Chapter 42

Lena's POV

The fury at Cain did not go away.

I had expected it to soften once Rael was gone and Demi was standing in my courtyard in the sunlight. I had expected the relief to crowd it out. That was how it was supposed to work. The good thing arrives and the bad feeling recedes and you get to just have the good thing for a while.

That was not how it worked.

Demi was here and I was grateful and the fury at Cain was still sitting in my chest like a coal that had been burning for three years and had just been given fresh air.

He had looked me in the face.

He had described it.

He had watched me absorb it and he had said nothing and he had gone back to his territory and his alliance negotiations and his life and Demi had been in Rael's hands for three years because of a lie he had told me in a corridor.

I sat through lunch.

Sat through Demi's debrief with Rendal which I attended because she asked me to and because some of what she knew overlapped with what I knew about Corvin's network and the two pictures together were more complete than either one alone.

Sat through Percy updating Damon on the council's response to Rael's departure, which was cautiously positive from Croft and characteristically silent from Vane who was apparently still processing the fact that his courier recommendation had ended up on the gathering room floor.

I sat through all of it.

And the coal burned the whole time.

Damon noticed at dinner.

He did not say anything during the meal. He waited until Demi had gone back to her room, until Percy had delivered the last update of the evening and been dismissed, until the dining room had emptied out and it was just the two of us at the end of the long table with the fire going and the fortress quiet around us.

Then he looked at me.

"Say it," he said.

I looked at the table.

"Cain," I said.

"Yes," he said.

"He is in Ashwood," I said. "Which is yours now. Which means he is sitting in a territory that belongs to you with nothing and no alliance and no leverage and he is just there." I looked up. "Living."

Damon held my gaze.

"What do you want," he said.

I thought about it.

The honest answer. Not the managed version. Not the version that sounded proportionate and reasonable and like something a Luna said in a dining room.

"I want him to answer for it," I said. "Not Ashwood. Not the territory. That is done and it is yours and that is justice of a kind." I held his gaze. "I want him to answer for Demi specifically. For what he told me. For three years of her life that were spent in a situation she should never have been in because he made a decision to lie and never looked back."

Damon looked at the fire.

"If I bring him here," he said carefully, "it becomes a formal proceeding. Council involvement. Documentation. A case that takes time to build and longer to resolve."

"I know," I said.

"And if I go to Ashwood," he said, "it looks like a King moving against a defeated Alpha which has its own complications."

"I know," I said.

"So what do you want," he said again. "Specifically."

I looked at him.

"I want to go to Ashwood," I said. "Not you. Me." I held his gaze. "I want to walk into whatever room he is sitting in and I want him to see my face and know that Demi is alive and standing in your courtyard in the sun." I paused. "And I want him to understand that everything he thought he buried is still here."

Damon looked at me for a long time.

"You want him to be afraid," he said.

"Yes," I said. "I want him to be afraid."

The fire crackled.

Damon looked at the table.

"When," he said.

I stared at him. "You are not going to argue."

"Should I," he said.

"Most people would say it is not worth the journey," I said. "That he has already lost everything. That going there gives him more attention than he deserves."

"Most people," Damon said, "did not spend three years thinking the person they loved was dead because he decided to lie about it." He held my gaze. "When."

I breathed.

"Three days," I said. "I want Demi stable here first. I want to know she is settled and safe before I go anywhere."

"I will come with you," he said.

"Damon—"

"I will come with you," he said again. The voice that was not a negotiation.

I looked at him.

At the jaw and the dark eyes and the man who had just watched Rael ride away and was apparently ready to get back on a horse in three days for a completely different reason.

"Okay," I said.

He nodded.

Reached across the table.

Put his hand over mine.

Just that.

The same way he had done it at the window.

Warm and still and completely certain.

I turned my hand over under his.

We sat like that for a while.

The fire burned down.

The fortress settled around us into the specific quiet of a place that had been through something large and was resting.

"Damon," I said.

"Mm," he said.

"Tonight," I said. "You said tonight we stop."

He looked at me.

"No Rendal," I said. "No papers."

"No papers," he said.

"No Percy at the door," I said.

"Percy has been told," he said.

"Told what," I said.

"That he is not to knock on any door in the King's wing for the rest of the night unless the fortress is on fire," he said. "And that on fire means actually on fire."

I looked at him.

Something moved through my chest that was warm and ridiculous and I did not try to manage it.

"Okay," I said.

We left the dining room.

Walked through the corridor together. The same corridor I had walked a hundred times since arriving here, in every possible emotional state, for every possible reason, alone and with Percy and with Mira and once at a dead run toward the north tower.

Different now.

Same stone. Same torches. Same cold draft from the east window that never fully sealed.

Different because he was beside me and his hand was at the small of my back and neither of us was managing it or strategising around it or calling it something else.

We stopped outside the Luna's chamber.

I turned to face him.

He looked at me in the torchlight with those eyes that had been reading my face since the first day and had never once gotten it wrong.

"Sera," he said.

"Yes," I said.

"Whatever comes next," he said. "Rael rebuilding. Cain. The council. Whatever shape it takes." He held my gaze. "I need you to know that none of it changes this."

I looked at him.

"I know," I said.

"Do you," he said.

"Yes," I said. "I know."

He looked at me for one more moment.

And then he pushed the door open.

I went in.

He followed.

The door closed.

And for the first time in as long as I could remember, there was nothing on the other side of it that needed managing tonight.

\---

Demi knocked at seven in the morning.

I heard it from a long way away, the comfortable distance of actual deep sleep, the kind I had not had in weeks, and surfaced slowly.

The room was light.

Warm.

I lay still for a moment.

Damon's arm was across my waist. He was still asleep, which was notable because Damon was never still asleep at seven in the morning, and I took approximately four seconds to appreciate the extraordinariness of that before the knock came again.

"Sera," Demi's voice. Through the door. "I know you are in there. I also know who is in there with you and I am not coming in. I am simply telling you that Mira made breakfast and it is getting cold and also Percy has a face."

I closed my eyes.

"Percy always has a face," I said toward the door.

"This is a new face," Demi said. "A worse one."

I felt Damon's arm move as he woke up.

He looked at the door.

Then at me.

"Percy," I said.

"Yes," he said.

He sat up.

Reached for his shirt.

I sat up beside him.

"Whatever it is," I said to the door, "give us five minutes."

"Four," Demi said. "The eggs are already cold."

I looked at Damon.

He was already standing.

Already becoming the King again, I could see it happening, the walls coming up just slightly, the particular settling of his shoulders.

I stood up.

He looked at me.

And before the walls were all the way up he put his hand against the side of my face the same way he had done it in the gathering room in front of everyone.

Just for a second.

Then he let go.

I followed him out.

Percy was in the corridor.

His face was doing something new.

"Percy," Damon said.

"Cain," Percy said.

I went still.

"He arrived an hour ago," Percy said. "At the gate." He looked at me and then at Damon. "He is asking for an audience. He says he has information about Rael that he did not give us during his visit." A pause. "He says it is urgent."

I looked at Damon.

Damon looked at me.

"He came here," I said. Flat.

"Yes," Percy said.

"He rode to this fortress," I said. "Voluntarily."

"Yes," Percy said.

I breathed through my nose.

Three days.

I had given myself three days before Ashwood.

Cain had apparently decided to save me the trip.

"Let him in," I said.

Both of them looked at me.

"Let him in," I said again. "Put him in the small meeting room. The one with no windows." I held Percy's gaze. "And Percy. Do not tell him Demi is here."

Percy looked at me for a moment.

Then nodded.

And went.