The maid sobbed against the table while blood from a shallow cut ran down her hand.

Fallon crossed the hall and pulled the dagger free.

"Out," he said.

No one moved at first.

He looked up.

"I said out."

The court emptied in seconds.

Kael rose from the throne more slowly.

"You are already spoiling your new toy."

Fallon wiped the dagger on a linen napkin. "I am preventing servants from undermining a treaty in front of witnesses."

"Call it whatever helps you sleep."

Kael left with his guards.

Fallon waited until the doors shut, then turned to me.

"Show me your hand."

"My face is the part she hit."

"Your hand."

I looked down. One of the maid's rings had scratched the back of my knuckles when I blocked her. A thin line of blood had appeared.

"It is nothing."

Fallon caught my forearm and inspected it anyway.

"Stop grabbing me."

"Stop bleeding on my floor."

He pressed a folded handkerchief against the scratch.

The gesture was careful enough to unsettle me.

"I don't need a savior," I said.

"Good. I am not one."

His gaze held mine. "No one in this fortress touches you without my permission because no one gets to damage a treaty asset."

"You make protection sound remarkably like captivity."

"In this house, the difference is often who holds the key."

"And you do."

"For now."

The answer carried more bitterness than triumph. I filed that away. Kael's court feared Fallon, but fear was not the same as freedom. His father had humiliated me publicly and Fallon had stopped only the part that went too far. He was powerful here, not absolute.

There it was.

Not kindness.

Ownership.

He picked up the iron collar the maid had dropped.

"This still goes on."

"I am not wearing it."

"My father made it part of the public terms. If I refuse in the first hour, he will test how far he can push every other condition."

"That sounds like your problem."

"It becomes yours when his retaliation reaches Crescent villages."

I hated that he was right about the leverage, not about the collar.

He stepped behind me.

Cold iron touched my throat.

Before fastening it, Fallon turned the inner band in his hands and used his dagger to snap off two of the longest spikes.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Making sure my father's symbolism does not cut an artery."

"How considerate."

"Do not mistake practicality for tenderness."

The lock clicked.

The scar beneath it ignited.

A memory slammed into me.

Moon Festival drums in the distance.

My silver amulet cold against my chest.

A man pulling me into the trees.

Not violently.

Desperately.

"You asked me to come," a voice said.

Then the memory fractured.

Dirt. Blood. Teeth at my neck.

My amulet chain snapping.

I shoved Fallon away with both hands.

He staggered one step, more surprised than hurt.

"What was that?"

"Get away from me."

He came forward again.

I backed into the stone wall.

"What did you remember?"

The question stopped me.

Not what is wrong with you.

What did you remember.

"Nothing."

"Liar."

He raised a hand toward the collar.

I flinched before he touched it.

His expression hardened.

He reached toward the scar again, then stopped himself before contact. The restraint unsettled me almost as much as the first touch.

"Who marked you?"

My pulse hammered.

"I don't know."

For the first time, Fallon looked genuinely shaken.

"That scar is a mate mark."

"I know what it is."

"Then why don't you know who gave it to you?"

"Because most of that night is gone."

He went still.

I watched the answer register behind his eyes, though I could not tell what it meant.

"Three years ago?" he asked.

"The Moon Festival. The night before your father's army took our sanctuary."

Fallon's jaw clenched.

"What do you remember?"

"Smoke. My brother. Someone in the woods. Enough to know I hate this place."

He turned away so abruptly the hem of his coat snapped behind him.

"Guards."

Two soldiers entered.

"Take Princess Lyra to the east tower. She is confined to her rooms until I say otherwise."

I laughed once. "There is the Obsidian hospitality I was promised."

Fallon did not turn back.

"No servant enters without permission. No soldier speaks to her alone. If anyone ignores that order, bring them to me."

The guards exchanged a nervous glance.

They marched me up three flights of stairs and locked me inside a round stone room.

