THE VOW

"She means nothing to me, Mira. You are the one I want." The words came through the door like a knife. My hand was on the handle. In my other hand was a small white flower I had picked from the garden for Dane. A stupid little flower. I had wanted to pin it to his coat before my father presented me to the clans. I stopped breathing. "Say it again," Mira whispered. My little sister's voice. Soft. Pleased. "She wears a mask because she is hiding," Dane said. "You are the real thing. I only stayed with her because of her name, her father's land. You know that." Her laugh was low and sweet. Behind the door, I heard the bed creak. I heard the sounds that no woman should ever hear from the man she loves with another woman. I heard the rustle of silk. I heard her say his name in a way I had only ever said it in my own head. My knees shook. Three years. Three years of meeting him by the river after dark. Three years of him kissing my masked cheek and saying, One day, Elara, the whole world will know you are mine. Tonight was that day. Tonight, I was to walk into the great hall with my back straight and be presented as his mate. I pushed the door open. I do not know why. Maybe I needed to see it. Maybe some part of me still thought I had heard wrong. I had not heard wrong. Dane was on the bed, his golden hair wild, his shirt on the floor. Mira was in his arms, her blonde curls spilled across the pillow, her blue eyes wide and bright. Her white dress was crumpled at the foot of the bed. The same dress my father had bought for her to wear tonight, while I got the old grey one. The flower slipped from my fingers. It landed on the floor without a sound. Mira saw me first. I watched her eyes meet mine over Dane's shoulder. I waited for her to gasp. To cover herself. To say, Elara, I can explain. She smiled. Slow. Soft. Cruel. Then she wrapped her arms tighter around his neck. "Dane," she said, her eyes still on me, "tell her what you told me." Dane turned his head. For one second, I saw his face change. I thought, Now he will stop. Now he will be ashamed. Now he will say it was a mistake. He looked at me the way a man looks at a stain on his shirt. "Elara," he said, not even sitting up. "You should have knocked." Mira laughed again. And they did not stop. They went on in front of me, as if I were a chair in the room. As if I were nothing. The sounds filled the air. Her hand pulled his face back to hers. His voice dropped low, "You, only you," and she moaned his name loud enough to shake the walls of the palace. Something inside my chest cracked. Not loud. Not with tears. It just went quiet, the way a glass goes quiet right after it breaks. I touched my mask. The cool white edge pressed against my cheek, the same mask I had worn since I was a baby. The mask that kept strangers from staring at the red mark on my face. The mask that kept me small. I turned. I closed the door behind me, very softly, as if I did not want to wake anyone. My legs carried me down the hall. "Lady Elara!" A servant girl stood in the corridor holding a tray of wine. She looked at my face, or what she could see of it, and her smile died. "The presentation starts in one hour, my lady. Your father said to…" "Thank you," I said. My voice sounded like someone else's. I walked past her. Past the guards. Past the long portrait of my mother, the one that hung at the end of the east hall, the one I used to stop and look at every night. Her eyes were hazel like mine. Her smile was warm. I did not look at her tonight. I could not. The night air hit me like cold water. I was outside. I did not remember opening the great doors. The garden stretched out in front of me, the garden where Dane had first kissed me, three summers ago. The roses were in bloom. They smelled sweet and rotten at the same time. I kept walking. Behind me, the palace blazed with a hundred torches. Music drifted from the great hall. Fiddles and drums. Every clan in Kaldor had come to see Alpha Gideon Voss present his eldest daughter to the heir of Blackridge. They were going to watch me walk into a room and be chosen. I laughed. It came out wrong. Cracked and thin. I pressed my hand over my mouth and kept going, down the stone steps, through the iron gate, along the dark path that led to the river. Why did you believe him? Because he said your name like it was precious. Why did you believe her? *Because she is my sister. Because when we were small, she used to climb into my bed when thunder came. Because I was a fool. I reached the old stone bridge. It was the place where Dane and I used to meet. The river was black below, loud and fast from the spring rains. I gripped the cold railing. My whole life ran through my head. The children in the market who ran when they saw me. The mothers who pulled their little ones behind their skirts. The whispers. Cursed child. Bad luck. Her mother died for her. My father looking at his plate at dinner and never at me. Mira getting the best of everything, the best dress, the best seat, the best everything, because I was the one nobody wanted to be near. And Dane. Dane, who said he saw me. He had never seen me at all. I had nowhere to go. Not home. Not to my father. Not to Nana Ife, who would only cry and worry and hold me, and I could not bear to be held. I stood there a long, long time, with the wind in my hair and the river roaring below, and I felt empty all the way through. "You should not be out here alone." I jumped. A man stood at the end of the bridge. Tall. Broad in the shoulders. A long dark coat hung open over a plain black shirt, and his hair was black and cut short. The torchlight from far away caught a pale scar that ran through his left eyebrow. His eyes were grey. Not soft. Not cruel. Just steady, like deep water. "I am fine," I said. "You are standing at the edge of a bridge in the dark, in a ceremony dress, with no coat." His voice was low and even. "That is not fine." I turned my face away so the mask caught the light. He did not step back. He did not stare at it. He did not whisper. He only stood there and waited, like a man who had all night. That was almost worse. Everybody else always looked. "Who are you?" I asked. "Duke Maddox. Alpha of Ironcrest." I knew the name. Everyone did. The northern clan. The one that never came south. People said its Alpha was cold, hard, and rude. "You came to see the presentation," I said. "I came because I was invited." A small pause. "And because I had a reason of my own. What is your name?" Nobody had asked me that in years. They said Lady Voss. They said *the eldest*. They said *the cursed one* when they thought I could not hear. My throat tightened. "Elara." "Elara," he said, the way a man tries a word he wants to remember. "Why are you out here?" "Because I am nobody," I said, and it just came out. "And tonight I found out." He was quiet. The river roared. Then he took off his coat, crossed the bridge in four long steps, and held it out. He did not put it on me. He only held it, so I could choose. I took it. It was heavy and warm and smelled like cedar and cold air. "Nobody does not stand on a bridge for an hour," Duke said. "I watched you. You did not move. Nobody does not matter that much." I stared at him. "You watched me?" "I did not want to leave." He said it plainly, with no shame. "Somebody had to be here." My eyes burned. I had not cried in the hall. I had not cried in the garden. But a stranger's coat and a stranger's plain words, and now the tears wanted to come. I held them back. "I am going to go back inside," I said. His brows drew together. "Why?" "Because I will not run away like a thief. They are all waiting for me." I lifted my chin. "And because there is something I want to say to them." For the first time, something moved in his face. A flicker. Almost like respect. "Then I will walk with you," he said. "You do not know me." "No." He looked at me a long moment. "But I know your mother." The wind stopped. I could not hear the river. "My... mother died the night I was born," I whispered. Duke Maddox's grey eyes did not leave mine. "That," he said quietly, "is what they told you."