The Luna Without a Wolf

The night Sabine disappeared, I was scrubbing a pot that had held venison stew. The kitchen fire had burned down to a red seam. Above me, the keep was full of running feet. Wolves, by the sound of it, their claws clicking on the stone like hail. Hattie came through the door with her shawl around her shoulders. Her mouth was set in a hard line. She had raised me since I was sixteen, and I had never seen her look so pale. "Leave the pot and go to the cellar," she said. "Do not come up until I call you." "What happened?" "The Luna is gone." I set the pot down. Sabine had been in the keep for six months, promised to Alpha Lucan. The pack loved her, and the Luna trials were supposed to start at dawn. "Gone where?" I asked, and my hand tightened on the pot. "Gone." Hattie took my chin in her hand and turned my face to the light. "Listen to me, Faye, because whatever happens tonight you are a kitchen girl with no wolf and no name. Keep your head down." "I always do." "Then start now." She pushed me toward the cellar. I got three steps before the guard came in. He was one of Warrick's men, a broad wolf with a grey beard and a lantern in his fist. "Warrick wants the kitchen girl." Hattie stepped between us, but the guard did not care. I put my hand on Hattie's arm. Her bones felt thin under my fingers. "It is fine," I said. "I will go." The guard took me up the back stairs. The corridor was one where servants were not supposed to walk. I kept my eyes on his heels. I counted the turns, because six years in Greyhaven had taught me every door. It had also taught me that a human who counted doors was planning to use one. Warrick was waiting in Sabine's chamber. The room was warm with candles everywhere. Sabine's dress lay across the bed, pale grey silk with silver thread at the collar. Warrick stood by the window with his hands behind his back. He was fifty-five, the Alpha's steward. He had already decided what everyone else would do. "Close the door," he said. I closed it and put my back against the door. "You know why you are here." "No." He turned. His eyes were tired as he said, "Sabine left the keep before the gates were sealed. The council will meet at dawn, and if there is no Luna, Dunstan will call for a blood challenge." "That is a wolf matter." "It is a pack matter," Warrick said. "And you are part of the pack." "Why am I here?" I asked. He walked to the bed and lifted the dress. The silk moved like water as he said, "Because you have no people, no family will come looking, and no wolf will smell the difference." "You want me to be her." "Wear her dress and stand where she stood. Thirty days, three trials, and at the end the pack will have a Luna, the council will have no reason to challenge, and you will have silver and a gate pass." "A writ with the Alpha's seal. No border guard will stop you." "No," I said. Warrick did not argue; he set the dress down and walked to the door. "Hattie has been good to you, six years of hiding you, and I wonder what the council will make of that." "She did not know." "She knew enough." He opened the door. "Wear the dress, Faye, or I will have her brought to the lower yard at dawn." I thought about Hattie's thin bones and the gate pass. "Wait," I said, and he stopped with his hand on the door. "I want the pass for two." He turned his head. "Two." "Then find a way, or find another kitchen girl." "One pass for two names," he said. "If you survive the first trial." He shut the door. "Take off your clothes." I undressed behind the screen. He set out the scent vials, and Sabine's scent was pine and cold air. Warrick poured a little into his palm and painted it on my wrists, my throat, behind my ears. "Wolves can smell a lie," he said. "Do not lie, and if they ask something Sabine would know, say you are tired. If they press, touch your throat, the way she did when she was nervous." He stepped back and pointed at the dress. The silk was cold, and it fit me, and that was the worst part. Sabine and I were the same height, and when I looked in the mirror, a Luna looked back. Warrick put a silver hairpin on the dressing table. I picked it up, and it was long and sharp, with a head shaped like a crescent moon. Silver would burn a wolf, and it would also pick a lock if I bent the tip. I slid it into my sleeve. The hall was full. Four hundred wolves filled the benches. Alpha Lucan sat on the dais in a black coat. His hands were loose on the arms of his chair. He was thirty, with dark hair and a hard mouth. A scar on his jaw looked like a piece of white thread. He looked like a man who was waiting for someone to make a mistake. Dunstan stood at the foot of the dais. He was fifty, head of the council, with the smile of a man who already knew how the night would end. Warrick led me to the center of the hall. I kept my eyes on Lucan and touched my throat. "Sabine," Dunstan said, and his voice carried to the back of the hall. "We feared you had left us." I did not answer. I let the silence stretch. "Of course." His smile widened. "The Alpha will take your hand now, and the Moon will witness the claim." Lucan rose and came down. His eyes were grey, like the river in winter, and they did not move from my face. I gave him my wrist. His fingers closed around it. Heat went up my arm like a wire. Under his thumb my skin burned, and a silver crescent rose out of my wrist, bright as frost. The hall went quiet, and Lucan's grip tightened; something pulled behind my ribs, low and hard, and I knew he felt it too. For one breath, he looked as if I had struck him. Then he let go. "The Moon has chosen," he said. The pack roared, and the sound rolled through the hall. Dunstan's smile was gone, and Warrick was staring at my wrist with his mouth open. Lucan did not look at me again. He walked back to his chair and sat down with his hand closed into a fist. I stood in the hall with a dead woman's dress on my back. A silver mark burned on my wrist. I had fooled them, or so I told myself. The Moon had marked a human as the Alpha's mate, and no one had seen it. Warrick found me in the corridor after the hall emptied. His face was grey. "The first trial is at dawn," he said. "The Hunt." "What happens if I fail?" He looked at my wrist. "They will look at you and find the human under the paint. The last girl who wore a false mark was burned in the lower yard." He straightened his coat. "The ash is still there, so sleep well, Luna." I touched the hairpin in my sleeve. I watched him go. Thirty days, one pass, one seal. At dawn I would hunt.