The Royal Summons
? Ivy ?
By morning, I’ve slept badly enough that calling it sleep feels generous.
Nora finds me in the Luna suite with untouched tea, half-eaten bread, and the mark quiet beneath my sleeve. Roman isn’t here, but I know he’s in eastern command.
It isn’t pain this time, only presence.
The knowing sits under my skin with the same unsettling ease as breath. I don’t have to ask the guard outside my door where Roman went. The bond knows the direction of him, and my body has begun accepting that as normal.
It isn’t normal, but it isn’t unwelcome either. That’s the dangerous part.
Nora studies the tray, then my face. “Half the bread. Three bites of pear.”
“I ate.”
“Not enough.”
She crosses the room and sets a small jar beside my cup. It isn’t tonic this time, but honey, thick and dark.
“For later,” she says. “If your hands go cold.”
I look at it. “For the cold?”
“Yes.”
There’s the Nora I know, but the bite is lighter today. She doesn’t reach for my wrist or ask me to name every sensation under my skin. She waits instead, and that’s new enough for me to notice.
“My hands are warm,” I say.
“Good.”
“My ears aren’t ringing.”
“Better.”
“The mark’s quiet.”
Her attention drops to my sleeve. “And Roman?”
My fingers still on the edge of the cup.
“I know where he is,” I say. “Not pain. Just there.”
Nora nods once, more thoughtful than pleased. “Awareness without distress. That’s worth noting.”
“You’re writing that down?”
“Yes.”
I doubt that, but I let it pass.
Nora gathers the untouched tea. “Walk if you need to. Avoid crowds. If someone starts handling you, leave.”
My stomach tightens. “Has something happened?”
“Sloane’s been asking questions.”
The name lands cold. Nora’s expression says she regrets being that plain, though not enough to take it back.
“What’s she doing?”
“Talking.”
After Nora leaves, I wait exactly long enough to prove I’m not chasing gossip like a fool. Then I stand, smooth my sleeve over my wrist, and leave the Luna suite.
The guard outside my door straightens. “Luna.”
“I’m walking.”
“Yes, Luna.”
She falls in behind me, far enough not to crowd. The corridor is colder than my room, and Eastmere’s grief has reached even here, in lowered voices and smoke-dark clothes carried toward the washrooms. Every servant who passes calls me Luna more carefully than they did before Ansel knelt.
I continue down the western corridor, meaning to go to command and keep my mind on work, because work has straight lines and feelings don’t. Then I hear Sloane’s voice.
It comes from the small solar the court guests have claimed as if sunlight belongs to them by rank. The door is partly open, spilling enough warmth to carry tea, perfume, polished wood, and every word I shouldn’t hear.
“I’m only saying people are wondering whether the North is speaking through her,” Sloane says, soft enough that anyone overhearing can call it concern.
A court woman murmurs, “But Ansel obeyed her.”
“Did he?” Sloane asks gently. “Or was he already half-broken by panic? There’s a difference between power and hysteria finding the right moment.”
My fingers curl at my side.
Another voice, male this time, says, “Witnesses say he dropped immediately.”
“Witnesses also say Roman Maddox is stable because he speaks quietly,” Sloane says. “The north has always mistaken severity for virtue.”
Roman’s name in her mouth turns my stomach.
A chair creaks. Someone lowers their voice, though not enough.
“You think the Alpha influenced it?”
“His vow is unusual, his scar is unusual, and Ivy was placed under his protection while she was humiliated and frightened.” Sloane folds her hands. “Someone should ask whether all of this power is really hers.”
I hear no accusation in it, only wonder and concern, but either can be used against me just as easily.
Heat climbs into my face because she isn’t inventing everything. I was humiliated. I was put under Roman’s protection. His vow is unusual. I nearly fell after Ansel knelt. Sloane doesn’t need a lie large enough to catch everyone. She only needs enough truth arranged wrongly.
A shadow shifts at the far end of the hall.
Dane stands there, expression flat, and he’s heard enough. So have I.
I step into the solar, and the room goes silent so fast the fire seems loud.
Sloane sits near the window in pale rose wool, framed by light she probably chose on purpose. Two court women sit with untouched tea while a thin scholar stands near the fortress histories with a notebook in hand.
Sloane looks up and widens her eyes. “Ivy.”
“Luna,” Dane says from behind me.
He doesn’t raise his voice because he doesn’t need to. The correction settles over the room with the weight of a locked gate.
Sloane’s smile tightens. “Luna, of course. I was just telling Lady Renna how worried we all are.”
“I heard.”
Color rises in Lady Renna’s cheeks.
