Chapter 6: Sign and Disappear

The courier arrived at Frosthold wearing Blackridge colors and the expression of a man who expected gates to open because he stood in front of them. Frosthold's gates did not open. Nora watched from the eastern gallery as the courier shifted in the snow below, red cloak snapping in the wind. Two Frost guards stood above him on the wall with crossbows angled down, bored and unwelcoming. Darius stood beside Nora with his hands clasped behind his back. "Do you know him?" he asked. "Rowan's legal messenger. He once charged a widow three silver marks to file a pension request." "Did she pay?" "No. I did." Darius glanced at her. Nora kept her eyes on the courtyard. "Do not make that face." "What face?" "The one that says you are adding names to a list." "I have many lists." The courier shouted up, "By order of Alpha Rowan Vale, I request audience with Nora Ashford, former Luna of Blackridge." Former again. The word had less bite from this distance. Darius looked at Nora. "Your choice." That surprised her, though by now it should not have. Rowan had never made requests choices. He presented them wrapped as duties, then punished hesitation as disloyalty. Nora touched the edge of her sleeve where the mate mark still ached. "I will hear him in the lower hall." "Not alone." "I did not ask to be alone." Something in Darius's expression eased, almost imperceptibly. Ten minutes later, the courier stood on Frosthold stone with snow melting from his boots. His gaze flicked around the hall, lingering on the armed guards, the black banners, the wolves carved into every pillar. He looked smaller here than he had at Blackridge. Good. Nora entered in a gray wool dress Dr. March had called appropriate and Nora had called armor. Darius walked at her left. Captain Wren stood behind them. The courier bowed to Darius first. "Your Majesty." Darius did not answer. The courier turned to Nora and bowed less deeply. "Lady Ashford." "You found my name. How refreshing." His mouth tightened. "Alpha Rowan sends documents requiring your signature." "Requiring." "For orderly separation." Darius's voice cut in. "Blackridge does not issue requirements inside Frosthold." The courier swallowed. "Of course, Your Majesty. I meant only that Alpha Vale hopes to resolve matters with dignity." Nora almost laughed. Dignity had apparently waited until after he took her mother's mantle, burned her proof, and left her outside the border. The courier opened a black leather folder and removed three documents. Nora did not touch them. "Read them." "Lady Ashford, these are private." "Then I decline." He flushed. "The first document confirms you accept the rejection as lawful and final. The second releases all Luna property, accounts, jewels, rooms, documents, and ceremonial rights to the current Luna, Iris Bell. The third confirms you have no existing or expected claim on Blackridge succession." There it was. Expected. Nora felt Darius go very still beside her. She kept her face blank. "Why include expected claim?" "Standard language." "For barren women?" The courier's eyes dropped. Nora stepped closer. "Look at me when you lie." He looked. Not well. Fear has a smell. Nora had smelled it in sickrooms, council chambers, and marriage beds. This man knew something. "Did Rowan write that line?" she asked. "The Alpha approved all wording." "Did Iris?" The courier said nothing. Nora reached for the documents. Darius's hand moved slightly, not to stop her, only to remind her he was there. She read quickly. The first page tried to turn Rowan's public cruelty into mutual separation. The second stripped Nora of property that had belonged to her mother's bloodline before Rowan was born. The third was worse. It required Nora to swear, under winter law, that no child conceived during her union with Rowan Vale existed. If she signed, her baby became a legal impossibility. Her vision tunneled. "He wants me to erase my own child." The courier went pale. Darius's voice was quiet. "Nora." Not warning. Anchor. Nora looked at the fireplace at the end of the hall. Then she walked to it. The courier lunged. Wren caught him by the back of the cloak and held him like laundry. "Lady Ashford, those are legal originals!" "No," Nora said, feeding the first page to the flame. "They are threats dressed as paperwork." The second page curled black. The third caught slowly, as if the words resisted dying. Nora watched until the line about no existing child became ash. Only then did she turn back. "Tell Rowan something for me." The courier trembled. "What?" "Tell him I will not sign and disappear." Darius's eyes were on her, unreadable and bright. Nora stepped over the ash that had fallen from the hearth. "Tell him the next document with my name on it will be read in front of the Winter Council."