Rejected and Sold to the Cursed Lycan King

ning, and she came the way Cerise did everything:

t the court turned out for everything. Mara read the banner from the wall and her mouth we

d seen it that night in the gallery, on the

ower's seal

uards in burnish; three courtiers for atmosphere. Cerise in white - Cerise in *white*, at a cursed court, a choice so loud it was practically a speech. And beside my father, an

said so. He had sat at the bottom of our table for two

e grain accounts. Whic

ed Court watch him do it. "Silverclaw gives thanks for the honor of the road. We come with

e throne, and didn't rise. "The cou

e, a banner in the north, Silverclaw's star ascended. He spoke of family bonds and old blood, and every second sentence had a hook in it for me. I stood at the dais in white and silver

se steppe

beside her, and walked it up the hall - up and up, past the columns, to the foot of the dais - and every soul in that hall, forty c

alace-made, older than her, and a

ent the way a hel

nd that the tears were not theater. "From Grandmother's vault. Grandmother said - Grandmother said the vault was opened three months ago, and one piece taken, and sh

nt hot and

three months ago. Three months ago was when the tribute summons went out. When Marek's letter had named the Silverclaw healer's lineage

s lineage was worth?" Kairos asked. Very

mouth, full of some s

ughed in the square while I was sold - turned around and looke

them, Father. Tell them w

did not

don

d the *day*, Father. It named which moon. Nobody in Silverclaw knew the cursed court's moon-calendar. But the letter did. And when I asked you last month why the king's coin had stopped, why we were suddenly borrowing against the autumn, you told me politics." Her voice fell off the edge of something. "And then I saw the grey-se

grey-waxed, crestless, and it matched th

he space between the sisters, under two courts' eyes,

n't finished being what they made me." Her chin came up, and it was the first time in my life I had ever s

e down off

oke the wax with his thumbnail, and read it standing beside me - and I watc

rge, pleasant as a festival: "The Cursed Court thanks Silverclaw for its renewal, its tribute, and its *family*. The delegation will enjoy our hospitality until the dark moon. After whi

sliding off him like snow off a roof, watching forty souls watch him, and for one moment - one

Waiting to

ed him past me, I leaned in and said the thing I had carried since the square, softly, for his ear

erclaw guards' weapons and the kitchens produced an actual feast for the first time in three years - Cerise

" I asked finally. "W

me, before you ever left, he stood in our kitchen and told Father a thing I will hear until I die." She looked out at the mist, and shivered. "He said: *the court's curse has never once touched a silver hand. The tribute either heals the king - or the chalice drinks her trying. Either way, the prince

and quiet over the kingd

wer, a patient prince now knew that we knew - and the coven's

iginal and copy reunited at last, and felt the

t the stitched-eyed cloaks, at every list eve