I woke up before the sun and made coffee in the pack kitchen, because sleep and I had stopped being friends around midnight.
My boot sat by the bed with four hundred and twelve dollars in the lining. That was the only part of my life that still made sense.
Perrin: Roderick wants everyone in the front hall. Right now.
Maeve: It's not even seven. Did somebody die?
Perrin: Don't joke about that. Something came for you.
Something had come for me. That was a brand new experience. Usually things came for Roderick and I just got blamed for them.
Doyle: It was on the front step. No runner, no tire tracks. Just sitting there like it grew out of the concrete.
Black paper. Heavy, expensive paper. And across the front, my name in gold.
Just my first name. Like the whole court already knew me.
Roderick: By order of the Alpha King's clerk, the human Maeve will be presented at the Gathering.
Maeve: Presented. Like a prize hog at the county fair.
Roderick: Don't.
The signature at the bottom was a thin, careful scrawl. Wendell.
The clerk who pulled my name out of a record I never agreed to be in had found a way to put it in gold.
Perrin: The clerk sent it to our house? To this house?
Doyle: The clerk doesn't send things. People send things. He's making a point.
Perrin: What point?
Doyle: That he can find her anywhere.
Maeve: He knew my name. Now he's got my address and my father's front step. What's next, a fruit basket?
Roderick: You'll go. You'll stand where I put you. And you'll say nothing.
My face was hot and my hands were cold, which is a stupid combination when you're trying not to cry in front of a room.
Upstairs, I pulled the ticket out of my jacket and the money out of my boot and laid them on the bed like I was showing them to somebody.
The ticket said Cedar Falls, one way. It had felt like a door for six months. Now it felt like paper.
Two weeks. That was how close I'd been. Two weeks of tips and skipped lunches and I would have been a waitress nobody had a file on.
Except the king's clerk did have a file. The file had my name in gold, and gold doesn't wash off.
Perrin: You could just not go. Nobody would stop you from staying in your room.
Maeve: And then what? He sends another envelope, and next time it's a guard on the porch.
Perrin: You make it sound like he wants you.
She said it like a joke. It didn't land like one.
I looked out at the tree line where the pines went dark and close, and it was standing in the same spot as last night.
Big. Gray. Pale silver eyes, patient as a bill collector.
Something under my ribs gave a slow, hard tug, the way it had under the streetlight when the tall man looked at me and then vanished.
Fear doesn't feel like that. I knew fear. This was heavier, and it had a direction.
Maeve: What do you want?
It didn't move. It just watched me like it understood every word, and my skin went cold all the way down.
Something was coming for me, and it already knew where I slept.