Seven Days
? Ivy ?
By the second morning, the map room has become the only place in the capital where no one asks whether Roman is going to survive.
Captain Carr refuses my first order to strip the eastern wall for the capital guard. She’s right; it’d leave Eastmere exposed. We argue, revise the plan, and send fewer wolves. Authority feels less like being obeyed than being forced to listen fast enough.
Wolves come in with wet boots, sealed dispatches, and problems that need answers before the next bell.
They crowd around the long table beneath the northern map while I move markers, read reports, and send them back out into weather that has already soaked through their collars.
The windows have clouded from the cold. Someone left a pot of bitter tea near my elbow, but I haven’t touched it.
“Birch Hollow,” I say.
Evan steps forward from the far end of the table. He looks as though he hasn’t slept, but there’s less fear in his face than there was when the medicine wagon first left the capital.
“The replacement crates reached them before midnight,” he says. “The fever broke in the second house before dawn. My sister sat up this morning.”
The room quiets around him. No one mistakes that for recovery, but she’s alive.
“Keep the healer there until she’s eating without help,” I say. “No supplies leave Birch Hollow until the outer houses have enough for five days.”
Evan swallows. “They’ll have it.” Holt pushes a smaller map across the table. Eastmere’s northern road is marked in dark ink, with three circles pressed into the paper.
“We found another supply hollow,” he says. “Half a mile west of the first.”
“What was in it?”
“Lamp oil. Rope. Bedrolls. Dried food.” He taps one of the circles. “Two sacks of grain carried a local trader’s stamp.”
Dane leans over the table. “Local to Eastmere?”
“Bought through an Eastmere supplier,” Holt says. “Not enough to tell us who paid for it. Enough to tell us the ambush wasn’t arranged by wolves who crossed the border the night before.”
I study the road. Three hidden stores. Waiting supplies. Smoke pots. A narrow stretch chosen for the wagon to slow before the ridge closed around it.
The attack had been built into the land before any of us stepped onto it.
“Eastmere stays closed,” I say.
A patrol captain near the wall shifts his weight. “Luna, the northern farms are already asking when they can move stock through.”
“They can ask again tomorrow.”
“The west road can’t carry all of it.”
“Then split the loads. Two patrols with every supply wagon, one visible and one moving along the ridge. No rider checks in alone. Every route captain reports at dawn and after dark, even if nothing changes.”
The captain hesitates. I meet his eyes.
“Tell the farms the road opens when we know who has been using it. Until then, they can be angry with me while they stay alive.”
His mouth tightens, but he bows his head. “Yes, Luna.”
Dane points toward the western route. “I can keep one patrol with the wagons and send runners south through the trees. No colors. No marked route.”
“Do it. Keep the runners out of sight of the main road.”
He nods. Holt starts gathering the Eastmere reports, but I stop him before he can leave the table.
“The trader’s stamp.”
“I’ll have the full supplier list by evening.”
“Not a list for the council.”
His gaze lifts to mine.
“A list for us.”
Something in his expression settles. “Understood.”
A young runner waits by the door with a sealed packet clutched to his chest. I hold out my hand, and he crosses the room to give it to me.
The seal belongs to the upper gate stores.
Blankets. Salt. Lamp oil. Food enough for fifteen wolves. Vance.
The request has already been delayed two days.
I look toward Dane. “Take this to the quartermaster.”
“He’ll say the stores are stretched.”
“Then he can explain why Birch Hollow’s medicine moved before he signed off on it.”
Dane’s mouth shifts.
“And if he says the crown ordered Vance supplies reviewed?”
“Tell him Northern guests don’t freeze because the crown has decided paperwork is safer than food.”
The runner’s eyes widen slightly. Dane takes the request from my hand. “I’ll see it delivered.”
“Under Northern guard,” I say. “No Crown escort.”
He nods once and leaves. The room clears in pieces after that. Evan returns to Birch Hollow’s messages. The patrol captain takes the new route orders. Holt goes after the trader’s records, and the runner hurries toward the stores with Dane at his side.
Roman is still sitting near the fire.
He looks pale against the dark collar of his shirt, one hand resting near the place beneath his ribs where the wound still pulls. Nora stands behind his chair with her arms crossed, watching him more closely than she watches anyone else in the room.
