BOUND IN ASH

CHAPTER TEN: NO CROWN FOR ANY OF THEM

The council hall was fuller than usual the morning Kael finally delivered his decision, every one of the twelve candidates seated along the front rows in their finest silks, each one certain, in her own private way, that today would be the day she became Luna of Ironclaw.

Elara stood along the back wall with the other serving staff, a pitcher of water balanced against her hip, watching the proceedings with the same careful blankness she had trained herself to wear in every public room of this palace.

Kael sat upon his throne, expression unreadable, and Corvin stood beside him with a scroll in hand, prepared to record whatever judgment the alpha king finally chose to deliver.

"I have made my decision," Kael said finally, voice carrying easily across the silent hall. "There will be no Luna chosen from among the candidates at this time."

A ripple of shock moved through the hall. Elara barely registered it, some strange tightness already forming low in her chest that she did not understand and did not have time to examine before he continued.

"In place of a Luna, I will be taking a concubine, as tradition allows during a period of continued consideration. Lady Bianca of the eastern packs has demonstrated the sharpest political instincts among the candidates presented to me. She will hold that position, with all honors and status it entails, effective immediately."

The tightness in Elara's chest sharpened into something else entirely the moment the name left his mouth. Something hot and unwelcome twisted beneath her ribs, ugly and immediate, and she stood frozen against the back wall trying desperately to understand what she was feeling and failing completely.

It was not sadness. She told herself it could not possibly be that. She hated this man. She had every reason in the world to hate him, and none whatsoever to feel anything resembling the sharp, jealous ache currently sitting in her chest at the sight of Bianca rising gracefully from her seat to accept his offer.

She watched Bianca dip into a bow before the throne, watched Kael's gaze rest on her only briefly, distantly, nothing at all like the way his eyes sometimes lingered on Elara in unguarded moments he probably did not realize she noticed, and the strange ache in her chest only tightened further.

This makes no sense, she told herself furiously, gripping the pitcher hard enough that her knuckles went pale. He is nothing to me. He whipped me for looking into my own father's history. He has done nothing since I arrived here but remind me exactly what I am now. Whatever this feeling is, it is wrong, and I will not entertain it.

She could not, however, seem to make it stop.

The hall began to empty, and Elara used the movement as cover to slip quietly back toward the kitchens, pitcher still balanced on her hip, the unfamiliar ache still sitting heavy and unwelcome in her chest the entire way, refusing to be reasoned with no matter how firmly she scolded herself for feeling it at all.

She did not understand it. She only knew, walking alone down that corridor with her jaw tight and her eyes stinging for reasons she refused to name, that something about watching another woman accept a place at his side had cut far deeper than it had any right to.

***

She learned the rest of it by evening, the way she learned most things now, passed hand to hand through servant gossip over the washbasins.

"They say Lady Bianca demanded her own private chambers near the alpha's wing," one of the younger maids whispered, scrubbing a pot with more enthusiasm than the task required. "Greta had to explain that only the alpha's closest circle is permitted on the third floor. She was furious."

"I heard she asked why," another maid added. "Wanted to know exactly who was permitted up there and why a concubine was not included among them."

Elara kept her head down, hands moving mechanically through her own work, forcing herself to focus on the information rather than the strange, persistent ache still lodged beneath her ribs. Bianca wanted access. Bianca wanted proximity to whatever secrets she suspected the third floor held. And Bianca, unlike Elara, actually had the standing now to keep pushing for it without fear of a whip for her trouble.

She would need to be more careful than ever. About the archives. And, some traitorous corner of her mind whispered, about whatever this unwelcome feeling was that she could not seem to talk herself out of.

***

That night, long after the household had gone quiet, Elara made her way back toward the council wing, moving with the same careful precision she had used weeks before, though this time doubly cautious.

The window latch was still loose, exactly as she remembered, and she slipped through it into the dark archive room with her heart hammering the same way it had the first time, grateful, at least, for a task that gave her something else to focus on besides the ache she still did not understand.

She moved directly to the shelf where she had found the ledger before, fingers trembling slightly as she pulled it free again, angling it toward the thin moonlight spilling through the window.

This time, she had longer. She read carefully, methodically, forcing her breathing steady despite the urgency clawing at her chest.

The treaty was dated eight years before the m******e. Her father's seal. And beside it, a second seal she still did not recognize, bearing a crest she had never seen before, some sigil that belonged to neither Silverfen nor Ironclaw.

She flipped further through the ledger, searching for anything that might identify the second seal, and found, near the back, a single loose page tucked between two others, written in a different hand entirely.

*If the Ashryn alpha's arrangement with the Vex bloodline is ever discovered by Ironclaw, it will mean war on two fronts. He knows this. He has agreed to bear the full consequence alone, should it come to that, in exchange for our silence and our protection of what remains should the worst occur.*

Elara went very still, reading the passage twice, three times, feeling the shape of something enormous finally beginning to take form.

Vex. A name she did not recognize, but a name someone in this palace clearly did, if Corvin's careful warning to keep quiet was any indication.

Her father had made a deal. Not with Ironclaw. With someone else entirely, someone he had been protecting even in death, someone whose silence he had purchased with a promise to bear consequences alone, should it ever come to war.

He had not simply betrayed the old alpha for selfish reasons. He had been caught between two forces, trying to protect something, someone, and it had cost him everything, cost her entire family everything, and he had never once told her why.

She heard footsteps in the corridor outside and barely had time to shove the ledger back into place before the door creaked open.

This time, it was not Kael.

It was Bianca.

***