Iona
On the fourth morning, Sera puts a basket of wet linen in my arms.
“If you’re going to stand in my doorway, you can work.”
She is broad through the shoulders, red-faced from the steam, and old enough not to care that I am an envoy.
I take the basket.
“Where?”
“Line by the windows. Not that one. It sags.”
The wash house is the warmest room in the hold. Sheets boil in copper vats, and heated flues run beneath the drying lines by the high windows. Two girls scrub shirts at the far table and whisper until Sera tells them to scrub harder if they have breath left for gossip.
I carry the basket to the taut line. Sera follows with a bucket of pegs.
“You came for something,” she says.
“Clean linen.”
“No, you didn’t.”
I pin up a sheet. She watches me do it wrong, takes it down, and makes me start again.
“The king cracked his throne the day I arrived,” I say.
“Aye.”
“He cut himself after the audience.”
“Aye.”
“His fangs hurt.”
Sera stops handing me pegs.
At the far table, the two girls go very quiet. Sera turns. “Out.” They leave with wet sleeves and disappointed faces.
When the door shuts, Sera looks me over.
“Who told you?”
“No one. Not properly.”
“Then how do you know?”
“I have eyes.”
“And no sense with them, from what I hear.” She shoves another peg at me. “Walking up to him. Touching his hand.”
The whole hold knows that already.
“Was I in danger?”
“Yes.”
“From him?”
Sera makes a face. “You want simple answers, ask a priest. I wash sheets.”
She plunges both hands into the basket and pulls out a shirt large enough to cover a dining table.
His shirt.
Four fresh slits cut one sleeve. Sera clicks her tongue. “Another one.”
“What is happening to him?”
She lowers the shirt.
“His people call it the choosing. The old blood picks one mate. Once. Could be anyone. Usually someone inconvenient, if the stories are true.”
My fingers tighten around the wet sheet.
“And the fangs?”
“They wake.” Sera touches her own eyetooth. “Ache until the mating bite is given.”
“Given by whom?”
“You.”
The wash house seems to tilt. Sera catches the basket before I drop it.
“You did ask.”
“He told you?”
“The king tells me nothing. Men don’t tell laundresses anything. They only bleed on cloth and think that keeps their secrets.”
I sit on the edge of the folding table. Sera picks up the shirt again.
“I know the shape of the law, not the private words of the rite,” she says. “The bite must be offered. Spoken and meant. If he takes it by force, the bond goes wrong.”
“How wrong?”
Her hands slow.
“My great-grandmother saw what was left of one,” Sera says. “A woman hollowed out by a forced bond. The old king killed the man, but she never came back to herself.”
A cold wave moves through me despite the steam. Sera shakes out the shirt.
“That is why the pale horns hang over the gate. Oath-breakers. His own blood.”
I think of Torgan in the corridor, claws driven into stone beside my head. He had smelled that I wanted those claws on me.
He had left anyway.
“Does he have a choice?” I ask.
“About the choosing? No.”
“About what he does with it?”
Sera snorts. “Of course he does. He has choices coming out of his ears. That man chooses where to put his feet, his hands, his teeth, same as anyone.”
I get up.
Sera points at the half-hung sheet. “You’re not leaving that crooked.”
I straighten it.
She grunts approval.
In the passage outside, I stop at the first locked door and count the hinges. Then the next. By the time I reach my rooms, I know every turn between the wash house and the outer yard.
I change for the treaty session twice. The first dress shows my throat. The second does too.
At the third treaty session that afternoon, I cannot stop looking at his mouth.
Torgan notices.
He notices everything.
We argue about river tolls. Callas argues about garrison limits. Perr copies each concession with a blot of ink because his hand shakes whenever the king speaks.
Torgan keeps the full table between us.
His claws appear twice.
The first time, when I lean over a map and my braid slips across my breast.
The second, when I say his name in my head and my body responds as if I said it aloud.
At sunset, Orrick brings wine. He sets the jug beside Torgan and begins to pour.
“Leave it,” I say.
Every face at the table turns toward me. Orrick looks at the king.
Torgan says nothing.
I stand.
Callas catches my sleeve. “Sit down.”
I pull free.
The walk around the table is not long.
It feels long.
Torgan watches me come. His hands close over the chair arms. His claws remain hidden, but I see the effort in his fingers.
I take the jug.
“Your cup, Great King.”
“Envoy.”
His voice has changed.
Deeper than it was a moment ago.
I pour.
The wine trembles in the cup. Not because my hand is unsteady. Because the table is shaking beneath his grip.
I set down the jug.
He catches my wrist.
The room freezes.
His hand circles me easily. Hot palm. Rough fingers. No claws. His thumb rests over my pulse. My body goes soft and tight at once.
He pulls my wrist to his nose.
He breathes in against my skin.
My knees soften.
The gray thins from his eyes as his pupils spread.
“You put soap over your scent,” he says.
“Sera’s wash house.”
“It did not work.”
“I wasn’t trying to hide.”
A claw presses out from his smallest finger.
Then stops.
He releases me.
“Go back to your chair.”
The words are quiet. His claws sink farther into the hidden underside of the table.
I do not move.
“Everyone here is afraid of what you might do,” I say. “You’re afraid of it too.”
His jaw tightens.
“No.”
“Then what?”
His gaze drops to the pulse beneath his thumbprint.
“What I will not do.”
The answer catches low in my belly. He reaches for the wine with the same hand that held me. Four claws slide out around the cup without touching it.
“Your chair, Envoy.”
Rougher this time.
I go.
Callas leans close the moment I sit. “What in the nine hells was that?”
“I poured wine.”
“He smelled your wrist.”
“Yes.”
“In front of the council.”
“I was there.”
Callas stares at me.
Across the table, Torgan drinks without taking his eyes from mine. The claw marks beneath his hand deepen.
I do not sleep that night. I lie in the dark with his thumbprint fading from my pulse and wonder what would happen if I stopped making him hold back.