The last bloodline

IRONGATE INN

ELORA — POV

The Irongate Inn sat at the edge of town, half-swallowed by fog that hadn't burned off since dawn, two stories of gray stone with a sign creaking on rusted hinges, and windows too small to let in much light. It didn't look like the kind of place where marriage contracts were signed; it looked like the kind of place people went to disappear.

I stood outside the door longer than I meant to. Just say no to his face, that's all you're doing. I'd repeated it the whole walk here, and I still didn't believe it by the time I pushed the door open.

The common room was empty except for one table near the back, tucked into a shadow the fire didn't quite reach, and he was already there, waiting, like he'd known I'd come, as there had never been a version of this morning where I didn't.

I made myself walk over instead of turning around. He rose when I got close, not quickly, like courtesy was a formality he performed out of habit rather than respect. He was taller than I remembered from that night, or maybe I just hadn't let myself look then. Black hair, cut short at the sides, a jaw sharp enough to cut something on, and a thin scar near it, pale against his skin. His eyes were dark, so dark I couldn't find where the pupil ended, and the iris began, and they didn't move off my face once, not even to gesture at the chair across from him.

"Sit," he said. Hmmphhh... " What a knackered, not even a request.

I sat anyway, because my legs had already decided for me.

"You came," he said. "You didn't leave me many other options." "There's always an option; you simply didn't like the others."

I didn't have an answer for that, so I didn't give him one, and he studied me the way you'd study a locked door, looking for the seam. Something flickered behind his eyes, gone before I could name it. "For now." He slid a single folded parchment across the table, and I didn't reach for it yet.

"You already know what this is," he said.

"A marriage contract, yes." My voice came out smaller than I wanted it to. "I read it twice." "And?"

"And I don't understand why you'd want this, with me, a stranger."

"That's precisely why."

I looked up at him, and he didn't explain further, and something in his face told me he wasn't going to, not yet, maybe not ever. I unfolded the parchment instead, if only to have somewhere else to look.

"One year," I said, "that's what it says."

"One year," he agreed, "you keep the title, you attend what needs attending, and beyond that, your life is your own."

"And after the year?"

"You leave, with everything promised to you, and nothing owed."

I read the terms again, my finger tracing the lines without meaning to. "There's nothing here about payment," I said.

"Because you haven't told me what you need yet," he continued.

I hadn't expected that; I'd expected him to name a number and watch me nod along to it, the way Croft had named a debt like it had already been decided, but this felt different, and I didn't trust different.

"Three hundred and forty silver, to the Joran and Holt Association, needs to be cleared before I sign anything."

"Done."

"You didn't even ask who they are."

"I don't need to."

I swallowed and kept going before I lost the nerve. "My grandmother is sick—lung disease—and she needs a proper healer, medicine that isn't scraped together from whatever I can grow behind the cottage, and that has to be paid for the whole year, not just once."

"How much?"

I put the sum in my head, adding a little more than I thought I'd need, because I doubted I'd get to ask twice. "Five hundred silver a month."

He didn't blink. "Agreed."

I'd expected him to push back, to haggle, the way Croft had haggled over every coin we didn't have, but instead he'd said yes before I'd even finished deciding whether I believed my own metrics, and that should have felt like winning, but it didn't.

Why would a stranger pay that much for a wife he doesn't know?

I didn't ask it out loud; I wasn't sure I wanted the answer yet.

"There's one more thing," I said. "If something happens to her, if she needs me, I leave immediately. No permission required."

He didn't answer right away, and his hand, still resting near the parchment, went still in a way it hadn't been before. Something passed behind his eyes, quick enough that I might have imagined it if I hadn't been watching for it.

"Agreed," he said, slower than the last time.

He reached across the table for the pen at the same moment I did, and our fingers brushed against the wood, barely, just long enough that I felt it travel up my arm, before I pulled my hand back.

Neither of us said anything about it.

He signed first, his hand steady, the letters sharp and certain, then he turned the parchment toward me.

I picked up the pen, and my hand hovered over my own name.

"Before I sign this," I said, "I want to know who you are, not your name, but what you are, that a man like Croft would answer to a contract with your seal on it."

The door to the inn opened behind me before he could answer: footsteps, several of them, moving too fast for casual guests, and a man's voice, low and urgent.

"Your Majesty, forgive the intrusion; the northern pass has been attacked."

I went still.

Darius didn't look surprised, and he didn't look at the man who'd spoken at all, his eyes sitting on me, waiting to see what I'd do with what I'd just heard.

"Majesty," I repeated, my voice barely carrying, "you're—"

"King of the Northern Keep." He said it the way other men said their own names, flat, unbothered, like watching my face change cost him nothing at all. "You should have asked sooner."

The pen was still in my hand, and my name was still unfinished on the page, and I had no idea anymore what I was about to sign myself onto.