Chapter 373 A Traitor Who Entertained Him In Bed
The window was small and narrow. The kind that existed in bathing chambers for ventilation, and the architect who had designed it had never once considered the possibility that a pregnant woman in silver burns would need to fit through it.
She crossed to it. Pushed it open. Cold air hit her face with the specific hostility of a winter night that had been waiting for exactly this moment to remind her that escaping a building was only step one and surviving the climate was step two.
She looked down.
Five stories.
The wall below the window was stone. Old stone, rough-cut, carrying the particular texture of masonry that had been exposed to weather for two centuries and had developed the kind of surface that was either excellent for climbing or excellent for dying, and the distinction depended entirely on the skill of the climber and the mercy of the gravity.
Agnes looked at the window. Looked at the five-story drop. Looked at the window again.
“This is my only option,” she said to the empty bathing chamber. “This is genuinely my only option. I picked two locks, found a secret passage, navigated to a second guarded room, threw up in my kidnapper’s personal basin, and my reward is a window the size of a dinner plate five stories above the ground.”
She looked down at her midsection.
“If you survive this, I will never deny you a single thing for the rest of your life. That is a binding verbal contract, witnessed by a basin and a window. Let’s go.”
The window was a tight fit. She went feet-first, which was the only orientation that allowed her hips to clear the frame, and the process required a degree of contortion that would have impressed a circus performer and horrified a physician.
Her silver-burned wrists screamed as they took her weight on the sill. Her fingers found the first handhold: a gap between stones approximately one inch deep and four inches wide.
She eased out.
The wind hit her immediately. Cold, vicious, carrying the particular contempt that winter air reserved for people who voluntarily exited warm buildings through bathroom windows. Her cloak was gone, torn on a thorn in a forest that felt like it belonged to a different lifetime. Her dress was thin. Her fingers were already numb from the silver, and the cold was going to finish what the cuffs started.
She descended. One handhold at a time. One foothold at a time. Each movement methodical, tested, the patient downward progress of a woman who had been trained to scale walls since she was twelve and was applying that training in conditions her instructors had never anticipated.
Fourth story. Fine. The stone was cooperative. The gaps were consistent. Her body was light enough that the handholds supported her weight without complaint, and the darkness was dense enough that anyone looking up from the ground would see shadow rather than a woman clinging to a wall.
Third story. Less fine. The stone was smoother here, the gaps shallower, the footholds narrower. Her left foot slipped once. She caught herself on her fingertips, the sudden load transfer sending a jolt through her wrists that made the silver burns sing. She pressed her forehead against the cold stone and breathed.
“We are fine,” she whispered to her midsection. “We are completely fine. This is controlled. This is calculated. I have done worse shit.”
She hadn’t done worse shit. She was lying to a fetus, and the fetus couldn’t verify, which made it the safest audience she had ever had.
Second story. She stopped.
A window was cracked open. Light leaked through the gap, warm and amber, throwing a thin stripe across the wall beside her. Voices carried through the opening with the particular clarity of a conversation happening near a window in a room where nobody suspected the wall had ears.
She knew those voices. One was her father’s Beta, a man named Corvin whose primary personality trait was agreeing with Reginald and whose secondary personality trait was also agreeing with Reginald. The other was a voice she didn’t recognize, deeper, carrying the lazy cadence of a man who was being entertained rather than briefed.
“—Darkhowler will respond. The question is how.”
That was Corvin. Agnes pressed herself flat against the wall, fingers locked into the stone, breathing through her mouth to minimize sound. The cold was biting through her dress. Her arms were trembling. The position she was holding was sustainable for approximately four minutes before her grip gave out, and the conversation on the other side of the window was going to determine whether those four minutes were educational.
“The Alpha King will either come himself or send a force,” Corvin continued. “Lord Viremont expects the former. The matebond guarantees a personal response.”
The deeper voice laughed. The laugh was warm, amused, the laugh of a man discussing a hunting strategy rather than a kidnapping.
“Is Lord Viremont certain the boy will come? There is a version of this where Darkhowler says good riddance. The girl was a traitor who entertained him in bed. That is all she was. She poisoned a member of the alliance. She spied on his closest allies. She has caused that man nothing but trouble since the day she walked through his gates.”
Agnes’s jaw locked. Her grip on the stone tightened by a fraction that she couldn’t afford.
“He should crown anyone else,” the voice continued, warming to its own analysis. “Any woman in Skardos with a pulse and fewer felonies would be an improvement. The girl is unlikable by design. She alienated every person who tried to help her. She drugged a prince. She poisoned the most beloved woman on two continents. The list of people who would actually miss Agnes Viremont begins and ends with the Alpha she was assigned to seduce, and even his patience has limits.”
Agnes’s left eye twitched. The twitch was involuntary, the specific facial response of a woman hearing herself described with a clinical accuracy that was more offensive than any insult because at least insults required exaggeration and this was just a résumé.
Her mouth opened. The response that was forming behind her teeth was sharp, specific, and would have blown her position so thoroughly that the remaining three stories of wall would have become irrelevant.
She swallowed it. The swallow tasted like blood from her split lip and bile from the bathing chamber and the particular bitterness of a woman forcing herself to stay silent while a stranger catalogued her shortcomings on the other side of a window.
Corvin spoke again. “Lord Viremont’s assessment is fifty-fifty. The Alpha comes because his ego demands it. We took what belongs to him. Wolves are territorial. The matebond will override whatever strategic calculation his advisors are attempting.”
“And the other fifty?”
“The other fifty is the Alpha decides the girl is more trouble than she is worth and uses the extraction as grounds to dissolve the matebond and find a mate who hasn’t committed treason against his closest allies. Either outcome serves Lord Viremont.”
The deeper voice chuckled. “A fifty-fifty that favors you regardless. Your lord is thorough.”
“My lord is always thorough.”
Footsteps. Boots on stone, moving toward the window.