THE VOW

CHAPTER 2

"What did you just say?"

My voice shook. His coat felt suddenly heavy on my shoulders.

Duke Maddox did not look away. "Not here," he said. "Not on a bridge, with ears in every bush. Walk back inside. Say what you came to say. After that, find me."

"You cannot say a thing like that and then walk away."

"I am not walking away." A muscle moved in his jaw. "But if I tell you now, you will not hear a word of the ceremony. And I think you need to hear every word they say tonight." He paused. "Trust me for one hour."

I did not trust anyone.

But I wanted to know. More than I wanted to breathe.

"One hour," I said.

He gave me a small nod. Then he took the coat from my shoulders, folded it over his arm, and walked beside me back up the path, one step behind, like a guard.

The great hall was loud with music.

Torches burned along the walls. Long tables were heaped with roasted meat, bread, and fruit. Hundreds of people filled the room. Clan leaders in their best coats. Wives in silk. Young men standing straight, hoping to be noticed. Everyone had come to see the Voss family show off.

My father sat at the high table, in the tall carved chair, his grey hair brushed back, his gold chain bright on his chest. Beside him sat Corbin Hale, his chief adviser, thin and silver-bearded, smiling his small smile.

Mira stood next to Dane at the foot of the stairs.

She had fixed her hair. Her white dress was perfect again. Her cheeks were pink, and she held Dane's arm like a girl who had just been given the world.

Dane looked up and saw me in the doorway.

His face went white.

Good, I thought. Be afraid.

The fiddles stopped one by one as heads turned. A hush rolled across the hall.

"Elara." My father's voice boomed from the high table. He sounded relieved. Impatient. "There you are. Come. Come, we have kept everyone waiting."

I walked down the long stone floor.

I could feel them watching. Hundreds of eyes. I heard the whispers start, the same ones I had heard all my life. There she is. The masked one. The cursed one. Why is she even here?

I kept my back straight.

When I reached the foot of the stairs, I stopped in front of Dane.

"Elara," he said, low and quick, "let me explain..."

"Alpha Dane Rourke." I said it loud enough for the front tables. "Three years ago you told me by the river that you saw my heart."

He swallowed.

"Tonight, I saw it too," I said. "In the east wing. Beating very fast. In my sister's bed."

The silence cracked like ice.

A woman gasped. Somebody dropped a cup. Mira's hand flew to her mouth.

"That is a lie," Dane said at once. Loud. Smooth. His handsome face turned hurt, as if I had slapped him. "Elara, you are upset. You are not yourself. I would never…"

"She said you did not stop," a voice cried. Not mine.

Mira.

She stepped forward, her blue eyes filling with tears so fast it was like a trick. "Elara, please. Stop. Why are you doing this? You always do this. When you are sad, you lash out at everyone."

I stared at her.

"I found you," I said. "I stood in the door. You looked at me and smiled."

"Because I was afraid," Mira sobbed. She turned to the crowd. "She came into my room tonight screaming. She was jealous. She has been jealous of me my whole life. Everyone knows I got the dresses, and she got the mask, and she has never forgiven me for it."

The hall stirred.

I heard it start. The murmur, low and sour, like water going bad.

Poor Mira.

That girl was always strange.

Cursed, you know. It comes out in the end.

My heart went cold.

"Father," I said, turning to the high table. "You know what I am saying is true. Look at their faces. Look at hers."

Alpha Gideon rose. His gold chain flashed.

For one small second, I thought I saw it. Pain. Doubt. A father's tired eyes looking at his two daughters.

Then Corbin Hale leaned over and whispered something in his ear.

My father's face closed like a door.

"Enough," he said. "Elara. You will not shame this house on the most important night of our year."

"I… shamed this house?"

"You have always been dramatic," he said, and the words hurt more than anything Dane had said. "Your sister has always been the gentle one. You are tired. You are hurt about something. Go upstairs. We will speak tomorrow."

"I am not hurt about something. I am telling you what I saw."

"Silence!" His fist hit the table. "You will not call your own sister a liar before the clans."

Beside me, Mira wiped her eyes and gave my father a small, brave, broken look.

I understood then.

