Chapter 4
905 Words
Cael
The Sovereignty was in the middle of a crisis about cutlery.
Specifically, the council had sent seventeen separate memos in the past month about the appropriate silverware configuration for the upcoming Luna Selection dinners, and Cael's senior steward had responded to all seventeen with the same two-sentence reply, and the council had responded to that with two additional memos each, and now there was a folder that was three inches thick and entirely about forks.
He handed the folder to Idris without opening it.
"Resolve this."
"I'm a general."
"You're a man who has strong opinions about logistics. The cutlery situation is logistical."
Idris took the folder with the expression of a man making a mental note to request a pay increase.
The Sovereignty's great gates were opening when Cael rode in, the stone archway carved with the old bloodline symbols that had stood for six centuries. He had grown up inside these walls. He knew every corridor, every shadow, every room that held a memory he would prefer not to revisit. He had made peace with the fact that his home was also his inheritance, which meant it would never entirely be his.
He dismounted in the main courtyard and looked up.
Above the eastern tower, a raven was circling.
He watched it for a moment. Ravens circled when there was a death, or news of one coming. He filed this away and went inside.
He gave Seraphine Voss the easternmost guest suite, which had three windows and a view of the herb garden and, coincidentally, the fewest walls shared with council chambers. He told himself this was practical. He did not examine the thought too closely.
The archive scholars were summoned. He did not attend the initial examination - better to keep distance, he told himself, better to wait for the report. He had twelve other matters of state requiring attention and a council dinner in four days at which he would be expected to narrow the Luna candidates to one. These were the things he should be thinking about.
He lasted three hours before he went to the archive.
She was sitting across from Scholar Aldwen, which was notable because Aldwen was seventy-two years old and had spent forty years regarding everyone who came to him for help with the patient, mild suspicion of a man who had seen too many people misunderstand what they were asking for. He was currently leaning forward, elbows on the table, looking at Seraphine with an expression Cael had never seen on his face.
Interest.
"The ward is a wraith-seal," Aldwen was saying, as Cael came in. "Third-era construction. I have not seen one in - there is perhaps one other documented case, and that was three centuries ago, and the practitioner who cast it had to-" He stopped, noticed Cael, and straightened. "My lord."
"Continue," Cael said.
Seraphine had turned when he entered and then turned back. She was sitting with her hands folded on the table in the particular way of someone giving a deposition. Not relaxed. Not afraid. Just present.
"A wraith-seal," Aldwen said, "is a protection ward cast on a bloodline, not a person. It passes through female lines and activates in the heir when the caster dies. The original caster-”
"My grandmother," Seraphine said.
"Your grandmother cast a ward specifically designed to destroy any claim-bond not strong enough to withstand it." Aldwen's voice was careful and not unkind. "She designed it to kill anyone who tried to claim you through anything less than a full-bloodline fated bond."
A silence.
She was protecting me," Seraphine said. It wasn't a question. Her voice was level in a way that cost her something - Cael could hear it, the effort of keeping it level.
"It would appear so, yes."
"From people who weren't-”
"From anyone whose bond wouldn't hold. Anyone whose blood wasn't old enough." Aldwen paused. "The ward was designed with a single exception."
He didn't look at Cael when he said it. He looked at Seraphine.
She didn't look at Cael either.
The silence stretched.
Cael kept his face exactly as he always kept it - neutral, settled, revealing nothing. Inside, something was happening that he had no procedures for. His grandmother had been a scholar. She would have known about wraith-seals. She might have known the Voss bloodline. Eight years ago, someone's dying grandmother had decided to protect her granddaughter from everyone in the world except one specific descendant of an ancient bloodline.
He was the only one.
He thought about Mira.
He thought about the Iron Accords and the council dinner in four days.
He thought about the carved wolf in his desk drawer, and what his sister would have said about this, and how she would have laughed.
"Thank you, Aldwen," he said. "Send the full report to my desk."
He left before either of them could speak.
He needed to think. He needed to be somewhere that wasn't a room with her in it, where the mate bond was a constant quiet pressure at the base of his throat like a bruise that hadn't decided yet whether to heal. His wolf had been considerably less philosophical about the whole thing - four days of proximity and it had stopped being theoretical and started being an instinct he was managing on a very short leash.
He went to the eastern courtyard.
The raven was still circling.
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