“You’re staring,” Roman says.
“I’m thinking.”
“That usually looks dangerous.”
“It should.”
His mouth almost curves. Roman studies the map for a moment. “You left the ridge patrol close.”
“The farms need to see someone near enough to reach them,” I say. “The runners give us the other answer.”
He looks at the markers again, then nods. “Good. Keep it that way.” Nora’s eyes move between us.
“You both done pretending he’s well enough to sit through a war room?”
Roman leans back. “I haven’t pretended anything.”
“You sat upright for an hour.”
“I was sitting.”
“You were trying to look useful.”
I turn toward him. “Stop proving you’re useful with your wound.”
The warmth at my wrist stirs.
Roman looks down at his own hand.
The faint silver line of our vow mark has warmed beneath his skin, not bright enough for anyone else to notice unless they’re looking for it. Nora notices anyway.
“Come with me,” she says.
Roman frowns. “That sounds ominous.”
“It’s medical. Stop making it worse.”
She heads for the adjoining infirmary before he can argue. I follow because I’m not about to stand in the map room while Nora studies our wrists as though she has found another wound no one told her about.
The infirmary is quiet. Morning light falls across clean sheets and jars of salve lining the shelves.
Nora shuts the door behind us. “Hold out your hands.”
Roman gives her a look, but he does it. I do the same.
She studies the narrow silvered lines without touching them at first. They haven’t changed. They’re still the marks we made when we chose each other.
But warmth moves beneath both of them, slow and steady.
Nora checks my wrist, then Roman’s.
“What?” I ask.
“It isn’t dangerous.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“It’s an emerging mate bond.”
Roman’s gaze shifts to mine.
“We haven’t mated,” I say.
“No,” Nora says. “You haven’t. This is unfinished.”
“Then what does it mean?”
“It means a mate bond has started,” Nora says. “It won’t heal him, strengthen him for the Circle, or give either of you authority over the other.”
My shoulders loosen before I realize I’d been holding them tight.
Nora’s expression softens, though only slightly.
“Fear isn’t the danger,” she says. “Turning fear into control is. Leave it unfinished as long as you need to.”
Roman flexes his hand once.
“So we do nothing.”
“You decide what happens next,” Nora says.
By the fourth day, Vance has become a problem for everyone who needs it to be one.
Grant’s guards don’t touch them. Rowan’s order still holds, at least where anyone can see it.
But messages take too long to reach the guest quarters.
Supply requests disappear into royal review.
Wolves passing the Vance rooms slow in the corridor, stare too long, then keep walking.
No one calls them prisoners. No one needs to.
I find Aurelian in the old records room after dusk.
He stands beside the northern map with his coat folded over one arm and his sleeves rolled to his forearms. The lamp beside him throws hard shadows across the faded roads. He’s looking at the western border, not at the route where Willow disappeared.
For a moment, I almost leave.
Then he speaks without turning. “The upper stores released the blankets.”
“Yes.”
“I heard you made certain of it.”
“They were requested under the compact.”
“They were.”
He turns slowly, giving me time to decide whether I want him looking at me.
“I’m not trying to tell you how to run the North,” he says.
“Good.”
A quiet breath leaves him. “I wasn’t certain.”
I move closer to the map but keep the table between us.
“Did you stop looking?”
The words come out sharper than I mean them to.
He doesn’t ask what I mean.
“When the road burned,” I say. “Did you stop looking?”
His face tightens.
“No.”
The answer stays between us for a moment.
“I searched until the routes closed,” he says. “Witnesses vanished, lied, or died before we reached them.”
His gaze drops to the map.
“I didn’t know Willow survived the first attack. I didn’t know you survived it either.”
“You knew she was carrying me.”
“Yes.”
The word comes out rougher than anything else he has said.
“I knew there was a child. I didn’t know whether that child was a daughter. I didn’t know if either of you lived long enough to be found.”
He reaches into his pocket and lays a small brass token on the table between us.
It has been worn smooth at the edges. A simple compass is stamped into its face, its needle pointing north.
“This was hers,” he says. “She carried it when she moved people through unsafe roads. It reminded her that every wolf behind her needed a way home.”
