Chapter 18
Fern
Karn crouched beside her, his hand gentle as it ran up and down her arm.
“Tell me,” he said, his voice low. “And remember, you cannot lie. Did you mean to run?”
Fern shut her eyes and nodded without a word.
He exhaled deeply. “We cannot stop him from punishing you, you know.”
She nodded again, sucked in a shuddering breath, and then asked, “Will he finally kill me this time?”
“No,” he answered quickly. He sat down, easing her head up to cradle it in his lap. “No, not death—”
“My legs, then? Will he cut them off?”
Karn shushed her. “There will be consequences, but nothing that will scar you permanently. Clan abandonment is a serious offense, though. I have a feeling Alpha Darion will be unmoved by your defense, but I will hear it if you have one.”
Her wolf was quiet, Karn’s presence soothing the beast.
And despite Fern’s own strange pull towards him, wanting to curl up higher on his lap and let him rock her to sleep, she knew his sympathy would amount to nothing. Like a small bandage over a slit throat.
“If I said it should be obvious, would you punish me?”
He chuckled, his fingers now running through her hair. Gods, had anything ever felt better? “I would not, no, but I wouldn’t recommend such language during your hearing. My advice is to be honest, contrite, and accept the decision fully.”
Fern snorted. “Ah, that’s good to know. My original strategy had been to appear as insincere and unrepentant as possible.”
And there it was, her disrespectful tongue again. She’d thought she was a good grasp on basic decorum before coming here, but something about the way the alphas could inspire a level of familiarity and safety when they were anything but had her all turned around. Unable to trust her instincts.
She winced, about to immediately launch into apology when Karn threw his head back and laughed, his whole body shaking from the effort.
“Oh, she-wolf. If only I were a younger alpha. I would have snatched you up as my Naravekh the moment you arrived.”
Her wolf very much liked that idea.
He’s old enough to be our father, Fern reminded her.
Her wolf shrugged.
He then started to move, helping Fern up to her feet. “Come, if we leave now, we’ll be back before it gets too late.”
“Are you sure you can’t just… pretend you never saw me?” she asked, giving him hopeful eyes.
He returned them with a pointed look. “I found you crying on the forest floor. I don’t think you would have lasted the night.”
Fern swallowed. She was quite pathetic, wasn’t she?
Indeed, her wolf scoffed. You couldn’t even find water.
“You have a point.”
He led her back to the road, where a horse was waiting patiently, grazing on some green shoots.
After helping her up on the saddle, he mounted the horse in front of her. “Hold on now. Wouldn’t want you to fall off.”
If only, she thought.
Instead she wrapped her arms around his chest, resting her cheek on his broad back and breathing him in. He smelled good, like leather and spice.
He patted her hand once, and then they were off.
* * *
“I’m disappointed to see you in front of the Council again so soon,” Alastair began.
And so was she, although it wasn’t quite the same Council as it had been the night before.
For tonight, a new alpha had joined them—Kyntha’s cousin from the Ironcoat Clan.
Reinn sat with one leg crossed over the other, his lazy posture and bored expression giving the impression he didn’t quite want to be there.
Moon-pale hair spilled past his shoulders in a silken sheet over dark clothes and a heavy fur stole that hung loosely from one shoulder, while warm amber eyes watched the room from beneath silver lashes, blinking slowly.
Fern said nothing, her cheeks red and eyes trained on the floor in front of her, hands wringing themselves into knots.
“I would argue her last appearance wasn’t her fault,” Karn added, and Alastair bobbed his head in acquiescence.
“Nevertheless, you have been found guilty of clan abandonment. Darion, as the alpha who bound her, the punishment is yours to decide.”
But before he could even speak, Darion’s eyes aflame and rage burning under his skin, Alastair added, “One sanctioned and approved for the crime.”
Darion rose, rounding the table to face her directly.
He opened his mouth to deliver his sentence, when another voice spoke.
“Why did you run, little sunbeam?”
Everyone, including Fern, turned to face Reinn, his eyes fixed where she stood.
Darion replied, “It doesn’t matter—”
“It does to me,” Reinn said, causing Darion to bristle from the casual interruption. “My cousin is marrying into this clan, and if a delectable little she-wolf like this would risk escape, I’d like to know why.”
Darion exhaled sharply, his teeth grinding. “She ran because—”
“I wasn’t talking to you, I was talking to her.”
Fern’s heart raced, and she looked at Darion, waiting for permission, instruction, anything…
But his eyes told her nothing except of his building anger.
“It’s alright, Fern,” Eidan said. “You can speak freely.”
She highly doubted that, especially since speaking freely—no, emoting freely—had been what turned Darion against her in the first place.
“Because I am a failure,” she replied, not bothering to see if her answer had pleased Darion.
She already knew nothing would.
“And I thought the clan would be better off without me,” she added.
