Chapter Ten
Calista
I should have known hope wouldn’t survive in Frostcrag for long either.
I felt the shift in the room before I fully understood it. In the way the guards went still. In the priestess’s lifted chin. In the way Marsten’s attention sharpened toward the door as if trouble had just become visible.
And in Savage.
He didn’t move at first, but something in him hardened.
He had just brought me across the sea. Just placed me at his left before all of Frostcrag. Just made a spectacle of protecting my place. And already the realm was reaching for him.
His gaze flicked to me once, then back to the kneeling runner. “Now?” he asked.
The runner bowed lower, breath ragged. “A message from the southern watch, my king. Blackwater Pass has fallen.”
The room went still.
The runner swallowed hard and forced the rest out. “The southern clans struck before dawn. They burned the lower grain holds, overran two signal keeps, and broke Stormhallow’s reinforcements. Saltspire’s southern channel is no longer secure.”
A curse hissed under his breath.
My stomach dropped.
Savage’s jaw shifted beneath the wolf mask. “How many dead?”
“We don’t have a full count yet. There are too many wounded, and the road is open.”
“Prepare the council chamber,” Savage barked.
The runner rose and fled. A few others filed along behind him, Dorian included.
I stood very still, hands folded so tightly before me my fingers ached.
Curses, this was not how the arrival was supposed to go. There should have been ceremony. Some measured softness of transition. Some pretense that I had not simply been claimed in an alliance and magically carried from one life into another.
The Conclave had opened its mouth the moment we stepped inside.
Savage turned to me. “You will attend.”
That startled me enough I forgot to hide it. “I will?”
“Surely, this will concern Hollowcrest, too.”
Dread slipped coldly down my spine. Because if the south had just lost an important pass, then whatever chance Hollowcrest had of being prioritized was already bleeding out before I even entered the bargaining room.
A moment later, Marsten led us through Frostcrag’s inner corridors, past braziers, arrow slits, and old stone that seemed to hold cold in its bones. I kept pace at Savage’s left, refusing to look as shaken as I felt.
By the time we reached the council chamber, all I could hear was the sea striking the cliffs below and the steady pounding of my own pulse.
The doors opened.
The room beyond was all iron sconces, scarred stone, and a long table shaped for rulers. Every seat was occupied except the king’s throne. Twelve courts. Twelve Alphas. Dorian was already seated. The whole of Lunaris gathered in one room that suddenly felt too small to hold all that law and power.
Maps littered the table. Of all three continents of Crescentia, of Lunaris alone, and a more detailed one still, of the northern lands of Frostcrag. Pins marked coastlines, ferry routes, trade roads, old watchtowers, grain stores, and villages. Too many of the pins were red.
My breath caught. The south wasn’t bleeding Hollowcrest alone.
Saltspire’s channels. Mistvale’s ferries. Thornwild’s inland spine. Nightreef. Stormhallow. Everywhere. Not enough to shatter the realm in one blow, but enough to thin it everywhere at once.
The Alphas rose in unison when the king entered.
Savage took his place at the head of the table. “What’s happened, Hale?”
I remained standing at his left, just behind the chair, my posture straight and uselessly formal. No one offered me a seat. No one even pretended I should have one.
The male in Frostcrag blue, the king’s beta I’d met a year ago in Hollowcrest, dipped his head.
“You returned just in time, my king.” Then he unrolled a fresh map across the table.
“Blackwater Pass is gone. The lower grain holds were burned before dawn. Saltspire has lost two more patrol boats in the southern channel.” He tapped one marker after another.
“Nightreef’s western caches were hit before sunup.
Mistvale reports another ferry route harried.
And Thornwild lost a grain convoy inland. ” Each one struck like a nail.
Stormhallow’s Alpha folded his arms. “Every movable spear has to go south. Immediately.”
“No,” Savage said. The word cracked through the chamber.
Every head lifted in his direction.
