Chapter 6

The First Battle.

Every eye in that room swung round to me after Vasha said her piece, and I felt it like heat, honestly, like standing too close to a fire that wasn’t even mine to begin with.

I meant to keep quiet. Told myself that quick, in the space of one breath, say nothing, let it pass on by, let Kaelan handle his own council same as he’d handled everything else since I got here. It wasn’t my place to speak up. Nobody had asked me to, not one soul in that room.

But I’d been listening. Really listening, these past weeks, same way I used to listen back in Roran’s kitchens for whatever scrap might keep me a little safer than the day before. And something about Bellamon’s argument had been sitting wrong with me the whole meeting, some thread I couldn’t quite pull loose till Vasha went and dragged my name into the middle of it.

Bellamon’s family held the western route. Held it three generations running, Nessa told me once, back when we got to talking about who owned what land around here and why any of it mattered. And the shipments running that western route, the ones he was saying needed heavier patrol all of a sudden, belonged mostly to families allied close with his own. Meanwhile the eastern routes, the ones actually seeing more traffic these past months, far as Kaelan himself had said not five minutes earlier, ran through land held by families who didn’t sit anywhere near Bellamon’s end of that table.

Wasn’t the territory’s safety he was fighting for. Was his own land, dressed up nicer.

My hands were shaking under the table, something awful. I made myself set them flat against my knees and made myself talk before the fear could go and talk me out of it entirely.

“May I ask something?”

The room went quiet in a whole different way than it had for Vasha. This was the quiet of people trying to decide whether they’d even bother listening to what came next.

Kaelan didn’t look surprised. Didn’t look like much of anything really, just watched me with that same unreadable stillness he wore into every room he ever walked into.

“Go on,” he said.

I made myself keep my voice level, the best I could manage. “Councilor Bellamon says the western route needs protecting because it’s been tested this season. But the shipments running that route mostly belong to families allied with his own. Eastern routes have seen more traffic these past months Alpha said so himself, not long ago and those routes serve families who aren’t sitting anywhere close to Councilor Bellamon at this table.” Made myself look right at Bellamon instead of down at my own knees, which was about the hardest part of the whole thing. “I’m not saying that’s why you’re arguing for it. Just asking whether it’s the territory’s safety driving this, or one particular set of shipments.”

Nobody said one word for a stretch that went on long enough I started thinking I’d gone and made some terrible mistake I couldn’t take back.

Then one of the older council members, a woman I hadn’t heard say two words in any meeting yet, made this small sound that might’ve been a laugh she was trying real hard to swallow down.

Bellamon’s face had gone dark red, near purple. “That’s an insult to my family’s service to this territory.”

“It’s a question,” Kaelan said, before I could even answer for myself.

The voice hadn’t changed one bit, still even, still controlled as ever, but something in how he said it closed the whole subject clean shut. “Worth answering plainly, Bellamon. Is it the shipment routes driving this argument, or the border’s actual condition?”

Bellamon didn’t have much of an answer for that one. Sputtered something about tradition, about his family’s long years of service, about principle none of it landing near as well as his first argument had, and everybody sitting at that table knew it too, I could see it on their faces.

Vote, when it finally came round, went Kaelan’s way.

I sat there after, heart still going way too fast, not even sure whether I’d done something brave or something reckless, and honestly not sure there was all that much difference between the two most days.

Vasha caught my eye on the way out of that room. Didn’t say a word. Just looked at me a beat longer than she strictly needed to, something calculating behind her eyes, like she was rewriting whatever notes she’d already made about me and starting the whole thing over fresh.

That look sat in my stomach heavier than anything Bellamon had said the whole meeting.

Kaelan found me later, out on that little balcony off the east hall I’d taken to going when I needed air that didn’t have a whole council’s worth of eyes stuck in it.

“You spoke without being asked,” he said, coming to stand beside me at the rail.

“I know it.”

“Bellamon won’t forget that.”

“Figured he wouldn’t.”

Pause. Wind moving through the trees down below us, only sound for a good while.

“You surprised me,” he said, finally.

I looked over at him quickly. Wasn’t what I expected to hear, not from a man who spent most every conversation telling me plain where the edges of things sat.

“You didn’t stop me,” I said.

“No reason to. You were right.” He was looking out over the grounds, not at me, hands resting flat on the stone rail. “Most people in that room spent years learning to nod along with whoever’s holding the most land. You saw the actual shape of it in one meeting.”

“I’ve had practice noticing things,” I said. “Nobody notices the girl carrying the tray. You hear all kinds of stuff that way, over the years.”

Something almost like understanding went across his face, there and gone again quick as anything.

“Won’t make you friends,” he said. “Speaking up like that does.”

“Never had many friends to begin with,” I said. “Figure I can survive without a few more.”

That got something out of him I hadn’t seen before, not quite a smile, but close enough to the shadow of one that I found myself staring a beat too long before I remembered I was supposed to look away.

I stood there a while longer, not saying a whole lot else, and I let myself feel it, just for a minute that strange unfamiliar thing of having said something out loud and had it actually matter to somebody. Nobody in my whole life waited to hear what I thought before deciding whether I mattered or not. I wasn’t sure yet what to do with a feeling like that. I wasn’t sure I trusted it either, if I’m being honest about it.

We didn’t say much else after that. Just stood there a while longer, side by side at that rail, close enough I could feel the warmth coming off him even without either one of us saying a thing, and I remember thinking how strange it was, how just a few weeks back I’d been dreading the sight of him, and now here I was not wanting to go back inside yet.

Messenger came in just after dark, horse lathered up something terrible, half-dead looking from riding so hard, and I heard the commotion clear across the courtyard before I even understood what any of it meant.

Kaelan was already moving toward the gate by the time I caught up to where I could see, the whole bearing of him changed in a way that put the hair up on my arms straight off that same stillness he always carried around, but sharpened now into something with real teeth behind it.

“Alpha.” Messenger nearly collapsed clean off his horse, one of the guards catching him before he hit the ground proper. “Northern border post. It’s been attacked. Fire casualties don’t know how many yet. Happened fast, real fast.”

The whole courtyard seemed to go still and loud both at the same time somehow, warriors already moving, shouting orders back and forth at each other, torches getting lit up all along the wall in a hurry.

Kaelan turned to look at me then, and whatever had passed between us on that balcony not even an hour before was gone clean off his face, replaced by something cold and focused and dangerous in a way I hadn’t seen off him yet, not once since I’d come here.

“Stay inside the estate,” he said. “Whatever happens next, you stay here. You understand me.”

Wasn’t a question. I nodded anyway.

Then he was gone, shouting his own orders now, warriors falling in around him same as they always did, quick and practiced like they’d done this a hundred times before, and I stood there in that torchlit courtyard with my heart hammering away in my chest, watching him ride out into the dark toward whatever was burning on his border, and thinking, distant and cold, that whatever had been building between us on that balcony was gonna have to wait.