Chapter 3

By dawn, I was the joke of Moonhaven.

"Twelve years she trailed after him. Twelve. And he picks the bastard."

"The Chancellor's such a decent man. How did he raise a daughter who throws herself at an Alpha like a tavern girl?"

"No wonder Aldric never marked her."

At sunrise, Aldric sent ten wagons of gifts to our gate for Rosalind. Silk, silver, a white mare. He made sure the wagons went the long way, through the market square, with the crest showing.

My father found me in the solar, painting.

"Nora." He hadn't called me that since my mother died. "I don't know what happened between you and the Alpha's son. But the city has decided, and the city is cruel. Would you like to go away for a while? The lake house. The coast."

I set down the brush.

"I thought about the Temple," I said. "But this isn't a storm I can wait out, Father. This one I have to stand in."

He rubbed his face. "I should never have brought her back. Moon forgive me. I should never—"

"You should never have what?"

Rosalind stood in the doorway in one of my dresses, altered at the waist.

"You sent me to the Ridge when I was four," she said. "Four. I ate other people's leftovers for nine years. Now an Alpha wants me, and you want to take him back and hand him to her?"

My father opened his mouth and nothing came out.

"You'll see." Her chin came up, trembling, magnificent. "I'm not high-born like Elara. But one day I'll be the daughter you brag about."

She swept out. My father sent a servant after her out of habit; the servant came back to report she had gone straight through Aldric's gates and hadn't come out.

I waited until the door closed.

"Father. In nineteen days, the ground east of the Ridge is going to break open. Villages, mines, the old road. Thousands."

He went absolutely still. My father has never once asked me how do you know. He knows exactly how I know; he's known since I was seven and told him about the flood.

"I'll go to the King tonight—"

"No." I caught his sleeve. "Aldric will move first. Let him. You handle what comes after—the grain, the healers, the orphans. Take the ugly work. Let him take the parades."

He looked at me for a long moment. Then he bowed his head and went to pack the wagons.

Nineteen days later the east broke open exactly as I'd seen it.

Aldric's riders had been in position for a week. He saved eleven hundred wolves, and he did it beautifully, and when the city poured into the streets to scream his name, he stood on the palace steps, took Rosalind's hand, and lifted it.

"Don't thank me," he said. "Thank her. She saw it. She dreamed it three weeks ago and begged me to ride."

I hadn't expected that. I'd expected him to keep the glory. He gave it to her.

By the next morning, Elder Corvyn's prophecy was on every tongue again, and the crescent drawn on her brow every day in fresh kohl was being called a birthmark by people who had never stood close enough to see.

And me?

"Poor Lady Elara. Loveliest girl in Moonhaven and it bought her nothing."

"Beautiful, educated, sings, rides, paints. But what's beauty next to a girl the Moon Goddess talks to?"

Rosalind found me in the study nine days later and pressed her hand flat over my brush, dragging ink across the page.

"It's my turn to be Luna," she said pleasantly. "So what if you're the real Moon-Marked? I remember everything that's going to happen for the next three years. That makes me just as good. You hid your gift your whole life like a coward—so I'll use it for you. You're welcome."

I looked up at her and, honestly, I laughed.

"You think I became Luna because Aldric became Alpha," I said. "Has it ever once occurred to you that it was the other way around?"

Her hand came up to strike me.

I caught her wrist in the air and threw it back at her hard enough to spin her.

Which is, of course, the exact second the door opened.

Aldric took in the room in one look—his mate stumbling, her sleeve twisted, my hand still raised—and I watched his face close like a trap.

He pulled her behind him.

"Elara." His voice had gone somewhere I'd only heard it go on a battlefield. "Touch her one more time, and I will make sure there is nothing left of you to bury."