Darragh got between me and the king before the frost stopped cracking under my boots.
Darragh: There is no Cairn claim. Her mother died with a broken lodge and a bad name.
Darragh: The seal she sent your court is a scrap of tin she melted herself in the dark.
Ilona: Look at her, my king. A dry wife in a dirty apron, reaching for a name she was never given.
Ilona: The Cairn were seed clerks. That is all they ever were.
That one landed under my ribs, because my mother had signed for the crown's own seed levy.
Fiona: My mother kept the Cairn lodge thirty years. Her mark is on the rolls at your court.
Darragh: Hold your tongue. You will not correct a Luna in front of the king.
Darragh: Say one more word and I will drag you out of this yard by that braid.
Cassius: Alpha. Step back from her.
Cassius: I have not asked you a question, and I am tired of your voice.
Darragh stepped back. His jaw worked like he was chewing something he could not swallow.
Cassius: Fiona of Cairn. You told me you had a claim. Show it to me.
I took the seal from my apron and set it in his palm. The whole yard leaned in to see.
The mountain and the hare were cut deep, and the silver was worn smooth at one edge.
Cassius: This is the Cairn seal. I have read its mark on the rolls at the Sun Court.
Cassius: It is not tin, Alpha. It is older than your fence line.
Darragh: Then it is a dead seal. Her mother is in the ground and the lodge is empty.
Darragh: Dead names do not feed a pack, and they do not stand in my yard.
Darragh: You barren bitch. Three years in my bed and not one pup. Get out of my sight.
There it was, in front of a king. Three years of it, said out loud where someone could hear.
Cassius: A seal is answered or it is refused. There is no third thing.
Cassius: And I will not refuse a Cairn seal in front of a Cairn daughter.
Something in my chest let go, and I had to make myself keep my shoulders straight.
Cassius: Until the Sun Court hears her petition, Fiona of Cairn stands under royal protection.
Cassius: No hand on her. No cellar. No fence line. No brother with a wagon on a long road.
He said the last part looking straight at Darragh, and Darragh looked at the ground.
Darragh: You cannot take a wife out from under her husband over a piece of old silver.
Cassius: I can take her out from under a man who threatens her. Watch me.
Ilona: My king, she is nothing. She could not even give my Darragh a child.
Cassius: You will not speak of her again in my hearing. Not one word.
I had been talked about like weather for three years. It was strange and good to hear it stopped.
I did not smile. Smiling would have cost me something I could not spare.
Cassius: You will ride to the Sun Court at the thaw. I will send an escort and a room with a lock on it.
Fiona: Thank you, my king. No one has ever answered me before.
Cassius: Then you have been asking the wrong people.
He held the seal out to me. When I reached for it, his fingers closed over mine.
I felt it all the way up my arm, and I did not pull away.
Darragh: Fiona. This is not finished.
Fiona: No. But it is not yours to finish anymore.
I walked back to the vault with the seal warm in my pocket and the king's words still in the cold air.
For the first time in three years, the fence line did not look like the edge of the world.