Chapter 7
Henrik let out a low, dark chuckle that rumbled through the quiet morning.
"Bram!" he called out without turning around.
The scarred lieutenant materialized from the stairwell, saluting with an iron fist over his chest. "Alpha?"
"Double the watch on the lower drainage tunnels," Henrik ordered, his eyes never leaving mine. "Instruct the sentries to look the other way when a shadow slips past the iron grate tonight. And prepare a set of silver manacles in the sub-dungeon."
Henrik stepped closer to me, his broad frame blocking the freezing wind entirely, wrapping me in his shadow, his scent, and his unquestioned protection.
"The little Luna wants to set a trap," Henrik growled, the edge of his scarred lips curling into a wicked, feral grin. "And we are going to give her all the rope she needs to hang the golden boy."
The midnight air in the lowest belly of Rimecrag was cold enough to crystallize breath on an eyelash.
Down here, carved forty feet into the living basalt beneath the fortress foundations, the air tasted of ancient lime, wet flint, and old bones. Henrik’s ancestors rested in narrow stone niches behind heavy iron grates, their carved effigies staring into the gloom with hollow, unblinking eyes.
I crouched beside Henrik behind the broken buttress of the fourth crypt archway.
He was so still he might have been hewn from the mountain rock. Even his heartbeat, pressed against my back where we shared the narrow sliver of shadow, was slow and measured—a steady, rhythmic drum that kept the freezing chill from settling into my marrow. His left arm was braced against the masonry above my head, his heavy wolfskin cloak draped over both our shoulders like a dark tent to smother our heat and scent.
"He's through the sluice," Henrik’s whisper was barely a breath against the shell of my ear.
I held still, listening into the subterranean damp. Beneath the distant moan of the northern gale driving through the air shafts, there was a soft, wet scrape.
Metal dragging over slick flagstones.
A shadow peeled itself away from the drainage grate at the far end of the corridor. It moved with the unnatural, fluid silence of an elite valley scout—low to the ground, paws barely touching the frosted stone. Malachi had trained his personal shadows well; they were bred for espionage, their wolves small, lean, and nearly scentless.
Corin paused at the threshold of the ancestral vault. He sniffed the drafts, ears twitching toward the ceiling vaults above.
Thanks to Henrik’s precise orders, the garrison watch three levels up was loudly hauling ironwood crates and calling out false relief rotations. To an infiltrator creeping through the dark, Rimecrag was sluggish, preoccupied with midwinter provisioning, and completely blind to its lower foundations.
Corin slipped into the third alcove.
Through the hairline fissure in the buttress, I watched him pull a bundle from his oiled leather rucksack. The wrapping gleamed dark crimson in the thin shaft of moonlight cutting through the ventilation shaft.
With practiced care, Corin slid the velvet-wrapped iron casket behind the loose stone marker of Henrik’s great-uncle—a border warlord whose name had been cursed in the capital for armed rebellions two generations ago. It was a calculated insult: Malachi was ensuring that when the council guards unearthed the box, it would appear as though Henrik and I were reviving an ancient separatist plot against the High Council.
Corin replaced the stone slab, brushed the mortar dust from his gloves, and turned back toward the tunnel.
He took three silent strides.
He never took a fourth.
Henrik did not issue a warning. He surged from the darkness with the sudden, terrifying momentum of a mountain slide.
Corin’s wolf sensed the charge a fraction of a second too late. The shadow-scout whipped a thin stiletto from his boot, but Henrik’s iron gauntlet took him across the side of the helm with the force of an iron ram. Steel cracked against stone. Corin struck the floor hard, his weapon skittering away across the flagstones, the air driven from his lungs in a sharp wheeze.
Before the scout could roll or shift into his wolf, Henrik’s heavy combat boot came down squarely upon his sternum, pinning him to the basalt. The stone beneath the scout groaned under the Alpha's weight.
"Make a sound," Henrik murmured, his gravel-rough voice dropping into a register that vibrated through the floorboards, "and I will drive your ribcage through the flags."
Corin lay pinned, his pupils dilated with raw panic, his breath whistling through clenched teeth.
I stepped out from the shadow of the buttress, the hem of my wool traveling skirt sweeping the dust.
Corin’s frantic gaze snapped to me. Even in the gloom, he recognized my face. In the capital, he had seen me dozens of times—the demure, obedient daughter of the Western Ridge, sitting by the window in Malachi’s solar, pouring spiced wine with lowered eyes while the men drafted pack ordinances.
He expected me to tremble. He expected me to cringe from Henrik's violence.
Instead, I knelt beside him on the cold stone, my expression as flat as winter ice.
"You shouldn't have used the northern drainage sluice, Corin," I said evenly. "The water levels rise after the first hard freeze. You left a trail of gray river silt on the third landing."
Corin choked, his lips parting in shock. "Lady... Lady Opal...?"
"She is not a lady of the valley anymore," Henrik rumbled above him. "She is the woman who just closed your iron collar."
Henrik reached down with one hand, caught Corin by the scruff of his padded tunic, and hoisted him off the flags as if he were an empty sack. Bram emerged from the gloom at the end of the vault corridor, carrying a set of heavy runic silver manacles.
"Take him down to the forge sub-cellar," Henrik commanded, passing the half-conscious scout into his lieutenant's grip. "Strip his leathers down to the lining. Cut open the seams of his boots. He did not cross three hundred leagues of mountain passes carrying an ancestral relic without clearance tokens. Find everything he brought from the valley."
"Aye, Alpha," Bram grunted, his split ear twitching with grim satisfaction as he hauled the scout into the dark.
The cold quiet settled over the vault once more.
I walked over to the third alcove. My fingers found the edge of the stone slab, working it loose from the mortar until I could reach into the recess.
The velvet-wrapped casket was heavy and biting cold.
I set it upon the flat top of a nearby sarcophagus and peeled back the dark cloth.
The latch on the dwarven iron casket was unlocked, designed to be opened with ease during a staged inspection. I lifted the lid.
Inside lay three thick, leather-bound ledgers stamped with the forbidden rune of the Gray Wastes—illicit contracts detailing transactions of processed wolfsbane and contraband weapons. Nestled beside the ledgers in a velvet groove sat a heavy silver vial filled with iridescent, shimmering black fluid: distilled nightshade-wolfsbane extract, the identical poison that had killed the former High Alpha three winters ago.
And resting directly on top of the vial was a heavy silver ring.