Moonlight fell through a narrow barred window. The room held a narrow bed, a washstand, and a fireplace laid with wood but no flame. It was not a dungeon, which was probably the point. Obsidian preferred cages that could be described as guest rooms.

I tested the door, the window latch, and the mortar around the bars. Habit from childhood raids. My brother Elian had taught me never to spend a night anywhere without counting exits. Remembering him made my throat ache.

I also checked the collar in the washstand mirror. Fallon had broken the worst spikes, but the iron still sat like a public brand around my neck. Under it, the old scar had turned pink. I pressed two fingers against the mark and felt a faint answering pulse that did not belong to my heartbeat.

Whatever Selene had tried to erase three years ago was waking up inside Obsidian territory, and Fallon seemed to know exactly what it was. That frightened me far more than the locked door ever could, because he was waiting for me to remember.

I waited until their footsteps disappeared before touching the scar beneath the collar.

Still hot.

Still pulsing.

A scratching sound came from the window.

I froze.

Scrape.

Scrape.

Something slipped through the gap beneath the frame and landed on the floor.

A folded piece of parchment.

I crossed the room and picked it up.

Red wax sealed it shut.

Pressed into the wax was the silver crescent emblem of my pack.

I broke the seal.

One sentence had been written across the parchment in hurried black ink.

Do not trust your fiancé. The priestess will come tonight.

I read it twice, memorized every stroke, then tore the message into pieces and burned them one by one over the candle flame.

If Obsidian searched my room, they would find ash.

The message changed the shape of the fortress around me. Until then, every corridor had belonged to Kael. Now I knew at least one Crescent loyalist could reach the east tower without being seen. That meant servants, passages, and divided loyalties. It also meant someone expected me to remember a priestess I could not picture.

I spent the afternoon turning the sentence over in my head. Do not trust your fiancé. It would have been more useful if the writer had explained whether anyone in Obsidian deserved trust at all.

At dinner, Kael made sure I sat where the entire court could see the iron collar around my throat.

"To peace," he announced, lifting his goblet.

No one looked particularly peaceful.

A scarred commander across the table laughed. "Crescent finally learned what happens when a weak pack confuses pride with strength."

Another wolf smirked. "They ran before the first gate fell."

"That is a lie," I said.

The commander leaned forward. "Careful, Princess."

"My people held the river crossing for nine hours against three times their number. If you need to rewrite the battle to feel brave, at least choose one no survivors remember."

The table went quiet.

Fallon sat beside me, rigid.

His hand closed over mine beneath the table before I could reach the silver knife beside my plate.

"Don't," he murmured.

"He is laughing about dead children."

"And you are holding a weapon in my father's hall."

"Maybe your father should invite better company."

Fallon removed the knife and placed it beyond my reach.

"Eat."

"I would rather starve."

"Then do it somewhere less theatrical."

I shoved my chair back.

Kael's eyes narrowed. "Where are you going?"

"To breathe."

"Sit down."

Fallon spoke before I could. "Let her go."

Kael looked at his son for a long moment.

Then he smiled in a way that promised consequences later.

I left.

Two guards followed at a distance.

The corridor outside the great hall was colder and almost dark. I turned a corner, then another, putting a stone pillar between myself and the guards.

A hand pulled me into an alcove.

I opened my mouth.

"Quiet," a woman whispered.

She wore a gray hood. Her eyes were clouded white with blindness.

"Selene?"

The name came from somewhere I could not place.

Her fingers tightened around my arm. "You remember me."

"No. I remember the name."

"The spell left fragments. I warned you it might."

My throat went dry. "What spell?"

Selene leaned close. "Three years ago, you came to my sanctuary before the Moon Festival. You wanted the mate bond removed from your mind."

I stared at her.

"I didn't know I had a mate."

"You did then."

"Why would I ask you to erase him instead of rejecting him?"

Selene's mouth tightened. "Because a true rejection requires both wolves to survive the breaking. You had no awakened wolf then. The bond had taken root in human blood, and you feared severing it would kill you before your pack learned Obsidian was coming."

