he

voice had taken on a tenderness s

. "We need to talk.

anyone watching, it would have looke

ened--slowly, deliberately--until his na

neutral. I didn

odded to the courtiers we passed, smiled at the servants, played the role wit

ng under his grip, and I smiled too, beca

door close

it the wall, shoulder-first, sliding d

entirely--stripped away as cleanly a

an shouting. "One meeting and you've already got that anima

eyes was absolute. "

s did--with precision, in the exact

ething that had spent twenty years trembli

aight

t look away. "You spent years teaching me how to pl

to the leather strap coiled on the edge of his desk--a reflex so

aise

en he

adily, my chin lifted,

ght. Not when Alric might see." I let tha

The strap retur

and slammed a document onto the surface between us

h. Fin

owly. I looked

lood left

rt of t

e way you know the names of thing

ver the wolves. A keystone of wolf power, a

he wrong

is h

ard the words come out of me, flat

never offering a truce." I looked

hing. He di

t assembled itself in my m

d within the wolf clan, trusted, close,

she wouldn't even know she was b

were enslaved or the war ignited--what happened to th

llectually, that

derstanding of the world around that fact

-old girl who had knelt on a temple floor and still, despite everything, b

. Completely and

his. "I won't be part of this. I wo

asted exactly

ha

out louder than I had ever

ound of it, clean and cer

ou slaughter people who have

fore. Not anger--anger I knew. This was something colder

name almost gently. "Y

ung the strap with the careful

s your salvation n

TONIGHT. You know nothing about what he is. Nothing

piked. "Wh

oor s

ock t

the reality of it broke over me and I was acro

echoed off the stone wall

r didn'

you what the

? What had he alr

before the questi

gistered--and Lord Harrow stumbled through it, reeking of wine, his

lready grinning. "All

s all it took to un

y father's

. Ruin me. Damage the commodi

oroughly that I would

g the distance between us, between me and the other door,

han I expected and caught my

like a wall. His free hand f

ee up hard enough to make him grunt, bit

he point of feeling much, and the edge of the desk

r did n

sed to

nding in the wreckage of it, and the man I saw was no

--red, burning, lit from somewh

wrong, fingers ending in something

with such careful warmth--was wearing an exp

g intent. N

how he cros

he was in the doorway; the next he

is

omewhere below speech, from the part of a cre

drove through

ow's ribcage, the sound of it, the blood coming fast and dark, Harrow's eyes going wide wi

his hand, he was hol

still b

the floor, back against the wall, and the sound com

you to see, some distant, func

lesson he ar

nished falling. The iron smell of b

turned to

something human-shaped. But the expression that replaced the

on. Absolute an

rong--still carrying some echo of the thing

move. I cou

and I looked at the man I had kissed in the moonlight less than an hour ago, and I

s not

never b

hand in his and aske

e kind, something

ver be the