Beneath The Blood Moon

The Envoy from the Fells

"Alone," Sofia said. "In the small hall. No guards visible."

"You are not meeting a sealed pack's envoy alone," Zayn said.

"Not alone. You'll be there. But not with Halden at the door and Fen at the window. If the Fells sealed their borders out of fear, and they did, no one seals for a season out of anything else, then the last thing that opens them is a room full of blades." She held his eyes. "I unmade an army by not being what they feared. I'm not going to be it now because you're nervous."

His jaw set. The old argument, protector against partner, sat between them again, familiar now, almost worn smooth from use. "I hate this."

"I know. Hate it beside me." Their line. It landed the way it always did, and he breathed out through his nose, and gave.

The rider arrived at midday under a grey flag, alone, older, weathered like the mountains she came from, with the Fells' grey braided into her hair by custom and not age. She came into the small hall and stopped and looked at Sofia for a long moment, and then she did a thing no one expected. She went down on one knee, slow, the knee of someone whose joints protested it, and bowed her head.

"We heard her," the woman said. "In the spring." She stopped, catching herself. "Forgive me. Not the spring, not yet. We heard what you did in the pass. Word travels slower behind sealed mountains, but it travels." She lifted her head. "The Fells sealed because we thought the vessel line was a weapon that had woken again. Mordain used the old power to bind. We felt you break his army and we did not know, from behind our mountains, whether you'd broken it to free it or to take it. So we sealed, and we waited, and we listened."

Her weathered hands rested on her knee.

"And we heard the story of what you did with the turned wolves at the pass camp. That you refused to force them back. That you brought them medicine and kindness instead of chains, even after they'd been turned against you. That when Voss burned the ones who tried to leave him, you grieved every one of them by name instead of simply moving on to the next battle." Her voice roughened. "A weapon does not do that. A weapon takes. We came to see if the story was true. I have looked at your face. It's true."

She bowed her head again.

"The Fells will open," she said. "We've been afraid a long time. We're done being afraid of you."

Sofia found she could not speak at once. Zayn's hand had come to rest at the small of her back, steady, present, and she leaned back into it a fraction and got her voice.

"Stand up," she said. "Please. We don't do the kneeling much here. Stand up and I'll have someone feed you, you've had a long ride, and then you'll tell me everything the Fells need, because if you sealed for a season out of fear, you sealed with something breaking behind those mountains, and I'd like to know what, so we can help mend it."

The woman stood. Slow. And on her weathered face something moved that she had not let move in a long time.

"Yes," she said. "Yes. All right."

They talked for two hours. The Fells had lost their own healer during the compulsion years, and their supply lines had thinned badly under Mordain's blockades, and the woman, whose name was Brenna, spoke of it plainly, without asking for pity, only for what could actually be arranged.

Zayn stayed at the edge of the conversation, occasionally offering a logistical detail, mostly letting Sofia carry it, and she noticed him watching her the way he watched terrain, cataloguing, but with something warmer underneath the assessment now.

When Brenna finally rose to leave, she paused at the door.

"There's one more thing," she said. "Something the Fells elders asked me to say, if the story proved true." She glanced at Zayn, then back to Sofia. "They want to send a delegation. Not for trade. For the succession question. The Fells have opinions about who should sit the Blood Moon Throne, and they intend to have those opinions heard before any coronation is finalized."

Zayn's expression didn't change, but Sofia felt his hand go still against her back.

"The throne isn't in question," he said, level. "Sofia's bloodline predates my claim. That was settled at council."

"Settled by fourteen elders in a room, Your Majesty," Brenna said, not unkindly. "Not by the packs who'll have to live under whatever you two decide together. The Fells aren't objecting. We're asking to be part of the conversation." She inclined her head. "You have time before we arrive. I'd use it, if I were you, to decide together what you actually want the answer to be."

She left before either of them could respond, and the small hall settled into a silence that felt different from the one before she'd arrived, heavier, carrying a question neither of them had fully spoken aloud yet.

"She's not wrong," Sofia said finally.

"About which part."

"About us needing to decide together. We've been at war since the terrace. We haven't actually talked about what comes after it." She turned to face him fully. "What do you want the answer to be, Zayn?"

He was quiet long enough that she thought he might deflect the question entirely, the way he sometimes still did with anything too large to calibrate quickly.

Instead he reached for her hand.

"I want to show you something," he said. "Tonight. It isn't an answer. But it's close to one."