Savage planted one gloved hand flat over the map. “Hollowcrest was sworn alliance protection only yesterday. I will not leave its coast bare less than a day after binding that Court to mine.”
The words hit me like a gasp of air after drowning.
Savage would fight for us. He hadn’t forgotten his vows. He was not brushing us aside as easily as the rest.
Mistvale’s female Alpha leaned forward, pale fingers braced on the table. “If Blackwater remains open, Tarrik reaches the interior stores before the week is out.”
“And if I strip ships north to cover Hollowcrest, I lose this passage too,” said Saltspire’s Magnus, stabbing a finger at the southern channel. “Then none of Frostcrag’s grain reaches the northern courts. Not Hollowcrest. Not anyone.”
Stormhallow’s Alpha looked straight at Savage. “This is no longer one starving isle against the rest. This is the spine of the realm. If it breaks, all twelve Courts bleed.”
“And Hollowcrest will bleed the most,” I muttered through my teeth, my tongue refusing to be sheathed for another moment.
Not a single head turned in my direction. As if I didn’t even exist.
Savage said nothing, and the silence in the room changed.
Dorian cleared his throat, voice already scraped raw. “Hollowcrest bent the knee in good faith. The alliance was sworn. My people expect protection.”
“You have Frostcrag’s banner,” Thornwild countered. “And from what I heard, raiders who strike your shores have already learned what that means.”
“That is not the same as protection.” The desperation in Dorian’s face laced his tone.
“It may be all any of us can spare,” Mistvale’s Alpha replied.
The words landed like a slap. I looked from one Alpha to the next, waiting for someone to correct them. Waiting for Savage to say what I had carried across the sea like a prayer clenched in both hands.
That this marriage meant something. That Hollowcrest would be shielded. That a king who took a bride took her people too.
He said nothing.
“We can reinforce key routes,” Hale interjected. “But not endlessly. Every spear moved north leaves the south thinner. Every cart of grain redirected leaves another Court hungry. Every ship sent to remote waters weakens the southern lines.”
Mistvale’s elder added, “Hollowcrest is not being singled out. It is one strain among many.”
No. No, this was not what this meeting was supposed to be. This was supposed to be the part where the shape of the alliance took form. Designating guards, supply routes, protection, and terms. Not this.
Again, the words came out before I could stop them, but this time I spoke them louder, ensuring I was heard. “We are not asking for special treatment.”
Every head turned this time.
Savage’s gaze cut to me, sharp as a drawn blade.
I lifted my chin anyway. “We are only asking to survive. Hollowcrest has been ignored for too long—”
Dorian’s expression flashed a warning. Too late.
I stepped closer to the table. “If alliance means anything, then it cannot end where inconvenience begins. If protection means anything, then it cannot simply be a useless banner.”
Stormhallow’s Alpha exhaled hard. “You speak as though Hollowcrest alone suffers.”
“I speak,” I said, every word burning my throat, “as though Hollowcrest matters too.”
The silence that followed was thin enough to cut.
I turned to Savage, pleading. “You crossed the sea for this alliance. You stood on our shore and promised protection. Was that only true until something larger demanded your attention?”
The moment the words were out, I wished I could have taken them back. Not because they were wrong but because I had spoken them in front of the entire Conclave. I should’ve known better, dammit.
Savage’s entire posture changed. The king in him came down like a gate slamming shut. “You forget where you are.”
“No,” I snapped, anger stripping caution from me. “For the first time, I understand exactly where I am.”
A murmur moved through the chamber.
“As your future consort,” I said to Savage alone, quieter now but no less sharp, “will I have a voice in matters that decide Hollowcrest’s fate?”
His answer came low and precise and infinitely worse for the control in it. “No.” The single word hollowed the air.
I stared at him.
“You will not sit the Conclave,” he replied.
“Not in the first year. Not until your place in Frostcrag is established and your safety is secured. Or at least until Selraya’s gift emerges and your power is honed.