"So I chose forgetting."

"You chose time."

"Who?"

Her blind eyes seemed to focus directly on me.

"Fallon."

The corridor tilted.

I caught the stone wall.

"No."

"You were already marked. Not fully bonded, but claimed. You begged me to sever the recognition because you had learned who he was."

"Kael's son."

"The heir of the pack preparing to march on yours."

A second fragment flashed through me: Fallon pressing a folded map into my hands beneath festival lanterns, his voice urgent. North pass. Two days. Get Elian out. Then the image vanished before I could tell whether it was memory or something the spell had invented.

I gripped Selene's cloak. "Did he warn us?"

"Ask him why your brother ignored the warning."

I touched the burning scar.

"Did the spell work?"

"Not properly. He found us before I finished."

A flash hit me.

Sanctuary doors splintering inward.

Women screaming.

Blood across white stone.

Fallon's face above mine.

Not cold.

Terrified.

Then nothing.

"He killed your acolytes," I said.

Selene's mouth tightened. "Men wearing Obsidian colors did. Fallon came through the doors with them. I never learned whose order they followed."

That distinction mattered more than I wanted it to.

"Did he kill my brother?"

"I did not see Elian die."

"Kael says Fallon was there when the sanctuary fell."

"Kael says many useful things."

My heart beat harder.

"How do I break the bond now?"

"You cannot destroy it by forgetting. That was my mistake. Memory is not the bond."

"Then what is?"

"Blood. Choice. Recognition."

"That is not an answer."

"It is the only one I have."

Boots sounded at the end of the corridor.

Selene pulled back.

"Wait."

"Do not trust the story either man gives you," she whispered. "Find what they were both willing to hide."

She disappeared through a narrow service passage just as the guards rounded the corner.

"Princess," one called. "Who was with you?"

"No one."

"I heard voices."

A colder voice came from behind them.

"Stand down."

Fallon approached from the direction of the hall.

The guards bowed and withdrew.

He stopped in front of me.

His gaze went to the dark alcove, then back to my face.

"Who were you talking to?"

"Myself."

"Your pulse says otherwise."

He stepped closer, one hand braced against the stone beside my head.

Pine and iron filled the space between us.

The scar under my collar began to burn.

Fallon's eyes dropped to it.

"What did she tell you?"

I forgot how to breathe.

He knew there had been a woman.

I thought of Selene's final warning: find what both men were willing to hide. Fallon had not asked who. He had asked what she told me. That was not suspicion. It was history.

And from the look on his face, he knew exactly which one.

"I don't know what you're talking about," I said.

Fallon studied me for another second, then stepped back.

"Be ready at dawn."

"For what?"

"We ride."

The next morning, frost silvered the forest floor.

I had expected a ceremonial hunt designed to display Obsidian strength. Instead, Fallon brought me to the northern boundary where winter traps were being reset and old battle markers removed.

"Why am I here?" I asked as we rode.

"Because the treaty gives Crescent access to this road next month. If you are going to accuse us of moving patrols across the line, you should know where the line actually is."

"How generous. A guided tour of stolen land."

"Half this ridge belonged to neither pack before your grandfather moved the stones."

"And I am sure Obsidian's version of the map says that."

"There are three versions. I have read all of them."

That surprised me enough to end the argument for several breaths.

Fallon rode a black stallion beside my gray mare while six Obsidian guards spread through the trees around us.

"Shorten your reins," he said.

"I know how to ride."

"You ride like someone who expects the forest to apologize before it attacks."

"Your father already tried that approach."

His mouth twitched.

Before I could decide whether it was almost a smile, a whistle cut through the trees.

"Down!"

Fallon launched from his saddle.

His body hit mine and knocked us both from the mare.

We crashed through thorn brush and rolled down a short slope.

A crossbow bolt buried itself in the tree where my chest had been.

Green liquid smoked along the metal tip.

Wolfsbane.

A gunshot cracked above us.

Fallon jerked.

