Chapter 14: Serena's POV

By the time I left Hale Manor, the night fog had already swallowed the whole capital.

I pulled the torn jacket tight around me again and went over the high wall the way I always did, dropping down on the lower city side. Ethan's warning had left something warm sitting under my ribs, but I still had a pile of mess to clean up — starting with a certain northern lord who trailed me like a haunting spirit that wouldn't be exorcised.

"Your instincts have gotten sloppy, little mouse."

A cold wind tore out of the alley's depths, and the standing water around my feet froze over in a thin skin of ice.

I stopped walking. I didn't need to turn around to know who it was; that presence belonged to exactly one person in all of Silver Crown.

Adrian came out of the shadows slowly, still wearing that untouchable black hunting coat, his ice-blue eyes cutting through the fog like two honed blades. He had clearly been waiting a long while, and his pressure rolled over me without the slightest courtesy.

"Forty-eight hours are up," he said, his voice cold enough to have been soaked in ice water. "So is my patience. Where is it?"

I turned around, shoved my hands into my pockets, and leaned back against the damp brick wall as though none of this concerned me. "And what if I told you the thing I said before was actually a lie?"

The air went solid.

Then it hit.

Adrian was on me faster than my eyes could properly follow, one hand closing around my throat and slamming me back against the wall hard enough that my spine lit up with pain.

"Say that again," he said through his teeth, something murderous churning up behind his eyes. "Do you have any idea what that Moonstone Bracelet means to me? You lost it?"

"Didn't lose it," I said, forced to tip my chin up. "Just pawned it."

The tendons stood out on the back of the hand around my neck. "You have a death wish."

"Strangle me now and you'll never find out which black-market dealer has it." I met his stare without flinching and patted the rigid line of his arm. "Let go, my lord. Come with me and I'll show you what your family heirloom looks like these days."

Adrian stared at me for a full ten seconds. Then he gave a cold huff through his nose and let go.

I rubbed my throat, pulled my cap lower, and turned toward the deepest part of the lower city. Adrian followed with his face set in a black scowl, and the killing intent rolling off him sent beggars and stray dogs scattering out of our path.

We crossed three open sewers before stopping in front of a ruin patched together from tarpaulins and rotten boards.

This wasn't the camp we'd been in last time. This was the largest refugee camp in the entire capital.

The one-armed old woman had pawned the bracelet, and I hadn't expected it to be worth so much. The surplus I brought to the biggest camp.

A dozen bonfires burned in the open ground, each one with an iron pot hung over it, and the smell of meat stew and cold-weather herbs drifted through the freezing air, driving off the reek of despair. Hundreds of low-ranked werewolves in thin, ragged clothes, widowed Omegas, and cubs skinny enough to count their ribs stood in a long line, wooden bowls steaming in their hands, their faces lit with something I hadn't seen in a long time.

Adrian stopped walking.

"There." I pointed at the blankets and the sacks of oats. "That's your Moonstone Bracelet."

Adrian's head snapped toward me, his brow twisting hard. "You took a priceless treasure and traded it for — for cheap oats and rags?"

"To you people in your temperature-controlled castles, it was a pretty bracelet." I looked at him coldly. "But to them, what that bracelet bought is what's going to get several hundred werewolves through this damn winter instead of freezing to death in a sewer."

To buy back my brother's badge I had already emptied out every coin I had. As the temperature dropped, fever had broken out in every camp, and I hadn't had a choice.

"Rogue!"

A little girl with wolf ears on her head and dirt smeared across her face came running out of the crowd, half a golden-crusted loaf of bread clutched in her hands. She stopped in front of me, gave Adrian a timid glance, then wrapped both arms around my leg and held the bread up to my face.

"Auntie said you made all this food with magic. So this is for you." Her voice came out bright and piping.

I crouched down and rubbed her ears — so small, she couldn't even hold her human form. I smiled and pushed the bread back toward her. "I already ate. You keep it. And remember, you have to eat a lot if you want to grow as tall as him, understand?" I tilted my head at Adrian.

She looked up at Adrian with something close to awe, nodded hard, and ran back to the fires.

I straightened and faced him again. "Kill me or cut me up, do whatever you want. The thing's already in the black market and I can't get it back anytime soon. Worst case, take my head back to your family and call it done."

I shut my eyes and braced for him to tear me apart.

The attack never came.

His killing intent had drained away at some point without my noticing. I opened my eyes and found him simply looking at me. Firelight jumped across his face and melted the ice at the bottom of his gaze as he looked at me, and then at the refugees further off.

"You're insane, Little Rogue," he said at last.

"Told you already." I shrugged.

He drew a slow breath and closed his eyes, as if holding something down by force. When he opened them again, the arrogance and the awkwardness were both back in place.

"That bracelet — consider it lent to you," Adrian said, turning his head aside and throwing the words out coldly.

I froze, not trusting my own ears. "What did you say?"

"Are you deaf, little mouse?" He turned back and glared at me, though the tips of his ears had gone faintly red. "The Moonstone Bracelet can't be allowed to drift around out there. I'll go into the black market and get it back myself. But —"

He paused.

"But that money, you owe me. From now on, your life is mine. Until you've paid back that fortune, principal and interest, I don't permit you to die at anyone's hands. Understood?"

I stared at him, and then a laugh burst out of me before I could stop it.

"What are you laughing at?" he snapped, embarrassment sharpening his voice.

"Nothing." I pulled my cap lower, and my mood had suddenly, inexplicably improved. "Understood, my lord creditor. I promise to stay alive."

Watching his back as he turned and strode off, I rubbed my chin.

So this young lord wasn't quite as hopeless as I'd assumed.