The Heartwood

Chapter 4 The Arrogant Misjudgment

I carried a bowl of winter berries to Elara’s room myself. Once she understood that I forgave her behavior at the coronation, she would settle back into her duties.

The speech I had prepared ended when I opened the door.

Her hearth was ash. The room smelled of cold stone instead of healing herbs, and the chair where she left compresses for my shoulder stood empty.

There was no second cup beside the tea tray. The patrol log she kept under the window for me was gone. I had never asked for either thing. I had also never gone without them.

Elara had sharpened my patrol quills, replaced the lamp oil, and left the council reports in the order I preferred.

The desk now held an empty rack and a ring of dust where the lamp had stood. I opened two drawers before remembering that this was her room, not another office arranged for my convenience.

Then I saw the bonding robe on the floor.

Elara had cut the white silk into strips and removed every silver crescent of my family crest. I set the berries down harder than I meant to.

So this was her answer. A public slight followed by a private tantrum.

“Alpha?” Silas appeared in the doorway. “A guard on the northern wall saw her leave. She walked into the Great Blizzard.”

I laughed. “She’s testing me. She thinks her absence will punish me.”

Silas shifted his weight. “The storm is brutal. No wolf can survive that cold for long alone.”

“Elara will. She’s strong because I made her strong. Once the cold has done its work, she’ll remember where she belongs.”

I left the berries on her table. “Give her three days.”

Three days passed. The blizzard weakened, then stopped. The gates remained closed.

On the first day, I told the kitchen to keep Elara’s supper warm. On the second, I ordered the guards to stop reporting that they had found no tracks.

By the third, I moved the untouched bowl of winter berries to the window so I would not have to see it each time I entered her room.

A fourth day came. Elara had not returned.

The border wards began to flicker before breakfast. By noon, tremors moved under the courtyard, and cold leaked through the stronghold walls.

“Caleb, I feel so weak.” Lily clung to my arm as we crossed the hall. The Luna’s crown looked dull against her hair. “The air feels thin. Your protection is fading.”

She had asked for a larger fire that morning, then another fur, then broth from the Alpha kitchen because the common stock tasted bitter.

Elara had once gone through an entire council meeting with a fresh offering hidden beneath her sleeve and asked for nothing.

A few days earlier I would have liked being needed. Now I pulled away.

“The wards are stable.”

Another tremor shook dust from the ceiling. Two servants glanced at me and hurried off.

I went below to the Heartwood chamber. Elara had interfered with the tree to force my hand. I would undo whatever she had done.

The Heartwood was dead.

Gray branches hung over roots that had gone hard and dry. The chamber held no magic at all. Even the ritual bowl beside the trunk had split down the middle.

I kicked the base of the tree. A root cracked, taking a clump of packed earth with it.

A book lay in the hollow beneath it.

The worn leather cover left brown flakes on my thumb. When I rubbed them, they broke into red dust.

I opened it. Elara’s careful handwriting covered the first page beneath a title I had never seen.

*The Sustenance Log.*