I stare at it.
“I kept it because I thought it was all I’d left of her.”
His hand moves away from the token.
“Leave it if you’re not ready.”
I pick it up before he finishes speaking.
The brass is cool against my palm.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with this.”
“You can decide later.”
“Vance kept records on command like yours,” he says. “If you want them, I’ll send them to Nora. No crown room. No one you don’t choose.”
“Send them to Nora first.”
He nods. “They’re yours.”
I close my fingers around the compass.
He doesn’t call me daughter, and I don’t call him anything in return.
When I leave, he stays beside the map.
By the fifth day, Holt has enough to tell me the Eastmere supplies didn’t move by accident.
He finds me in the map room before dawn with a small stack of invoices and a face that tells me he hasn’t slept.
“The trader sold the grain through a Brooks factor,” he says.
The words settle slowly.
“Which factor?”
“Three buyers were used. Two are false names. The third traces to a warehouse account that has been inactive for years.” He pushes one page toward me. “The collection number appears in old Brooks freight records.”
I read the number. It means nothing by itself.
Then Holt places Sloane’s copied letter beside it.
Blue winter shawl. Fifth trunk. East storeroom.
The old code lies on the page like a door I should have recognized before I opened it.
“You think Fenner used the letter,” I say.
“I think someone with access to the old Brooks freight system understood exactly what it meant.” Holt’s mouth tightens. “I need the warehouse records before I call it proof.”
“You’ll have them.”
He looks at me.
“Do you want me to send the request through the council?”
“No.” I fold the copied letter and slide it back toward him. “Not until you know what we have.”
He nods. Roman is walking the south corridor when I leave Holt’s workroom.
Nora trails behind him with the expression of someone tolerating a bad idea because she has run out of ways to forbid it. Roman moves slowly, one hand flat against the wall when the corridor turns.
He sees me and straightens too quickly.
The motion catches him beneath the ribs.
“You should sit down,” I say.
“I’ve been sitting down.”
“You’ve been walking for less than ten minutes.”
“Eight.”
Nora looks at me. “He counted.” Roman’s mouth tightens.
Before I can answer, Jace steps out from the shadowed passage ahead. He’s alone.
That doesn’t make me feel safer.
“Luna,” he says.
Roman’s breath stops beside me. Jace notices. Of course he does.
“I was hoping for a word,” he says to me.
“You have one.”
His gaze moves over Roman’s face, then down to the hand he has kept near his side.
“He shouldn’t be walking.”
“That’s none of your concern.”
“It becomes my concern in two days.”
Roman says nothing. Jace looks at me again.
“This is what you’ve made of him.”
His words hit the same place they did at the altar, the place he still expects to find open. Then I look at Roman. He’s hurt, but he’s still here because he chose me the same way I chose him.
“You keep calling care a weakness,” I say, “because you’ve never understood the difference between standing beside someone and owning them.”
Jace’s face hardens.
“You think that’ll matter in the Circle?”
“No,” I say. “I think it already does.”
He looks at Roman once more.
“Two days.”
Then he walks away. Roman waits until the sound of Jace’s boots has faded before he exhales.
Nora swears under her breath. “Infirmary. Now.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not.”
I take Roman’s hand, and he lets me turn him toward the infirmary.
On the sixth night, I find him in the small sitting room beside the infirmary.
The fire has burned low. A map of the Circle lies open on the table, though he isn’t looking at it. He sits with his head tipped back against the chair, eyes closed. I stop in the doorway.
“You should be asleep.”
“So should you.”
“I have patrol reports.”
“I have a challenge.”
Then Roman opens his eyes.
“Come sit with me.”
I cross the room and settle beside him on the narrow settee. Our shoulders touch first, then my hand finds his on the cushion between us. Warmth rises beneath our vow marks, quiet and steady under our skin.
Roman turns his hand beneath mine and threads our fingers together.
“You can stay away from the Circle,” he says.
“I know.”
“You don’t need to watch him hurt me.”
“I’ll be there because I want to be,” I say. “Jace doesn’t get to turn my absence into proof of anything.”
He looks at me for a long moment, then nods.
“Then stay where you can see the line.”
“I always do.”