15
Kason
She found me before I found her, which should have surprised me less than it did, given how thoroughly she'd already proven, over seven weeks, that she sensed me coming long before I ever announced myself.
"You came to my door yesterday," she said, standing in the corridor outside my own chambers at an hour early enough that the castle hadn't properly woken around us yet.
"Twice, apparently, according to a maid who mentioned it in passing this morning without understanding why the information made me sit down rather abruptly. "
"I did." No point denying it, not to her, not after everything. "I lost my nerve both times. I'm not proud of that."
"I know the feeling much better than I'd like to.
" Something in her expression had shifted since I'd last seen her properly, two days before — steadier, though tired in a way that worried me more than her words did.
"I found letters. From Katra. She was part of something, Kason — loyalists, sworn to protect the Frostmark line.
She died keeping that oath, and I spent an entire day yesterday too overwhelmed to seek you out, and my own body apparently had opinions about that distance considerably more forceful than I expected. "
The specific cold that moved through me at that confirmed something I'd suspected but hadn't let myself fully examine — that the bond's cost ran both directions, that whatever I felt when distance stretched too far between us, she felt in equal, unbearable measure. "Are you all right?"
"I'm better now. Yeva sat with me most of the evening.
" She held my gaze steadily, no accusation in it, only a weariness that had earned every ounce of its weight honestly.
"I'm not here to demand what you've been withholding, though I think we both know I already understand more of it than either of us has said aloud.
I'm here because avoiding each other clearly isn't sustainable, whatever either of us hoped distance might accomplish, and I'd rather face whatever's coming with you than apart from you. "
I should have told her everything, standing right there in the quiet corridor with the whole weight of it finally, mercifully within reach.
I opened my mouth to begin exactly that, and a rider's horn sounded from the outer gate before I'd managed a single word — three short blasts, the specific signal reserved for urgent border intelligence, cutting through the morning quiet with an authority that neither of us could ignore.
"Go," she said, before I could apologize for the interruption. "Whatever it is, it matters more right now than finishing this conversation properly. I'll still be here when you're done."
I left her with a promise in my chest I still hadn't managed to speak aloud, and found Teodor waiting in the courtyard with a scout half-fallen from his saddle, exhausted and wolfsbane-scented in a way that told me, before he'd said a single word, exactly how close he'd ridden past danger to reach us.
"Confirmed Unbound encampment," the scout managed, between gulped breaths a squire pressed water into his hands to steady.
"Half a day's ride east of the Sorrowmarket.
Small — a dozen men, perhaps fewer — but they're holding at least one captive, and they're not moving on.
They've been there three days already, which isn't how Unbound scouting parties usually operate. "
"They're waiting for something," Teodor said, already reading the same conclusion I'd reached. "Or someone."
"Or they've already found what they came looking for and they're simply confirming it before they move.
" I felt my wolf surge forward at that, sharp and immediate, significantly less patient than the rest of me currently had the luxury of being.
"Assemble a strike party. Small, fast — I want this resolved before whatever they're waiting for arrives to meet them. "
"You're going yourself."
"I'm going myself." I met Teodor's look before he could argue it. "If they have proof of her, I want to be the one who takes it from them, not a report that reaches me secondhand after the fact."
We rode hard through the morning, my wolf riding close beneath my skin the entire way, restless and sharpened in the particular way it only ever became before violence I couldn't fully avoid.
The forest changed character as we moved east, pine giving way to older growth, the air carrying less of the glacier-mineral bite I'd grown up reading as home and more of something closer to rot — old leaves, standing water, the staleness of ground that didn't drain properly even in dry seasons.
My wolf catalogued all of it without my asking, the way it always did, building a map of the territory considerably more detailed than any scout's report could offer.
I smelled the camp before Teodor's lead rider signaled it — woodsmoke first, ordinary enough, but threaded under it something sharper, unwashed men and old blood and, fainter still, the distinct acrid green bite that meant wolfsbane stores kept somewhere close.
