A Door You Can Walk Out Of

Hoarfrost Keep looks like it was carved out of the cliff by someone who hated warmth.

You see it at dawn from the back seat of the king's SUV: black stone, narrow windows, towers dusted white, the town of Varnholm spilling down the slope beneath it in a jumble of steep roofs and chimney smoke. A wind turbine turns slowly on the next ridge. Somebody has strung fairy lights along the gatehouse, which only makes the rest of it look more like a fortress.

The king did not sit with you. He rode in the front car, upright, refusing the medic. Bohdan sat beside you instead with his arms crossed and didn't say one word for two hours, except, at the very end, "You hungry?" and handed you a protein bar like he was disarming a bomb.

Now you're in an infirmary with a vaulted ceiling, wrapped in a blanket, while a very thin old man with white hair shines a light in your eyes.

"Doctor Piotr Benedek," he said when you came in. "Physician to the crown for thirty-one years. Hold out your hands."

You hold them out. He turns them over, presses each fingertip, holds a little silver coin against your palm and watches your face.

"Does that burn?"

"It's cold."

"It should burn." He sets the coin down very carefully. His hands aren't quite steady. "It burns every wolf I've ever met. Lycan, lowland, rogue. It burned the five before you right up their arms like ink in water, and it did not stop at the heart." He looks at you over his glasses, and there's something raw in it. "I knew all of them. Good healers. One was my student."

"I'm sorry."

"So am I." He clears his throat. "There's nothing in you. Not a trace. I don't understand it, and at my age I don't enjoy not understanding things."

The infirmary door opens without a knock.

The woman who walks in is wearing a cream wool coat that probably costs more than your old house, and her platinum hair is pinned up so perfectly it looks painted on. She's maybe thirty, tall, with gray eyes and a mouth made for disappointment. Two courtiers trail behind her like ducklings.

"So it's true," she says. "He brought one home from the snow."

"Lady Severine," Piotr says, weary.

She looks you over the way you'd look over a stray dog someone carried in: the borrowed blanket, the black stains still under your nails, the canvas bag at your feet. "Marrowfen. I can smell the river from here."

One of the ducklings giggles.

"Lady Severine Krol," Piotr tells you. "Daughter of the Lord Chancellor."

"And you are?" Severine asks.

You've had the worst night of your life. You've been stripped, exiled, frozen, and covered in a king's blood. You're too tired to be afraid of a coat.

"The one who kept him alive," you say.

The giggling stops.

Severine's mouth curves. "We'll see how long that lasts," she says, and turns, and leaves a cloud of expensive perfume behind her.

He sends for you at noon.

The king's study is the warmest room you've seen in the Keep: books to the ceiling, a fire roaring in a hearth tall enough to stand in, a desk of dark wood covered in neat stacks of paper and a laptop with its lid closed. No silver anywhere. The candlesticks are iron. The pen on the blotter is black resin.

He's standing at the window with his back to you, in a clean black shirt, and when he turns your breath does something embarrassing.

In the headlights on the pass he was a shape. In daylight he's devastating. The gold eyes are paler in sunlight, almost amber, set under straight black brows. His nose has been broken once and set perfectly. Two maids passing the open door slow down without seeming to know they're doing it. Bohdan, posted outside, clears his throat at them, and they scatter.

"Sit, Ava," he says. Then, a beat later, as if correcting himself: "If you like."

You sit. He doesn't. He picks up a single sheet of paper and holds it out across the desk.

"A contract," he says. "One year. Royal healer to the crown. You'd live in the Keep, in the healers' corridor. Salary is at the bottom. You would answer to me and to Doctor Benedek, and to no one else at this court."

You read it. Then you read the salary again, because it is more than Marrowfen spends on medicine in a decade.

"This is a lot of money to pay someone you met in a ditch."

"You closed a silver wound. Nobody has done that in three years." He watches you read. "There's a clause at the end. Read that one twice."

You find it. The healer may terminate this agreement at any time, for any reason or none, and shall be given safe passage and full payment for time served.

You look up. "You're giving me a way out."

"I'm giving you a door." His voice is very even. "You were thrown out of one last night. I won't lock you behind another one. If you stay, you stay because you want to. If you want to walk out on the first day, you walk out on the first day and Bohdan drives you anywhere you like."

Something tightens in your throat. Four years in Marrowfen, and nobody ever once asked you what you wanted.

"Why would you do that?"

He considers it. "Because healers who are frightened make mistakes," he says, "and because I don't keep people in cages. That was my father's style. Not mine."

"And the five in the garden?"

His jaw tightens. For a second he looks very tired. "Ask me that when you've decided whether to stay. I'll answer it honestly. I promise you that."

You pick up the black pen. You sign.

He looks at your signature for a long moment. "Welcome to Hoarfrost, Ava," he says quietly. Then he takes a phone out of his pocket, unlocks it, and slides it across the desk.

"Put your number in, Ava."

You do. He takes it back, types something, and your own phone buzzes in your bag.

"That's mine," he says. "Private. Bohdan has it. Doctor Benedek has it. That's the list."

"Your whole court doesn't have your number?"

"My court," says the Lycan King, "would not dare."

Your room in the healers' corridor is small and clean, with a narrow bed, a thick quilt, a radiator that clanks and a window looking out over the snow garden. You can see shapes under the snow down there. Five low mounds in a row, each with an iron marker.

You turn away from the window. You lie down fully dressed. Somewhere in this black-stone building, the man whose blood is still under your nails is lying awake too. You can almost feel it, a faint, stupid tug behind your ribs, pointing east.

You tell yourself it's exhaustion.

At 2:13 AM, your phone lights up on the pillow.

The screen says Kasimir Draghan.