Chapter 21 · The Knot Isn't Mine

No chains. That was the insult of it.

Six of his enforcers walked me through the Iron-Crag gates with their hands braced behind my elbows, waiting for a bolt that wasn't coming. No rope. No cuffs. Like I was a houseguest who'd taken a wrong turn.

My legs were lead and my mouth tasted like road dust. A kitchen girl dropped her basket on the steps and stood there while turnips rolled into the mud.

"Move," one of them said.

*Luna,* the yard whispered. Then somebody hissed the correction. *Not anymore.*

Yeah. Not anymore.

They put me in the guest wing — the room they keep for foreign envoys. Good bed. Thick door. Bars set too close for a wolf to squeeze through. I checked them twice, then put my back to a wall where I could see the door.

My hands wouldn't quit shaking, and it wasn't the walk. Bitterroot. Two weeks chewing it raw to drown my scent, and my pouch was lying in the mud somewhere on the north road. Every hour in this room, the lie got thinner.

Boots in the corridor.