My wolf went very still at that scent, the specific stillness that came before violence rather than the stillness that came from calm, and I felt every man in the strike party shift with me, reading the change in my posture the way trained soldiers learned to read an Alpha's body before he'd said a single word aloud.
The encampment sat in a fold of forest half a day east exactly as the scout had promised, smoke rising thin and careless from a fire that told me, before we'd even confirmed the count, that whoever held this position hadn't expected company.
They hadn't expected wolves either, not properly armed ones, not a Crown Prince's personal guard moving through undergrowth with the particular silence years of training bought a man.
I let my wolf closer to the surface than I usually allowed in mixed company, the shift stopping short of full transformation but carrying enough of the change that my vision sharpened, my hearing narrowed to the specific rhythm of six separate heartbeats scattered through the camp, each one spiking the instant our presence registered.
We took the camp in minutes rather than hours, the fight brief and brutal in the way most fights were once surprise had been fully spent.
I moved through it the way I'd trained to move for two decades, aware of my own body only as a tool doing precisely what was required of it, my wolf's instincts running half a step ahead of my conscious decisions the entire time — a blade angle read before my eyes had fully processed it, a man's shift in weight answered before he'd committed to the strike he was telegraphing.
This was the part of my nature I rarely let Ilinca see plainly, the part that had kept me and everyone under my command alive across a decade of border skirmishes, noticeably less gentle than the man who'd learned her tea preference over quiet evenings in an archive wing.
I found myself, in the aftermath, standing over the last conscious captor with my wolf close enough to the surface that my voice came out rougher than I intended.
"Where is the captive."
He gave up the location fast enough — fear working faster than loyalty ever did, once a man understood precisely how outmatched he'd become — and I found her in a makeshift cage near the camp's edge, a rogue wolf woman perhaps ten years my senior, half-starved and wolfsbane-weakened but alive, her eyes going wide and disbelieving at the sight of a Crown Prince's crest on the men cutting her free.
"They kept asking about a mark," she said, once water and a blanket had steadied her enough to speak clearly.
"A crescent. A thorn beneath it. Kept asking if I'd ever seen a wolf carrying it, or heard whispers about a wardsmith with old-style training working somewhere near the border towns.
" Her eyes found mine, sharp despite her exhaustion.
"You're the one who claimed a wardsmith at your own Council, aren't you. Word travels, even out here."
I didn't answer that directly, though the confirmation I needed sat plainly enough in the question itself. "What else did they ask?"
"Whether the search had already succeeded.
Whether the leadership already had confirmation, or whether they were still working from rumor alone.
" She accepted more water, hands shaking as she drank.
"I told them I knew nothing. That was mostly true.
I don't know your wardsmith, Your Highness.
But I know men desperate enough to interrogate strangers for three days running usually believe they're close to something worth that particular patience. "
I questioned the more senior of the two captured scouts myself, before we broke camp, my wolf close enough to the surface that the man's own fear-scent came to me sharp and immediate, considerably more honest than anything he initially tried to tell me.
"Who ordered this camp held here specifically," I asked, low and even, the stillness I'd learned commanded truth more reliably than threats ever did.
"Voivode Ossendrei." The name came fast, the man clearly calculating that cooperation cost him less than loyalty to a leader who wasn't present to punish the betrayal.
"He's had riders working every border town for two years, methodical, patient — not raiding, mostly, just watching and asking.
This camp was meant to hold until we had a name to bring back to him. Something more than rumor."
"And did you find a name?"
Something flickered in the man's expression, calculation warring with fear, and I felt my wolf press closer to the surface, patient and utterly still, waiting.
"Not confirmed. But close enough that the Voivode himself was planning to ride out and assess it personally, once we sent word.
That's all I know, I swear it — I'm a scout, not one of his inner circle. I wasn't told the specifics."