Claimed By The Cursed King

Chapter6

Chapter Six: Dinner with the Devil

The invitation came on the eighth day. A folded note on heavy black paper, delivered by a guard who handed it to me with the seriousness of a man delivering state documents. The writing inside was precise and minimal:*Dinner. Tonight. Eight o'clock. Wear something from the wardrobe.**— C*I read it twice, then looked at the guard. "Does he usually issue dinner invitations like this?""The King doesn't usually issue dinner invitations," the guard said, with the slightly stunned expression of someone reporting an unexpected weather event.I wore dark green. It seemed like the most neutral choice among a wardrobe that appeared to consist entirely of expensive things in serious colors — no pastels, no florals, nothing that said anything other than"I am not to be trifled with.* Someone had stocked this wardrobe with considerable knowledge of the kind of person who would be wearing it. That continued to unsettle me.The great hall had been set for two people at one end of the long table — an intimate arrangement in the context of a room that could seat two hundred. Candles everywhere. The fire is at maximum.Cael was already there when I arrived. Standing, as he always seemed to be standing — at the window, looking out. He turned when I entered, and for just a fraction of a second, something moved across his face that he didn't entirely manage to suppress."You're on time," he said."I grew up in a pack that took punctuality extremely seriously," I said. "It's a deeply ingrained trauma response."He blinked. Then — and I watched it happen with the kind of fascination reserved for genuinely rare natural phenomena — the corner of his mouth moved. Barely. Perhaps one millimeter in the direction of something that, in different lighting, you might call a smile.We sat. Servants brought food — more food than two people needed, all of it better than anything I'd eaten in my previous twenty-two years combined. I ate with the focused appreciation of someone who had spent years eating communal pack meals characterized primarily by adequacy."You're from Gregor Voss's pack," Cael said. "In the southern lowlands."Yes."You were brought to him as a child. He didn't take you in out of charity."It wasn't a question, exactly. "No," I said. "He took me in because someone paid him to keep quiet about what he was keeping."Cael's eyes sharpened. "Someone paid him."I was seven. I didn't understand at the time." I set down my fork. "I only know what I overheard. A man came to the pack house once, when I was about twelve. He gave Gregor a package — I couldn't see what was in it — and I heard him say: *keep the girl quiet, keep the girl ignorant, and keep her alive.* The alive part was apparently a recent amendment to the original arrangement."The silence was specific. Focused."The original arrangement was to have her killed?" Cael said carefully."The original arrangement was to have me killed," I agreed. "Apparently, at some point, someone decided I was more useful breathing."Until Dorian Voss came looking," Cael said.I looked at him. "You know about that?"Dorian has been searching for something for five years. My intelligence network is thorough." He picked up his wine. "The timing of your sacrifice — Gregor's decision to send you here specifically — suggests that when Dorian's search got too close, Gregor panicked. He couldn't kill you himself without questions being asked. So he sent you to someone who was expected to do it for him."You," I said."Me."I was quiet for a moment, processing my thoughts. "What does Dorian want with me?"I have theories," Cael said. "Not certainties." He looked at me steadily. "What do you know about the Moon-born bloodline?"The word hit me somewhere below rational thought — a resonance, as a bell struck inside my chest. I didn't know why. "Nothing."It's a bloodline thought to be extinct. An ancient wolf lineage, predating the current pack system by thousands of years. Created by the Moon Goddess as her earthly vessels — carrying a wolf of extraordinary power." His eyes didn't leave mine. "Silver wolves. The last confirmed sighting was three hundred and forty years ago."The resonance in my chest deepened. Throbbed once, like a second heartbeat."Why are you telling me this?" I said." Because," Cael said, very quietly, "I think you already know why." He set down his wine glass. "And because the next time my curse nearly overcomes me, I'd like to know whether you standing there and not flinching is a coincidence or something considerably more significant."I held his gaze across the candlelit table and said nothing, because I didn't have an answer, and because the hollow place in my chest was resonating now with a frequency I had never felt before, and because whatever was waking up inside me, I wasn't ready to name it."Tell me about the curse," I said instead. "The real version. Not the village story."He was quiet for a long moment. Then he began to talk.