Chapter 3

Vespera isn't done with us.

At the King's moon-feast, she has Mama pour her wine. Lift her hem. Kneel to set the cup at her feet.

"Vale, pour."

"Vale, kneel."

"Vale, lift."

She uses Mama's own family name like a slave's collar. Every command snaps across the hall. The vixens of the King's court titter behind their fans. The lords laugh outright.

Mama does it all. She doesn't lift her eyes from the floor once.

I sit in the corner with Brynn's claws tight on my shoulder. I don't look away from any of it.

When Vespera's had enough of ordering Mama around, she takes us out to the cold pool behind the King's hall.

She tips her head, smiles, and slips one of her serpent-scale earrings off her ear.

Drops it straight into the black water.

"Swim for it."

Mama doesn't move.

Vespera's voice snaps sharp against the water.

"Vale. You're my maid. When I tell you to go get something, you go get it."

Mama looks her in the eye, very calm.

"You crawled out of a brothel, Vespera. A stolen crown doesn't change that."

Vespera's hand goes up to slap her.

I'm between them before her palm comes down. I shove her hard with both hands.

"Get away from her! Don't touch my mother!"

"Little bitch, you dare —"

Her hand swings at me. Mama snatches me into her arms in one breath.

Vespera's nails rake across the side of Mama's throat — three thin red lines.

For one heartbeat, the old fire comes back behind my mother's eyes. The old Vale blood.

Even Vespera takes half a step back.

Then she collects herself. Curls her mouth.

"Iselle. You're a clawless old vixen. All hiss, no bite."

"Don't get it. I don't care. But your daughter — your sweet little Lyra — is another matter."

"You wouldn't —" Mama's eyes flash wide, wild. "Lyra is Kael's firstborn. If you touch her, and I'll claw my way out of my own grave to drag you under —"

"Oh, I know." Vespera's smile widens. "She's almost old enough to mate. Every minor Streak and Nest is sniffing after her. So tell me — should I tell Kael to mate her off to Vorath's boy? Or the Hawkmaster's son?"

Two of the most rotten cubs in all of Highmount.

One a leopard-whelp who's mounted low-blood shifters to death.

The other a hawk-blood so cruel his own Cast won't fly with him.

Mama is shaking. Her jaw is locked.

"Fine. I'll go."

It's the deep of autumn. The pool is half-frozen at the edges.

Mama walks down the stone steps into the water inch by inch. By the time the water's at her waist, her skin's grey. Her lips are blue.

I'm crying. I scream for her to come back. Vespera turns and slaps me twice across the face.

"Shut your mouth, whelp. One more word and I cut your tongue out."

The marks of her hand burn on my cheeks. I bite the inside of my mouth so I don't scream again.

Then — behind us — a voice.

"What are you doing?"

Kael.

Vespera's face doesn't change for one breath. Then she moves and grabs my wrist, slaps my hand onto her chest, and throws herself backwards over the low stone railing.

The water swallows her with a great white splash.

Kael is in the pool before she's fully under. He hauls her up against his chest, fur cloak and silk shirt and all, his great gold tiger-eyes wild with panic.

He doesn't — not once — look toward the middle of the pool, where my mother is going under for the third time.

It's a low-blood shifters who finally drags Mama out.

Vespera collapses in his arms, sopping, shivering. The moment she sees me, she shrieks and burrows deeper into him.

"No — please — I'm sorry — I'm sorry — please don't hit me again —"

"I never touched you!" I scream. I point at the red prints on my own face.

"She drove my mother into the freezing water to pick an earring! She called me a half-bred whelp! These marks on my face — she did this! She's a serpent, she's poison, she —"

For the first time, Kael's eyes go to my mother.

She's lying on the stone, the back of her robe torn open, the patchy place on her shoulder — where her bonded mark used to be black and clean.

Her breath is barely there.

Something almost like grief flickers across his face. He starts to open his mouth.

Vespera weeps into his shoulder.

"Iselle. I know you hate me. Play your wounded game — that's your right — but to teach Lyra to lie about me…"

"I admit it. The slap on her face was mine. Because she called me a whore. She even spat on my own dead mother's name…"

"I came up from the dirt but I have my pride. I'd rather drown than be spoken to like that."

She twists in his arms as if to throw herself back into the pool.

"Enough."

His voice cuts. The stripes under his skin are crawling all the way up his throat.

"Lyra. You raised a hand against Vespera. You shamed the Drayven Streak in the King's court. To the Bloodline Altar. Twenty lashes of the Silver-Thorn."

"No —"

Mama drags herself across the wet stones on her elbows. She throws her body over me.

"If you whip anyone, you whip me."

Father's voice doesn't lift.

"Forty."

...

The Bloodline Altar is bone-cold.

Mama kneels on the black stones, swaying. The Silver-Thorn Lash is brought out — black leather threaded with cursed silver, every barb a thorn forged to bite straight through a shifter's hide and burn the soul beneath.

One lash and a low beast's shift breaks forever. Forty can kill a vixen of the highest blood.

The first lash opens her from shoulder to hip.

The blood runs down the stones in a long dark line and pools at her knees.

I crawl forward on the floor. I beg the Hold elders. I beg Kael.

No one looks at me.

I watch her light go out, lash by lash. I watch it leave her eyes.

By the fortieth, she hasn't made a sound in a long time. She vomits a mouthful of bright blood and slides sideways off her knees.

I carry her back myself to her chamber. I send for the healer. And I sit by the bed until dawn.

I fall asleep with my face pressed to the edge of her furs.

I half-wake to footsteps.

Kael.

He kneels beside the bed. His fingers shake as he lifts the robe off her back. When he sees what's underneath — the cursed silver burns, the strips of skin curling away — his eyes go red at the rim.

A tear falls on her shredded back.

He begins, very gently, to dress the wounds with his own hands. His voice is broken raw.

"Iselle. Why must you be so stubborn…"

"Vesp came up from nothing, yes. But she's loyal to me. She bit her own wrist open and fed me her blood in the Bone Wastes when I was bleeding out. Without her I'd never have come home to you —"

"If you truly can't share my Hold with her — once she bears me a cub, I'll send her away. And then it'll be the three of us again. Like before."

I keep my eyes shut.

There's no us anymore.

You and Mama are finished, Kael.