The Alpha's Funeral Was My Wedding Day

Chapter 17

Kane sent for me at first light. He sent Marit, which was either an apology or a blade, and with Kane I had stopped being able to tell.

"He's asking for you," Marit said, in the doorway, twisting her apron the way she had at twelve. "He says. He says he knows he has no right to ask."

"He doesn't."

"I know." She would not look at me. "I opened the store because the recorder's schedule told me to, Sera. I didn't know. I swear on the moon I didn't know what it was for."

"I know you didn't." And I did know, which was its own kind of grief, because the old man had used a girl I loved the way he used everything, as a clean pair of hands to keep his own from showing. "Take me to Kane."

***

They had him propped in the Alpha's chambers under his father's other portrait, the private one, and the sight of him stopped me in the door.

A night had done to Kane what the season had been threatening. The rot had reached his face fully now, the grey gone to something worse, the strong bones of him standing out under skin that had given up. He was dying in front of me at a speed I could measure, and I am a healer before I am anything, before I am a wronged woman or a queen, and my hands wanted to move before my grievance could stop them.

He saw it. He saw my hands twitch toward him, and something broke open in his ruined face.

"There it is," he said, hoarse. "You can't help it. You never could." He almost smiled. "You'd heal the man who threw you in the snow. That's the difference between us, Sera. I rehearsed a rejection. You can't even rehearse leaving a patient to die."

"You didn't send for me to be flattered."

"No." He shut his eyes. "I sent for you because I finally know what's killing me, and you're the only one who can tell me if I've understood it right."

I said nothing.

"Ravenna told me last night. After the corridor. After you said ask your wife what's killing you." His jaw worked. "She told me about the bond. That a rejection doesn't end it clean, it tears it, and the tear festers in the one who did the tearing. That I've been rotting for five years from the inside because of what I did in that hall." He opened his eyes and they found me. "And she told me one thing more. That there is exactly one hand on the continent that can close the tear, or cut it clean, and end the rot either way. Yours."

So Ravenna had told him that much. Not the rest. Not what the gold truly was, not the letter, not the erasing of the line. Just enough to put his life in my hands and let me decide what to do with it. She was still spending her knowledge precisely, that woman, even in mercy.

"She's right," I said.

"Then I understand it." He let out a breath. "You can close it. Heal the tear, and the bond knits, and the rot stops, and I live. Or you can cut it, sever the thing clean, and the rot stops that way too, and I live, but the bond is gone, truly gone, unmade, and I am free of you and you of me forever." His hands were flat on the coverlet. "Either one saves my life. And both of them are yours to choose, and I have no right to ask for one over the other, so I won't. I only wanted to be sure I understood the shape of it before I put my life on your table."

"There's a third option," I said. "The one you already chose once."

"Yes." He did not flinch from it. "You could do nothing. Walk out this door. And I die by the end of the moon of the thing I did to you, and no pack could ever prove your hand in it, because your hand would never have touched me at all." He held my eyes. "I know. I've had all night to know. I threw you into the snow to die of the cold, Sera, and now you can throw me back into it, and it would be the most balanced thing that has ever happened in this hall, and I would not blame you for a single hour of it."

The room was very quiet. His father watched us both from the wall.

I looked at the dying man who had rehearsed my rejection, who had let them take my wolf, who had turned away before the doors even closed, and I waited to feel the thing I had rehearsed for five years, the cold clean satisfaction of watching him understand at last.

It did not come.

What came instead was worse, and quieter, and I hated it. What came was the memory of him climbing through my workroom window smelling of pine, and the scar under the clasp of a coat I mended twice, and three years that my grandmother's letter had just poisoned along with everything else, because now I could not even be certain that what I had felt for Kane, back then, had been mine. I had been a gold queen the whole time. My gift had reached for the strongest thing in my small world, and the strongest thing had been the future Alpha, and I had felt it as love.

Maybe I had never loved Kane at all. Maybe my hands had built it, the way they might have built Caspian, and Kane had felt the pull of a bond he never understood and married elsewhere and torn it and started to die, and none of it, not the loving, not the leaving, not the rot, had ever been anyone's free choice at all.

That was the thing I could not forgive. Not the rejection. The possibility that even the rejection had been my own blood's doing.

"Sera," Kane said, watching my face. "Where did you go just now?"

"Somewhere you can't follow." I made myself look at him. "You've laid it out fairly. I'll give you that. You understand the shape of it exactly." I stood over him, and I let my hands warm, just faintly, just enough that we both saw the gold rise, the hand that could close him or cut him or leave him. "Three doors. Save you and keep the bond. Save you and cut it forever. Or walk out and let the snow have you, the way you let it have me."

"Yes."

"And you truly won't ask which."

"I truly won't." His voice cracked. "I lost the right to ask you for anything the night I didn't say your name. Whatever you choose, I earned. Choose."

I stood there with my grandmother's warning in my chest and a dying man under my hands and three doors in front of me, and I understood that this was the real return, not the title, not the gold, not the hall on its knees. This. The moment I held Kane's whole life in the palm of a hand he had once thrown away, and got to decide, freely, for the first time in either of our lives, what to do with a man I might never have truly chosen or truly hated, because my own blood had never let me know which.

I raised my hand.

And I put it flat against the Alpha of Blackridge's chest, over the tear, where the rot lived and the old bond frayed, and I felt it leap to meet me, that ruined thread, desperate, and I felt exactly how easy it would be to do any of the three, and Kane looked up at me with his life in my palm and did not breathe.

"Sera," he whispered. "What are you going to do?"

I felt the gold gather in my hand.

And I made my choice.