping.

I turned to the last page and added a line for tonight. Isolde. Released by betrothal. Transferred to Gale, 5 days. I looked at it for a long time.

I still believed I was wolfless, like every veiled daughter. But if a house orders that much stillroot for girls who have nothing to suppress, it is not for their nerves. It is doing something to them.

The window had a crack in the frame. A line of cold air came through it and I felt it on my neck.

Five days. Five days until a man with two dead wives took delivery of me. If I stayed, I would go to him. If I ran, I would run with a wolfless body, in winter, into the hills where no pack would claim a woman nobody had claimed.

The tea had taken the edge off the panic. It always did. Tonight I noticed that, and I did not like it.

I wrapped the ledger in my spare shirt and put it inside my coat. I counted what was in the chest: two pairs of wool stockings, a knife from the kitchen, a map I had drawn from memory, and bread I would have to steal tomorrow.

I would not go tonight. Tonight they would be watching, because the whole house knew what had happened. Tomorrow night they would assume I was too frightened to move.

I lay down and shut my eyes.

Tomorrow, I told myself, I skip the tea.