The King's Second Heart

The Festival Begins

"My lady is wearing the green gown?"

The serving girl had her hand frozen halfway to the wardrobe.

Elowen was already at the polished mirror, pinning her dark hair up in the simple plaited crown her own mother had taught her how to plait when she was nine years old. She did not turn around.

"Yes."

"My lady — that is your wedding gown."

"I know what it is."

"The Alpha said—"

"The Alpha may say whatever he likes. Bring it to me."

The girl brought it to her with a face that was carefully not asking any of the questions her face was full of, and Elowen lifted the deep green gown out of the girl's hands and laid it across the bed.

Four years of dust came off the folds of the skirt in a small soft cloud. The gown had been packed away in the cedar chest at the foot of her bed since the morning after her wedding night. She had not looked at it since. She had not been the kind of woman, until this morning, who wanted to look at it.

This morning she was a different kind of woman.

This morning she was the kind of woman who was going to walk out into the courtyard of Ironbough Pack on the morning of the autumn festival in the gown she had been married in, and she was going to sit at the high table at her husband's side, and she was going to make him say the words to her face in front of the entire pack while she was wearing the dress she had worn the day he had first promised in front of the same pack to honour her.

It was the smallest possible rebellion.

Nobody but her would understand it.

That was part of what made it hers.

"Lace me in," she said.

The girl laced her in. The gown was loose at the waist where it had once been tight — Elowen had lost more weight in four years than either of them wanted to acknowledge — but the deep green of the velvet still caught the morning light the way it had on the morning she had been sixteen, and the small white embroidery at the cuffs and the throat was still bright after all this time.

The grey ribbon was around her wrist.

She had tied it there before the girl had come in. She did not know why. She had woken before dawn with the ribbon on the writing desk where she had left it the night before, exactly where she had set it down, exactly where it could not have moved by itself, and she had picked it up and tied it around her own left wrist with three small tight knots, and she had not once asked herself why she was doing it. The ribbon was warm against her pulse.

The second heartbeat under her ribs was awake.

It had been awake since the moment she had opened her eyes this morning. It was beating in a slow steady rhythm against her own heart — not fighting hers, not crowding hers, but pulsing alongside it the way a second drummer comes in alongside the first drummer in a marching tune. Boom. Boom. Boom. Calm. Patient. There.

She was no longer pretending it wasn't real.

She did not know what it was. She did not know whose it was. She did not know why the grey ribbon on her wrist was warm. She did not know why a face with grey eyes had looked down at her from her own ceiling two nights ago. She did not know why she had seen a man kneeling in mud in the library yesterday and tasted iron in her own mouth.

She knew that today was the day Doran was going to put her aside in front of the whole pack.

She knew she was going to walk out and let him do it.

And she knew — she did not know how she knew, but she knew — that she was not walking out alone.

"My lady is ready?"

"Yes."

"Shall I — shall I tell the Alpha you are coming down?"

"He will see me when I arrive."

The serving girl curtseyed and fled.

Elowen stood for a long moment in front of the polished mirror by herself. The woman who looked back at her from the silver was not the hollow-eyed thing she had seen there four nights ago. The woman in the mirror was still pale and still thin and still exhausted, but there was something underneath the exhaustion now that had not been there four nights ago. Something steady. Something looking out of her own grey-green eyes that had been waiting a long time to look out of them.

"Whoever you are," Elowen said, very softly, to her own reflection, "thank you for the ribbon."

The woman in the mirror tilted her head. Just a fraction. Just enough that Elowen, watching, was not entirely sure her own head had moved at all.

She turned away from the mirror and walked out of her chamber.

The courtyard of Ironbough on a festival morning was a thing she had not let herself look at properly in four years. She had always watched it from the window. Now she walked into the centre of it.

The pack was out. All of them. The garlands were up along every wall. The wine barrels were open. The musicians were playing a slow bright autumn dance from the stone platform built against the south wall. Children were running in and out of the legs of the pack-folk in their festival best. There were old women selling honey-cakes from baskets at the gate. There were warriors in their dress-leathers. There were the witches from the road yesterday in their dark blue robes, set up at a small careful table near the kitchen door, telling fortunes for a copper a hand.

The pack saw her.

It was not all at once. It rippled. The first man to see her, standing near the wine barrels, looked up and went very still. The second was a kitchen woman with a tray of bread who saw her and stopped dead in the middle of the cobbles. The third was a child who tugged on her mother's sleeve and pointed.

The Luna of Ironbough was walking down to the high table in her wedding gown.

The Luna of Ironbough had not worn that gown in four years.

The pack-folk did not know what was about to happen at the high table this morning. Most of them did not know. But they all knew, in the small wordless way pack-folk know things, that the Luna of Ironbough did not wear her wedding gown to the autumn festival, and they all knew that if she was wearing it today she was wearing it for a reason, and the reason was going to matter.

The whole courtyard had begun to go quieter by the time Elowen reached the steps of the high table.

The high table had been set up on the great covered platform at the north end of the courtyard. It was draped in the red and gold cloth of festival days. There were three carved chairs along the back of it — the Alpha's chair in the centre, the Luna's chair to his right, and the chair for the most honoured guest of the festival to his left.

Selene of Silverbrook was already there.

She was not seated. Not yet. She was standing beside Doran's empty chair on the Luna's side, with her hand resting lightly on the carved back of it. She was wearing red again. A different red gown from the one she had worn in the great hall. This one was for festival days. It was finer. It was tighter. It was lower at the shoulders. Her hair was pinned up and twisted with small red ribbons, and her mouth was painted in the colour of the gown.

She saw Elowen come up the steps in the green wedding gown.

The smile that went across Selene's face was small and private and pleased. It was the smile of a woman watching another woman dress up especially for her own funeral.

Elowen did not look at her.

Elowen walked to the Luna's chair. Selene's hand was still on the carved back of it. Elowen stopped one pace away and looked down — just slightly, because Elowen was the taller of the two of them — and waited.

After a long terrible silence, Selene moved her hand.

Elowen sat down in her own chair.

The grey ribbon on her wrist was warm against her pulse.

The pack-folk in the courtyard had pretended not to watch the small wordless thing that had just happened at the high table. The pack-folk in the courtyard had watched every second of it, and every Lycan in Ironbough now knew, in the small wordless way Lycans know things, that the woman in the red gown had been told to take the Luna's chair this morning and the Luna had walked up and made her move out of it.