5 #2
“My lord…” she stammered, her voice thin with the knee-jerk panic of a Beta trained to yield to the house Alphas. “I… I didn’t know we had guests from the plateau. Would you have me wake the stable hand to saddle a horse?”
A strange pang caught me in the stomach—a twist of wonder and bitterness that chilled my blood.
I had spent six years serving this woman, scrubbing her kettles, taking her scolding over salted broth, and enduring her glances of counterfeit pity. Now, a drop of resin and a borrowed scent were enough to keep her from even lifting her chin to see my face beneath the hood.
“There is no need,” I answered.
My own voice sounded foreign: deeper, dry, pitched low by the linen bound across my ribs and the rasp the alkaloids had left in my throat.
“Leave the latch unbarred and return to your duties,” I added without breaking stride.
“Yes, my lord. At once.”
I stepped out into the yard without looking back.
The outside air lashed me like a whip of ice. The gale was picking up, churning swirls of powdery snow across the cobbles.
I walked toward the stables. Barek, the old stable hand, was cinching the belly band on the dapple-gray workhorse beneath the amber glow of a lantern hung from a crossbeam. He was sixty, his spine bowed by rheumatism, reeking of the sour grease of laborers who slept in the hay.
When I stepped into the shed, the horse snorted and threw his weight back, knocking his hoof hard against the manger boards.
Barek turned with a scowl, but before he could open his mouth, the wash of cedar and smoke rolling from my cloak filled the stall.
The old man paled instantly. He dropped the leather strap, jerked his wool cap from his head with a clumsy sweep, and flattened himself against the timber post, his chin tucked hard to his chest.
“Forgive me, my lord,” he said, his voice shaking. “I took you for the woodcutter. My lady’s carriage set out at noon, but if you need a mount to overtake the court convoy, this beast is strong enough, even if he’s hard in the mouth.”
“Saddle him with the traveling pack-rig and throw the oilcloth over his quarters,” I ordered, keeping my hands inside my cloak.
“Ready in a minute, my lord. One minute.”
He moved with a frantic deference I had never seen in him. He hauled the cinch tight with hurrying fingers, slipped the iron bit between the horse’s teeth without a single balk from the beast, and handed me the reins with a bow that nearly pitched him over the oat bucket.
I swung up into the saddle.
The drug’s heat burned through my wool hose, but my legs held firm—taut, steady, and precise.
I settled the customs pass in my upper pocket, drew my cloak tight at my throat, and urged the gray out onto the high road at a brisk trot, leaving Barek bowed in the drifting snow with his cap in his hands.
The road to Asteria was a river of frozen mud and deep ruts glazed with a dusting of white snow.
As I drew closer to the canal’s main arteries, the traffic thickened. Squads of riders in fur-lined mantles, curtained carriages bearing plateau crests, and mounted guard patrols moved toward the capital’s ramparts beneath the flare of pitch torches spitting sparks into the north wind.
The cold was sharp enough to numb fingers in ten minutes’ ride, yet my body boiled under my clothes.
Fever from the blocker kept my temperature spiked, driving a steady vibration down my spine.
Every few furlongs, an involuntary spasm seized the tendons in my forearms—the wolf trying to breach the chemical armor holding her captive, clawing at the base of my skull with a dull panic that forced me to drive my heels into the stirrups to keep my seat.
In my doublet pocket, the brass collar burned so hot it felt like a live coal pressed to my ribs.
*Hold on,* I told myself, tightening my leather-gloved grip on the reins. *Just five hours. Just until the parchment is in my hands.*
Two miles from the gates of Asteria, the road narrowed before the bridge at Lock Four.
A detachment of ten Crown guards in oilskin cloaks and surcoats bearing the black wolf manned the carriage passage. Two officers with brass lanterns scrutinized travel writs, while four spearmen shoved wagons toward the canal verge to probe hay bales and supply crates.
Tied to iron rings set into the stone by the toll booth, two dark-coated mastiff hounds with broad jowls tested the wind with low, guttural growls.
An icy clutch caught my throat.
The Royal Alchemists’ hounds, trained to pick up the sweetish taint of illicit suppressants or the scentless void of an unregistered Omega.
The four-horse carriage ahead of me—a closed coach bearing the arms of a southern baron—pulled up before the wooden boom. The driver produced a wax-sealed parchment; guards swept the cabin with a torch, traded a pair of curt words with the passenger, and raised the iron crossbar to let it through.
I nudged the gray forward at a walk, keeping his hooves steady across the bridge’s wet cobbles.
One of the guards—a young Alpha with a shortsword at his belt and a fresh scar nicking his left ear—thrust up his hand to halt me.
“Travel writ or bloodline entry for Solstice night,” he muttered, not looking up from his muster log.
I didn’t answer with words.
I leaned over the saddle bow, letting the fold of my cloak part a hand’s breadth.
The wave of scent rolling from my neck wasn’t subtle. It was a dry strike of cedar, bitter resin, and forge smoke that sheared through the frozen air like a razor.
The soldier’s words snapped in two. His eyes went wide; his shoulders stiffened instantly, and his chin dropped two inches in an instinctive gesture of martial deference.
By the booth, the hounds went abruptly quiet. One flattened its ears and sank onto its forepaws, whimpering at the flags; the other backed two paces off the verge, its tail tucked between its legs.
“Transit pass from the western valleys,” I said, showing the estate’s brass token between gloved fingers. “Bound for the chancery of Vhal before midnight.”
The guard didn’t touch the metal. He glanced at the worn crest, smelled the crushing presence flooding the gap between my horse and his checkpoint, and backed clean up against the stone parapet.
“Pass, my lord,” he said, snapping to attention with his right fist over his chest. “The left lane of the upper courtyard is cleared for the lords of the plateau. A good night to you.”
“And to the guard,” I answered, keeping my tone level.
I flicked the reins and cleared the bridge at an extended trot, hearing the clank of the iron barrier rising behind me.
My heart was hammering so hard my temples throbbed.
I had cleared the first cordon without anyone asking for my name, without a search of my saddlebags, and without the hounds sounding the alarm. The lie held. The poison Soren had sold me in that cellar along the canal was a master key to gates barred to me since birth.
Yet the toll was already coming due.
Near the crest of the paved ramp leading up toward Asteria’s outer walls, a sudden dizziness blurred my vision for two long seconds. I brought my gloved hand to my mouth to stifle a dry heave.
At the back of my tongue, tangled with the resin’s bitterness, I caught a faint, ghostly aftertaste of rainwater and sea salt.
The wolf was clawing at the bolt.
I gritted my teeth, swallowed hard, and looked up toward the hill.
Before me, silhouetted against the black belly of the storm, Vhal Citadel rose on granite bastions lit by hundreds of flared torches. The bells in the clock tower began tolling eight, their deep, bronze peal rolling over the city rooftops like the opening drums of a battle.
I had four hours before the mask shattered.
I settled the green cloak over my shoulders, touched the velvet mask in my breast pocket, and spurred the gray toward the citadel gates.
There was no turning back.
I would take back what belonged to me, or I would end as ash upon the Alphas’ marble.