Bound by Blood and Fire

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They met again the next morning, ostensibly to review treaty language, and spent the first twenty minutes doing exactly that — until the guard posted outside the study door drifted far enough for privacy, and Kael set his papers down entirely.

"I've been thinking about what you said," he said. "About your father exiling you quietly rather than fighting the accusation."

"It's not something I enjoy revisiting."

"I know. I'm sorry." He hesitated. "But it matters. Because my father did something similar — reassigned my personal guard within a week of the raid, before I'd even finished grieving what I thought you'd done to me. At the time I thought it was compassion. Getting me away from anything that reminded me of you."

"And now?"

"Now I think someone wanted both of us handled quickly. Contained, before either of us asked too many questions about what actually happened at that raid." He met her eyes. "Do you remember who was on patrol that night? On your side?"

Ravenna frowned, casting her memory back six years, past the version of events she'd been forced to accept rather than the one she'd actually lived. "Elder Hask's son. He was patrol lead that week. I remember because he was the one who reported seeing dragon scouts near the meeting point — the testimony that started the accusations against me in the first place."

"Elder Hask." Kael's expression sharpened. "The same Elder Hask who's spent six years leading the faction that wants you removed from succession."

"You think he arranged it. His own son lying about dragon scouts, to frame me."

"I think it's worth finding out," Kael said. "On my side, the scout who reported seeing wolf patrols at the meeting spot that night was quietly promoted within a month of the raid. I never questioned it before. Now I can't stop questioning it."

Ravenna sat with that for a long moment, feeling six years of carefully constructed grief start to crack open into something more dangerous — anger, directed finally at people other than herself and the boy she'd loved. "If you're right, someone on both sides benefited from us being torn apart. Someone who wanted the border conflict to keep simmering rather than end."

"Or someone who specifically didn't want a wolf and a dragon getting close enough to actually change anything," Kael said quietly. "Which, given what's happening with the alliance now, might matter more than either of us realizes."

Something in his tone made her go still. "What do you mean?"

He didn't answer right away, and she watched him war with himself again — the same hesitation from the balcony the night before, the shape of a second confession he still wasn't ready to give her.

"Not yet," he said, and this time she let it go, though it cost her more restraint than she wanted to admit, because some part of her recognized that whatever he was protecting her from wasn't going to stay hidden much longer.

---

She spent the afternoon doing what she'd been trained to do since she was old enough to hold a blade — quiet, methodical investigation, the kind that didn't announce itself. She found Elder Hask's son, now a mid-ranked patrol officer, drinking alone in the wolf delegation's temporary quarters, and struck up a conversation about old times that he was clearly too many drinks in to handle carefully.

"You remember the raid," she said, keeping her tone light, nostalgic. "Six years back. You were patrol lead that week."

"Bad night," he said, not quite meeting her eyes. "Lost good wolves that night."

"You reported seeing dragon scouts near the meeting point beforehand. That's what started everything."

"That's what I was told to report," he said, and then seemed to realize, a half-second too late, exactly what he'd admitted.

Ravenna kept her expression carefully neutral, though her pulse had gone sharp and fast. "Told by whom?"

He set his cup down, suddenly much more sober-seeming than he had a moment ago. "I should go."

"By whom," she said again, quieter, more dangerous.

He wouldn't answer. He left instead, quickly, without meeting her eyes again, and she stood alone in the quarters with the confirmation she'd been half-dreading and half-hoping for: someone had told him what to report. Someone had shaped the story from the very beginning.

She found Kael in the gardens that evening and told him everything.

"He as good as admitted it," she said. "Someone told him what to say. He wouldn't tell me who."

Kael's jaw tightened. "That's more than I expected to get so quickly."

"It's not enough. We know someone shaped the story on my side. We don't know who, and we don't know why, and we still don't know who did the same on your side, if anyone did." She studied his face in the fading light. "And you still haven't told me what you were about to say earlier. About the alliance mattering more than I realize."

He was quiet for a long moment, long enough that she thought he might actually tell her this time.

"Give me a few more days," he said instead. "I need to be certain before I say something I can't take back."

She wanted to push. She wanted, badly, to demand the truth right then, in the fading light, with six years of careful distance finally starting to dissolve between them. But she thought of her own father, of secrets kept out of a misguided attempt at protection, and recognized, with a cold, uncomfortable clarity, that Kael might be making exactly the same mistake — protecting her from something by keeping her in the dark, the same way she'd been protected right into exile.

"Don't do what my father did," she said instead. "Don't decide for me what I can handle knowing."

Something in his expression cracked at that — guilt, she realized, sharp and sudden and entirely unhidden for once. "I hear you," he said. "I promise. Just a few more days."

She let it go, again, and told herself it was the last time she would.