Chapter 4
1171 Words
CLARA
Last time. Those two words sat in my chest like a stone all night.
I lay in my bed staring at the ceiling and turning them over and over. Last time what exactly. Last time who. Diana had been here long before me, everyone in the pack knew that much, but the way she said it, so satisfied and so certain, made something cold settle deep in my stomach.
I got up before dawn and went looking for Mrs Graye.
Mrs Graye was the head housekeeper. Small and round with sharp grey eyes and the kind of face that had seen everything and forgotten nothing. She was already in the kitchen when I came downstairs, moving around quietly in the early morning dark, and she looked up when I walked in without any surprise at all, like she had been expecting me.
"Sit down child," she said. "I will make tea."
I sat. She made tea. She put a cup in front of me and sat down across the table and looked at me with those sharp eyes and waited.
"How long have you worked here," I asked.
"Twenty two years."
"And Diana. How long has she been here."
Something moved across Mrs Graye's face. Quick and careful. "Long enough."
"I heard her say something last night," I said. "She said this was going to be easier than last time. What did she mean by that."
Mrs Graye was quiet for a long moment. She looked down at her tea. Then she looked back up at me and said, "How much do you know about Lena."
Lena. Lucian's first mate. The one who died three years ago. "Only what everyone knows," I said. "That she died in a rogue wolf attack. That Lucian has never been the same since."
Mrs Graye nodded slowly. "Lena was a good woman," she said carefully. "Kind. Hardworking. She cared about this pack very much."
"She sounds like someone I would have liked."
"You remind me of her actually." Mrs Graye said it quietly, almost to herself. Then she seemed to catch herself and looked back down at her tea. "That is all I will say about that."
"Mrs Graye."
"I have worked in this house for twenty two years Clara. I have a position to keep and a life here that I cannot afford to lose." She stood up and picked up her cup. "Just be careful. That is all I am saying. Be very careful."
She walked away and left me sitting alone at the kitchen table with my tea going cold and more questions than I had started with. I thought about Lena all morning.
I thought about her while I worked through the record room. I thought about her while I walked the pack grounds and spoke to the families who were slowly, carefully starting to trust me. I thought about her while I ate lunch alone in my room because Diana had somehow managed to fill every seat at the main table by the time I came down and there was simply no space left.
That one was so obvious it was almost funny. Almost.
In the afternoon I found Finn. He was in the warriors quarters lying on his bed with a badly bandaged wound on his side from a border patrol three days ago and a fever that was climbing fast. The pack healer had apparently looked at him that morning and told him there was nothing more to do.
"Nothing more to do," I repeated, looking at the wound.
"That is what he said." Finn tried to sit up and winced badly.
"Do not move." I was already going for clean water and the herbs I had been quietly studying since arriving at Ironveil. "That man would not know an infected wound if it introduced itself to him personally."
Finn actually laughed at that. Then winced again because laughing clearly hurt.
I spent the next two hours cleaning the wound properly and bringing his fever down and making him drink water every time he tried to stop. He complained about it constantly.
"You are bossy," he said at one point.
"You are delirious," I said. "Drink the water."
"I am not delirious."
"You just told me your name was Gerald."
He blinked. "I did not." "You absolutely did. Drink the water Gerald."
He drank the water.
I went back every morning after that. And every evening. His fever came down by day three and by the end of the week he was sitting up and eating properly and looking at me with those steady honest eyes like he was trying to work something out.
"Why are you doing this," he said one evening.
"Because you needed help."
"Diana told two of the other warriors that you were only doing it to cause trouble. To make the healers look bad." I kept my face completely still. "And what do you think."
Finn was quiet for a moment. "I think you sat with me for six nights straight and made sure I did not die," he said. "I think that is what I think."
I nodded and changed his dressing and said nothing else.
Three days later Lucian called me into his study.
I already knew what it was about before he opened his mouth.
"I need you to stop spending time alone with male warriors," he said. "It does not look appropriate."
"I kept him alive," I said. "Your healer had given up on him."
"That is not the point."
"With respect it is exactly the point."
Lucian's jaw tightened. "You will do as I say in my pack."
"And you will let pack members die because Diana finds my helping them inconvenient?" The silence after that was very loud.
Lucian looked at me for a long moment with those storm grey eyes and I looked right back and did not flinch and did not look away and eventually he said in a very flat voice, "We are done here." I left.
I was halfway down the hallway when I heard Diana's voice coming from the room beside the study. Low and quick like she was trying not to be heard.
"It is working," she was saying. "He is pulling away from her already. Just like before." A pause.
"No she does not suspect anything. She is too busy playing Luna to notice what is actually happening around her."
Another pause. Then Diana said something that made me stop breathing completely.
"Once Lucian signs it she will have nothing. Just like Lena had nothing at the end. Just like Lena.
I stood in that hallway with my back against the cold stone wall and my heart slamming against my ribs and one terrible thought moving through my head over and over. Lena had not just died in a rogue attack.
Something had happened to her in this house first. And whatever it was Diana had been involved in it.
And now she was doing it again. To me.
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