Reinn nodded knowingly, and then said, “You mean you thought you would be better off without the clan.”
Her mouth dropped open while the other alphas bristled.
“We take very good care of our Solvekh,” Norden said, attempting to affect a calm edge on his voice. But the tight set to his jaw belied his annoyance. “You can ask any of them. This one is… a special case.”
“I can see that.” Reinn leaned forward, sniffing the air. “She smells divine.”
Fern shifted on her feet, and the other alphas grumbled their agreement. Then they looked at him again, waiting for him to further his line of questioning or to explain it.
Darion cleared his throat.
But Reinn simply shrugged, looking down to pick at his nails. “That’s all I wanted to know, don’t mind me. I’m just an observer this evening. Please continue.”
Fern could see how it irked Darion for Reinn to give him direction in his own home, and she doubted it would translate into anything positive for his decision.
He looked at her, his expression set once again in a glower.
“If you cannot appreciate what the clan gives, then you will no longer receive the protections and benefits it provides.”
She tried to keep her gaze downcast, schooling her face into remorse when instead she wanted to laugh.
If this was what her life was like with the clan’s protections and benefits, then without them must be truly awful.
Her eyes lifted slightly, darting between Eidan and Karn in the hope they might give some kind of visual clue as to the seriousness of her fate, but both offered only blank slates.
“You are hereby stripped of the right to rest within the castle walls.”
She took a deep, shaking breath. That… that didn’t sound so bad. There would be no maiming, at least.
“From tonight until the full moon, you are to sleep outside.”
That was a little less than a week now. As long as it didn’t rain, she could survive—
“On the roof.”
The world muffled around her, as though she had been plunged in water. She only vaguely heard confused questions, asking for clarification, while her own breathing and beating heart were nearly deafening inside her.
Her palms started to sweat, and her knees shook.
“Please,” she whispered, “not…”
“And if your wolf does not appear,” he continued. “We will need to find a more permanent solution for your constant disappointments.”
He enunciated each syllable with hard consonants and snapping teeth, and Fern shrank further into herself until she felt she might collapse.
Six nights… on the roof.
And if she failed…
Please, she begged her wolf.
But her wolf merely whined, tail between her legs.
* * *
Fern followed the guard up a narrow spiral stair tucked deep within one of the castle towers, one hand dragging along the stone wall to steady herself whenever the steps threatened to tilt beneath her feet.
The higher they climbed, the colder the air became, carrying sharp gusts that slipped through narrow arrow slits and tugged at her hair and skirts.
The stair itself was too tight. More than once she stumbled and felt her stomach plummet, convinced for one sickening heartbeat she was about to pitch backward down the endless curve of stone.
The guard caught her elbow the third time.
“Careful,” he said, almost sounding as though he were actually concerned.
Fern nodded mutely, unable to speak past the growing lump in her throat.
Up, up, up…
By the time they reached the final landing, her legs trembled so badly she nearly missed the last step entirely.
The guard shoved open a heavy wooden door reinforced with iron bands.
Wind slammed into her instantly, and Fern recoiled.
The roof stretched beyond the doorway in a broad expanse of dark slate and pale stone, glistening faintly beneath the evening mist. Chimneys rose from portions of it in blackened pillars, smoke curling into the night sky.
Along the edges stood a waist-high parapet, thick enough to keep a person from accidentally stepping off, though that did little to soothe the violent panic clawing up Fern’s spine.
Too high.
Too… too open.
Her body understood it before her mind did, and her pulse exploded into a frantic rhythm, breaths turning shallow and painful as her vision swam.
The stones beneath her feet no longer felt solid but horribly temporary, as though the entire roof might tilt at any moment and spill her into the abyss below.
Don’t look over the edge.
The thought came too late as the cruel impulse took over.
Her eyes flicked toward the parapet, and instantly her stomach lurched so hard she gagged.
The distance below looked consuming, a gaping maw ready to swallow her whole.
Her toes curled inside her shoes as if trying to cling to the roof itself.
“Please,” she whispered before she could stop herself.
The guard shifted awkwardly behind her, clearly uncomfortable. “Orders are orders, Ashpaw.”
Fern barely heard him, her chest tightening so violently it hurt.
She could already imagine sleeping here, with the wind screaming around her and nothing overhead but open sky, only one wrong movement away from falling forever.
The roof did not feel like punishment. It felt like she’d been brought to the edge of the world and left there. To be forgotten.
The door closed, the lock turned, and the panic sluicing through her veins made it difficult to think.
Where to sleep, where to sit…
The middle too open, the side too precarious…
Everywhere was wrong.
She sat down where she stood, closing her eyes. After bringing her knees to her chest, she rested her forehead on them, whispering to herself.
“I’m on the ground, I’m on the ground, I’m on the ground…”
She did not sleep.