Bound by Blood and Fire

The council chamber smelled like woodsmoke and old decisions. Ravenna stood in the center of it, spine straight, hands folded behind her back the way her father had taught her before she was old enough to understand why it mattered — never let them see your hands shake, even if everything else does. Six elders sat in a loose crescent around the hearth, their faces arranged into expressions of practiced solemnity that didn't quite hide the relief underneath. She'd learned to read that expression a long time ago. She was reading it now. "The dragon court has agreed to the terms," said Elder Hask, not quite meeting her eyes. He was the oldest of them, and the one who'd never forgiven her for a crime she hadn't committed. "An emissary from each side, sent to formalize the peace. Someone of consequence. Someone whose presence proves we're serious." "Someone expendable, you mean," Ravenna said. The silence that followed told her she wasn't wrong. Her father shifted in his seat at the head of the crescent, and for one unguarded second she saw something that might have been guilt cross his face before it smoothed back into Alpha stillness. Garrick Calder did not do guilt in front of his council. He barely allowed himself grief in front of his own daughter. "Not expendable," he said. "Necessary. The border dispute has cost both our people too much already. Sending you shows good faith — you're my daughter, my heir apparent's blood. It's the strongest offer we can make." It's also the easiest way to be rid of me, she thought, and didn't say, because saying it out loud would mean admitting she still cared whether that was true. She'd spent six years rebuilding what the border raid had cost her — six years of proving, patrol by patrol, treaty by treaty, that she hadn't betrayed her own people to a dragon boy she'd loved in secret. Six years, and it still took exactly one land dispute for half this council to look at her and see the fastest way to solve a problem instead of the alpha's daughter who'd earned her way back. "When do I leave," she said. Not a question. "Three days," her father said. "You'll travel under your mother's name. Ashcombe. It's safer that way — the dragon court doesn't need to know exactly whose daughter they're negotiating with until the alliance is settled and can't be unmade." Safer for who, she almost asked, but she already knew the answer.