Blood spread across his left shoulder.

"Fallon?"

He rolled off me, drew a pistol with his good hand, and fired twice into the canopy.

A man fell from a branch and hit the ground hard.

Two more shots answered from deeper in the trees. Our escort scattered for cover. Fallon shoved me behind a fallen trunk before he returned fire. The attack was disciplined: one shooter kept the guards pinned while another moved to cut off the trail back to the fortress. These were not desperate refugees. Someone had trained them.

"West ravine," Fallon barked to his captain. "Do not chase past the marker. It is a funnel."

Even bleeding, he recognized the terrain faster than any of them.

"Move," Fallon ordered.

"You're shot."

"I noticed."

He kicked the dead attacker's arm aside.

A black serpent had been tattooed around the man's wrist.

"Serpent rebels," Fallon said.

His face had already gone pale.

The bullet was silver.

He grabbed my wrist and pulled me deeper into the woods as another bolt struck the dirt behind us.

We ran until the guards' shouts disappeared.

A narrow crack in a limestone ridge opened into a shallow cave.

Fallon made it three steps inside before collapsing against the wall.

His breathing turned ragged.

I used the small knife from my boot to cut away his jacket. The bullet had passed through the outer shoulder but left a silver burn around the wound. Blackened veins were already spreading under the skin.

"That looks bad."

"Your medical training is astonishing."

"I could make it worse if you prefer."

"There is the woman I remember."

I froze.

Fallon's eyes opened.

"What did you say?"

He looked away. "Nothing."

The lie sat between us.

"The bullet needs to come out."

"No. Silver fragments. Digging blind will make it worse."

"Then what?"

"Pressure. Time. My wolf will push it toward the surface if the dose doesn't stop my heart first."

He said it as if discussing weather.

I tore a strip from the hem of my dress.

"Don't touch the blood," he warned. "There is wolfsbane on the entry wound too."

"You could have mentioned that before smearing it across my sleeve."

I folded the cloth and pressed it against his shoulder.

He hissed.

"Why did you jump in front of me?"

"You are my fiancée."

"I am your prisoner's daughter."

"Same treaty."

"That is a terrible answer."

"It is the one you keep asking for."

His eyes closed.

I tightened the bandage.

The cave grew quiet except for dripping water and his uneven breathing.

I could leave.

Selene might still have allies in the forest. The border was somewhere west. A wounded Fallon could not stop me.

I stood.

At the cave mouth, I could see only trees and pale rock. Freedom might have been a mile away or twenty. The rebels who had tried to kill me might belong to Crescent splinter groups, to the Serpent clan, or to Kael himself if the attack was meant to test Fallon's loyalty. I hated that every path required trusting someone who had already lied.

His hand caught my wrist.

The grip was weak.

"Don't."

I looked down at him.

His eyes had shifted from silver to the bright gold of his wolf.

"Don't what?"

"Leave the cave alone. There are at least three more outside. I can smell them when the wind changes."

That was more sensible than the plea I had expected.

I sat again.

"You thought I was running."

"You were."

"I was considering it."

A rough laugh escaped him.

"At least you are honest when I am half dead."

"Do not flatter yourself."

He leaned his head against the stone.

"Seven days until the wedding."

"If you survive."

"I intend to."

"Disappointing."

His thumb moved once against my wrist, directly over my pulse.

The scar at my throat warmed in answer.

Fallon's gaze sharpened despite the pain.

"You feel it."

I pulled free.

"I feel nothing for you."

"That is not what I said."

Before I could answer, a howl sounded far outside the cave.

Then another.

Obsidian tracking hounds.

Fallon tried to rise and nearly collapsed. I caught his good arm before I could think better of it. His weight settled against me for one unguarded second.

"If you tell anyone I helped you stand, I will deny it."

"Naturally. It would ruin your reputation."

Fallon exhaled. "My father's men found us."

I looked at the bandage darkening over his shoulder.

For reasons I did not understand, relief came first.