” Then his gaze darkened to molten silver, voice dropping for my ears alone.
“And you will never question my rulings before the gathered Courts again.”
Heat flashed through me, a desperate tangle of humiliation, fury, and grief. I would have no seat, no voice, no leverage.
Goddess, how could I have been so na?ve?
The marriage would not save Hollowcrest.
The alliance would not save Hollowcrest.
Something ugly and hot climbed my throat.
All year I had believed this might be Selraya’s answer. All year I had worn the crescent mark on my skin like proof that perhaps the goddess had not forgotten me after all.
It served me right for being foolish enough to believe blessings ever came to Hollowcrest without a blade hidden inside them.
Savage moved then, finally. He stepped forward, hand flattening harder over the map. And despite myself, despite everything, hope flared one last time.
He was going to fight them again. He would tell them Hollowcrest would be protected because he had sworn it and because kings who crossed seas to claim brides should at least mean the promises they made on shore.
“The realm cannot sustain further division.” The words hit like a fist.
His hand remained on the map, not over Hollowcrest now but over all of it. The bleeding roads. The severed routes. The weakening lines.
“If I hold men north for Hollowcrest, Blackwater remains open,” he said. “If the pass remains open, then Tarrik takes the grain roads. If he takes the grain roads, Saltspire loses the channel, Stormhallow loses the interior, and by winter the realm starves from the south up.”
He lifted his gaze to the room. “I cannot trade eleven failing courts for one dying island.” Then his icy gaze pivoted to me, and the brutality of it stole my breath.
“Hollowcrest keeps the alliance already sworn. Its trade rights stand. Raiders who strike its shores will be answered where possible. But no further resources will be diverted at this time.”
And just like that, there was nothing left.
A future in which Hollowcrest remained what it had always been, starving, raided, expendable, only now with my body used to seal the arrangement.
Dorian slammed his hand onto the table. “My king…” There was complete despair in his voice now, raw and unhidden. “Without additional support, we will not hold.”
“There is nothing I can do,” Savage replied. The denial cracked through the chamber.
Hollowcrest would continue to bleed, and my people would go on starving under a banner that could not shield them. Because the Conclave, the law, the whole brittle structure of the realm had boxed us in so tightly that even the Savage King could not break one line without breaking the rest.
That should have made me pity him. Instead, it only made me furious. Because whether the end came from choice or constraint, it remained the same.
No help was coming.
Magnus looked at Dorian and then away. Even Mistvale’s elder lowered her eyes with a sorrow that offered nothing. Thornwild’s Alpha didn’t even bother pretending sympathy.
I hated them all. It took everything I had not to throw the map at the king’s masked face. And most of all, I hated that I had let myself hope.
Dorian spoke again, voice scraped hollow. “Then Hollowcrest is abandoned.”
I barely heard the rest.
Only my mother’s voice that morning, clear for one blessed moment.
Only my father’s hands grinding moonveil petals by firelight. You must never tell anyone about your mother’s affliction. Keep it a secret at all costs.
Ma would not survive this. Suri would not survive it for long either. Not with the stores thinning, the raids worsening, and the one fragile lifeline I had clung to proving to be made of smoke.
This marriage would bury me in Frostcrag while Hollowcrest died in slower pieces.
I looked at Savage then not as an answer or a blessing but as part of the cage. And the truth wasn’t that only the king had failed me. It was that the whole damned realm had.
The system would not bend for me, not even with Selraya’s mark burned into my skin. The realization landed clean and final.
For one terrible heartbeat, I stood there with nothing.
Then memory struck… The slip of parchment I’d tucked into my pocket.
A rite older than treaties, older than the Conclave. A path no council could refuse if I named it before witnesses.
My fingers curled hard at my sides. There was still one choice left.
I forced my tongue to still and lifted my head to look straight at the king. All the fragile hope I had carried across the sea turned hard enough to cut.
Now I only had to decide whether I was willing to stake my life and all of Lunaris on the one path left to me.