The scholar lowers his notebook, though not enough.
I turn to him. “Write carefully. I can hear you.”
His mouth opens, but nothing useful comes out.
Sloane rises smoothly. “That isn’t fair.”
“No,” I say. “It isn’t.”
One of the women looks down at her tea.
Sloane’s face softens. “I’d never want you hurt.”
“You keep saying that like it erases what you said before it.”
“I’m concerned.”
“You always are.”
Her eyes sharpen for half a second, revealing the resentment beneath the softness, the part of her she hasn’t learned to dress prettily yet.
“You’ve changed,” she says.
“I’ve been told.”
“The north has encouraged you to become sharp.”
“The North didn’t make me sharp,” I say. “You did.”
No one answers at first. Dane shifts once behind me without stepping closer. He’s present, but he isn’t rescuing me, and I’m glad for it.
Sloane’s smile fades by a fraction. “You always did make yourself sound lonelier than you were.”
The words hit harder than they should.
I see the Brooks dining room, Sloane beside Marissa, and me at the wrong end of the table with work I was allowed to do but never own. I remember how easily they called isolation manners, neglect discipline, and humiliation sensitivity.
My hands begin to cool, and I rest two fingers on the back of a chair. I don’t need it. I choose it.
“I was lonely,” I say.
Sloane blinks.
“I was lonely,” I say. “You knew it.”
The scholar glances toward the notebook again.
I face the clerk. “Write that down.”
He swallows and closes the book.
Sloane looks toward Dane, then back to me. “This is exactly what frightens me. You’re exhausted, Ivy. You’re under strain. Now every emotion near you becomes dramatic proof of some rare power no one’s even verified.”
I hold her stare. “None of you knew what I was. Don’t pretend fear is knowledge now.”
Sloane has no immediate answer.
The silence lasts only a moment before a voice comes from the corridor.
“Female Alpha commands are rarely documented cleanly, especially where the bloodline itself has been obscured.”
Jace stands outside the door with an older council scholar beside him, a silver-haired man in traveling black with a leather folio under one arm. Jace’s face is calm, but not easy. He has the look of a man trying to make numbers confess, only to find worse questions.
He studies me differently now, not as he did at the altar or in the winter corridor. Now he treats me like a language he hates because he can’t read it.
The older scholar inclines his head. “Luna.”
Jace’s jaw tightens at the title, a small reaction only I seem to notice.
“So now it’s research,” I say.
Jace’s attention stays fixed on me. “I’m trying to understand what happened.”
“You’re trying to name it before she does,” Dane says.
The scholar’s brows lift. Jace gives Dane a cold glance, then turns back to me. “A public command was witnessed. A vow irregularity already exists. My uncle’s history with broken-vow resonance isn’t irrelevant.”
There are the pieces: rare command, vow resonance, a female Alpha-born line, and Roman’s scar. Jace has gathered them like stones, deciding which one he can throw without seeming cruel.
“You didn’t care about my blood when you thought it was useless,” I say.
His expression closes. Sloane inhales softly, offended for him because that’s safer than admitting the sentence is true.
Jace lowers his voice. “You don’t understand the danger of what’s happening.”
“You only call it dangerous now that it belongs to me.”
The mark warms beneath my sleeve, steady rather than sharp or painful.
“You’re being used,” Jace says.
The words still cut, even though I should expect them.
Dane takes one step, but I lift my hand slightly, and he stops. I face Jace. “By Roman?”
His mouth tightens. “By the north. By a vow none of us fully understands. Perhaps by power you were never trained to carry.”
“Perhaps,” I say.
That unsettles him more than denial would have. Denial gives him something to argue, but uncertainty is still mine to carry.
“I’m untrained. That’s all you know.”
For a second, his mask shifts into something that isn’t remorse or love. It’s pride, wounded in the old place.
“You’ve learned his way of answering,” he says.
“I learned not to answer loaded questions.”
Dane makes a low sound that might almost be amusement as Sloane’s mouth tightens and Jace’s eyes flash.
Before anyone can answer, boots strike fast against stone.
A northern guard appears at the far end of the corridor carrying a sealed black case embossed with the royal crest. His face is pale in the way men look when news is above their rank and still in their hands.
“Where’s Alpha Roman?” he asks.
Dane’s expression changes. The guard sees him and straightens. “Beta Carter. Royal summons.” The solar empties of air.
Jace’s face goes carefully blank, which tells me enough.
Dane holds out his hand. “Give it to me.”
“It’s addressed to Alpha Roman and Luna Ivy Maddox.”
My name beside Roman’s in royal script makes the mark pulse once. Sloane notices my wrist. I don’t hide it.
