Chapter 4 The Truth at the End

Two men followed her into the room. They wore no pack colours, only plain dark leathers and the good, heavy boots Wren had warned me about. One had blood on his sleeve. They took up places on either side of the door like men who had done this before.

“You shouldn’t be out of bed,” Calista said, and set the box down on my table as gently as if she had come to nurse me.

I gripped the shutter to stay upright. “Where’s Ansel?”

“Resting. Worry about yourself, Fi.” Her gaze travelled over my swollen hands and sweat-damp nightgown, and she clicked her tongue. “You’ve barely eaten a thing I sent. That’s why you’re so weak.”

“I ate all of it.”

“Did you?” She smiled. “Good girl.”

It was the way she said it, warm and pleased, like a hunter praising a dog that has finally learned to come to heel.

She sat in my only chair, crossing her ankles the way she used to in the Beta office, and broke a honey cake neatly in half.

“Do you know what hushroot is? No, nobody does these days. It grows by the southern roads. It’s bitter, so you bury it in something sweet. In small doses it makes you tired and hungry, and it makes your wolf so sleepy that she forgets how to wake up.” She looked at me over the cake with something almost like fondness. “Eighteen months, Fi. Every cake. Every bottle. I made them all myself.”

The pieces fell into place around me, one by one. Wren pushing a cake back into my hand because it smelled bitter. My wolf flinching from the basket. Four pages without a word about Logan. Every clue had been put into my hands, and I had eaten every one of them.

The dresses that no longer fit. The stairs I could not climb. The half-eaten cake thrown at my feet on the moonstone. All that time I had hated my own body and apologised for it, and she had sat beside me every night, feeding me and telling me I was lovely.

“Why?” My voice broke. “You were my best friend.”

“I know.” Something flickered across her face and was gone. “That was the hardest part.”

“Then why?”

“Because you’re a Moonwhisper.” She leaned forward. “Your father never told you, did he? Too frightened, after your mother. The Moonwhisper women were Witnesses. Every Alpha had to swear his oath before one, and if she said it was false, he was finished. One Witness could break an Alpha. And then there was only one left, a plump, kind Beta’s wife who wouldn’t keep her mouth shut.”

“My mother.”

“She ate from the same hand, Fi. My father arranged it before you were born. She died having you, and everyone blamed her weight.” She tilted her head. “He says you have her eyes. That’s why we had to be careful with you. A Witness who can’t stand can’t testify. A Witness nobody believes is no Witness at all.”

I lunged for her.

I was too slow and too heavy and too sick. The larger man wrenched my arms behind my back, and the other forced my head against his shoulder. I bit the hand that came over my mouth until I tasted blood and heard him swear. It made no difference. For eighteen months, Calista had made sure of that.

She emptied a small glass vial into the bottle of elderflower on my nightstand and shook it until the dark grains dissolved.

“The Alpha took a much bigger dose. Your father carried his flask on the hunt, but I’m the one who filled it.” She smiled at whatever she saw in my face. “He died for my work, Fi. I’m sorry, truly. He always gave me the best seat by the fire.”

“Logan,” I gasped against the man’s palm. “Logan will find out.”

“Logan sent you here himself. He thought he was hiding you from the people who wanted you dead, and all he did was put you somewhere quiet, where no one could hear you scream.” She came close enough that I smelled honey and crushed mint. “At the Spring Moon, he names me his Luna. My father takes his seat on the council. And Silverwolf never has another Witness again.”

She pinched my nose shut, and when I opened my mouth to breathe, she poured.

It was sweet. That was the worst of it. Sweet and fizzing, with the bitterness underneath, the same taste I had swallowed a thousand times and never once questioned. The men held me until the bottle was empty, then let me fall. My heart lurched once against my ribs and began to stumble like a horse on ice.

Below, the outpost door crashed open.

“Fiona!”

I had known that voice all my life. A roar of fury came up the stairs, a body slammed into a wall, a man screamed. Calista swore and snatched up her cloak. “Out, the back, now,” she snapped, and the last I saw of her was her golden braid whipping past the shutter into the night.

Then Logan was in the doorway, half shifted, his eyes burning gold, blood streaming from a gash across his ribs and down one arm. He took one look at me on the floor, and the colour left his face. He fell to his knees and gathered me against his chest.

“No. No, Fiona, look at me. Stay with me. I got the letters. Moon help me, I got every single one.”

I tried to speak and couldn’t. My heart was slowing, each beat further from the last.

“I sent you away to keep you safe,” he said, his voice cracking apart. “Darius wanted you gone. I thought if they believed I’d cast you out, they would leave you alone. I meant to fix it before spring, and come for you, and tell you everything.” He pressed his forehead to mine. He was shaking. “I never stopped loving you. Not for one day. Fiona, please. Please.”

I had waited my whole life to hear those words. I had waited all winter, through eleven unanswered letters. Now they reached me from very far away, like a voice calling across a frozen lake, and I could not even lift my hand to touch his face.

The last thing I felt was his tears falling on my cheek. The last thing I heard, from somewhere beyond him, beyond the room, beyond the cold, was a woman’s voice I had never heard before and somehow knew, soft as moonlight.

Not yet, little one.