It did not matter what I said. It had never mattered. In this house, they had already decided who I was the day I was born. Whatever I said, they would hear cursed.

"Say it to my face, then," I said, quiet now, turning back to Dane. "Say it was not true. Say you were not there. Say it in front of everyone, Dane."

His mouth opened.

Nothing came out.

I saw the flicker in his eyes. The calculation. The man weighing what to lose.

Then Mira put one hand on her stomach.

A small, sweet, terrible movement.

"I did not want to say it like this," she whispered. "I wanted to wait until the ceremony was over."

Every head in the hall turned.

"Dane and I... we have been in love for months." Tears rolled down her face. "And I am carrying his child."

The hall exploded.

Shouts. Gasps. Chairs scraping. A woman cried out, "A child!" Someone clapped, and someone else booed. Dane's eyes flew to Mira, and I saw a flash of real shock on his face, as if he had not known.

My knees nearly gave out.

A child.

Months.

Not tonight. Not one mistake. Months. While I had waited by the river in the cold. While I had sewn him a scarf by candlelight. While I had told Nana Ife, He is a good man, you will see.

My father stood frozen at the high table. His mouth was open. He looked at Mira. He looked at Dane.

And then, slowly, he looked at me.

"Elara," he said. His voice had gone hard and tired. "You have brought this on us."

I laughed. I could not help it.

"I... brought this?"

"You came in here shouting and making a scene, and now your sister is forced to say something she should have said in private." His voice rose. "If you had been quiet, as I asked…"

"I have been quiet for twenty-four years, Father."

My own voice rang out across the hall. "I wore your mask. I stayed in the back. I took the grey dress. I sat at the end of the table. I was quiet when they called me cursed. I was quiet when you looked away. And I was quiet when she took the one thing I thought was mine."

I turned in a slow circle, looking at all of them.

"I am done being quiet."

Nobody spoke.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Duke Maddox standing against the far wall, his arms folded, his grey eyes on me. He gave one small, steady nod.

It kept me standing.

"I do not accept this match," I told my father. "And I will not be presented tonight. Or ever. To anyone."

"You do not get to decide that."

"I just did."

"Then you are no daughter of mine."

The words dropped like a stone into deep water.

I had thought I was empty. I was wrong. There was still a little piece left, and it broke.

I looked at him. Grey-haired, heavy-eyed, tired. My father, who had never once come to my room when I was sick. Who had given me a mask instead of a hug.

"You said that like it would hurt," I said softly. "It does not. You gave me that up a long time ago."

I reached up.

My fingers found the edge of my mask.

I had not taken it off in front of anyone, not once, since I was a child. Not for Nana Ife. Not for Dane. Not even for the mirror, most days.

A hush came over the hall. They were all leaning in.

I lifted it away.

The red birthmark lay across my cheek, shaped like an open wing, from my eye to my jaw. It was not ugly. It was not a curse. It was just a mark, the kind a baby is born with, the kind a mother kisses.

But a whole room gasped as if I had pulled off my skin.

"There," I said. "That is what you have all been afraid of for twenty-four years. A birthmark."

I set the white mask down on the nearest table.

"Keep it," I said. "It never belonged to me."

I turned to leave.

"Elara."

It was Dane. He caught my wrist.

I looked at his hand. Then at his face.

"Let go."

"You do not understand," he said in a low rush, so only I could hear. "It was never supposed to go like this. Mira…she is not what you think. She…"

"What?"

His eyes flicked past me. To the high table. To my father's adviser, Corbin Hale.

He swallowed.

"Nothing," he said. "Nothing. Forget it."

I pulled my hand free.

Behind me, I heard my father's voice rise, loud and sharp and final.

"Guards! Seize her! If she will not honor this house, she will not sleep under its roof one night more!"

Heavy boots rang on stone.

I did not run.

I stood and waited as six guards came toward me, and I felt cold, and I felt calm, and I felt something I had never felt before.

Free.

And then, across the hall, a voice I did not know shouted a single word that made every guard stop in their tracks.

"Wait."

Alpha Duke Maddox stepped away from the wall.

"Before you touch her," he said, in a voice so cold it sounded like iron, "I have a letter to read. It was written twenty-four years ago. And it has Alpha Gideon's name on it."