Chapter Ten: The Price of the Gift
592 Words
The scent hit before the figure. Copper and panic. Blood soaked into fabric. Someone running on adrenaline alone.
Bianca stumbled into the clearing. Her hair was matted. One sleeve torn, dark with blood that wasn't hers. Her eyes were wide with a terror I'd never seen on her face before.
"Ivy" She collapsed more than stopped, catching herself against a tree. "You have to run. Now. All of you."
Rhys was already moving, positioning himself between her and the rest of us, wary despite her obvious state. "Explain. Fast."
"Serrin." Bianca's breath came in ragged gasps. "She wasn't planning to wait for a legal order. She was never planning to go through the King at all. She's coming tonight, with her own people, and she doesn't care how many bodies it takes to get to you."
"How do you know this?" Kaelan demanded.
Bianca's face crumpled. "Because I was in the room when she gave the order. Because I finally understood what I actually did when I told her what Ivy is, and I tried to stop it, and she" Her hand went to her torn sleeve, and I saw, with a sick lurch, the deep claw marks underneath. "She doesn't let people change their minds."
The full weight of it crashed into me. My sister, vain and jealous and careless with my feelings, had still tried to undo the damage. It had nearly gotten her killed.
"How far behind you is she?" Rhys asked.
"Minutes," Bianca gasped. "Maybe less. She has at least a dozen fighters, and she knows exactly where the Sterling pack house is."
Kaelan's face went hard and focused, colder than I'd seen since the ceremony. The uncertain man from the study was gone. "Rhys, can your pack hold a dozen Draveth fighters?"
"Not without losses," Rhys said grimly. "Not tonight, with no warning."
"Then we don't fight her here." My voice was steadier than I felt. The gift still hummed hot and strange under my skin. "We make her come to me on my terms, not hers."
"Ivy, no", Kaelan started.
"I can do what I just did to you," I said, cutting him off, "to her. In front of witnesses. If Serrin Draveth has spent her whole life lying her way toward a throne, I can make sure the first time she opens her mouth in front of people who matter, the truth comes out whether she wants it to or not."
"That's not a plan," Rhys said. "That's a suicide risk. You don't know your limits yet. You awakened this gift twenty minutes ago."
"I don't have time to know my limits," I said. "She's minutes away."
The clearing went silent. Only Bianca's ragged breathing and the distant sound of wolves, fast and coordinated, closing in.
Kaelan's eyes locked on mine, gold burning bright even in the darkness, and for the first time since the ceremony I saw something in his face that looked entirely, terrifyingly like fear for someone other than himself.
"If you do this," he said quietly, "and it goes wrong"
"Then at least it'll be my choice," I said. "Not something decided for me in a cell, or a treaty, or a rejection ceremony."
The first shadow broke through the tree line.
Serrin Draveth stepped into the clearing, flanked by fighters, her earlier composure replaced with something sharper, hungrier, utterly certain of her victory.
"There you are," she said, smiling at me like a woman who'd already won. "Little Seer. Let's see exactly what that gift of yours is worth."
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