“Then we bring it to both,” Dane says.
The walk to eastern command feels longer than it is. Jace follows at a distance with the scholar, and Sloane comes too, of course, because poison likes an audience. No one has invited them, but no one stops them either.
The northern halls react to the royal crest before anyone says a word. Guards turn. Holt appears from the records room with ink on his fingers and fury already rising.
Roman steps out of eastern command before we reach it.
His attention finds me first, not the summons or Jace. He takes in my face, my hand on the chair rail, the court guests behind me, and Dane’s expression. Every line of him locks.
“What happened?”
The guard offers the case with both hands. Dane answers, “Royal summons.”
Roman takes it and breaks the seal without ceremony.
His eyes move across the page once, then again, and the hallway tightens around him.
Roman lowers the page. “King Grant summons us to the capital.”
Sloane’s breath catches softly, too perfectly to be surprise. Jace says nothing.
I look at Roman. “For what?”
His answer comes controlled enough to frighten me. “A formal vow review. Public inquiry into resonance irregularity, northern influence, and emerging Luna command.”
It doesn’t matter whether the summons began before this morning or whether someone carried Sloane’s words into the right court ear.
It has the same shape as everything else they’ve done: take something they don’t understand, call it dangerous, then build a cage around it before I have a chance to speak.
The north reacts before I can.
Holt’s face goes red with fury. “They can’t summon you now. Eastmere’s still bleeding.”
A guard near the wall mutters something about royal timing that makes Dane glance sharply at him, though he doesn’t disagree.
Nora arrives from the infirmary corridor with bloodless hands and a face that goes hard when she sees the royal case.
“No.”
Roman doesn’t look at her. He’s staring at the summons like it’s alive. Then he folds it once.
“No,” he says, quiet and absolute.
Relief comes first, warm and immediate. Yes, refuse. Stay here. Let the capital choke on its own questions. Let the north close around me like stone and snow and Roman’s hand stopping before it takes.
Then the second feeling comes, smaller and colder.
If I stay hidden, Sloane reaches the capital first. Jace’s questions become the frame, the scholars make them official, and by the time anyone asks me what happened, the answer already has a cage around it.
Roman turns to Dane. “Send a reply. The north is under active border threat. The king can wait.”
Jace finally speaks. “The king won’t see refusal as caution.”
Roman’s gaze cuts to him. “I didn’t ask you.” Jace’s mouth shuts.
Dane looks ready to enjoy that later.
But Roman’s refusal still stands between me and the room where my name will be used whether I enter it or not.
“Roman,” I say.
His attention returns to me instantly, which makes it harder.
I want him to keep saying no, but safety that erases my voice is still erasure.
“If you refuse,” I say, “they’ll hold the inquiry without me.”
“They can’t rule on a vow without both parties present.”
“The court can do anything if it finds the right words first.”
The silence after that’s bitter because everyone here knows I’m right.
Holt looks away first. Nora’s mouth tightens. Dane watches Roman, Jace watches me, and Sloane waits for whichever of us breaks first.
Roman’s face is colder than I’ve ever seen it, but the mark beneath my sleeve warms in a way that tells me his anger isn’t turned toward me. Even now, I need to know that.
“You’re exhausted,” he says.
“Yes.”
“You’re still recovering from what happened in the village.”
“Yes.”
“The court will turn your cost into proof you’re unstable.”
“Yes.”
“And you want to walk into that?”
“No,” I say.
That answer silences the hall more than bravery would have.
I step closer, stopping before proximity can become something he uses to steady me without meaning to.
“I don’t want the Moon Chamber. I don’t want Grant’s scholars counting my pulse.”
Roman’s jaw flexes.
“If I stay, they’ll decide what happened without looking me in the eye.”
I think of my mother leaving my father unnamed because naming him may have made me a target. I think of years spent becoming smaller because every room had already decided what I was.
I’m tired of other people naming my life before I can speak.
Roman’s voice drops. “I can protect you better here.”
“I know.”
“Then let me.”
The simple answer would be yes, and my old answer would have been yes. Then I’d have made myself grateful for the shape of the walls.
Instead, I reach for the folded summons in his hand.
He doesn’t hold it away from me, even angry.
The royal script is neat and merciless. Irregularity, influence, stability, and review. Every soft word is a hook.
The north is angry for me. The court guests are hungry for spectacle. Jace treats me like a locked door, while Sloane still hopes to find the old hinge.
Roman waits as if my answer matters more than his fear.
That’s why I can give it.
“If they want to decide what I am,” I say, “they can do it while looking at me.”