The screams from the courtyard didn't bother Rowan.
It was an hour later. The branding irons had been heated in the great hearths. Cedric and Holden were being stripped of their wolf marks, a pain that seared deeper than flesh, severing their connection to the pack spirit.
Rowan sat on a stone bench in the high alcove overlooking the courtyard. The thick glass of the window muffled the noise, but she could still see the orange glow of the torches. She felt hollow. The revenge she had dreamt of for a decade was playing out below her, but it didn't bring her parents back. It didn't unbreak her ribs. It just left a strange, echoing silence in her mind.
Heavy footsteps approached from behind. She didn't flinch this time. She recognized the steady, deliberate cadence of the king.
Cassian stopped beside the bench, looking out the window down at the courtyard. He held two heavy iron mugs. He offered one to her. Rowan took it. The ceramic was hot. It wasn't ale. It was mulled cider, thick with cinnamon and honey. The sweetness coated her throat, soothing the ache.
"You have a dark heart, Rowan," Cassian said softly, not looking at her.
"You say that like it's a flaw."
Cassian chuckled, a low rumbling sound in his chest. "In my line of work, it is a requirement. A soft heart gets your men killed. You gave them exactly what they earned."
Rowan took another sip of the cider, wrapping both hands around the mug to leech the heat into her scarred palms. "What happens now?"
Cassian leaned against the stone frame of the window. He looked exhausted again, the adrenaline of the tribunal fading, leaving the weariness of a man who carried a continent on his back.
"Frost Peak is a mess," Cassian said plainly. "The pack is divided. The supply stores are half empty because Cedric was hoarding grain to sell to the southern merchants. If I leave you here on the throne, they will assassinate you within a week. You don't have the strength or the loyalists to hold the keep."
Rowan looked down at her heavy boots. "I know."
"You ride with me tomorrow at dawn," Cassian continued. "Back to the capital. To the Iron Citadel."
Rowan's grip tightened on the mug. "As what? A prisoner? A trophy?"
Cassian turned his head, his amber eyes catching the moonlight reflecting off the snow outside. He studied her face. The bruises, the sharp angles, the sheer exhaustion.
"As my ward," Cassian said. "For now."
Rowan scoffed quietly, a bitter sound. "Don't pretend you're doing this out of the goodness of your heart, King Cassian. Breeda already told me. You need the north. You need the bloodline to legitimize your control over the border packs. I'm just a walking, breathing deed to the land."
Instead of getting angry, Cassian fully turned to face her. He crossed his arms over his armored chest.
"Breeda talks too much," Cassian muttered, though there was no real heat in it. "But she isn't entirely wrong. I am a king, Rowan. Every move I make on the board has to serve the kingdom. Yes, bringing you back alive secures the north. It stops a civil war from breaking out across my borders."
He took a step closer, his voice dropping, becoming rougher, more intimate.
"But if I just needed a political pawn, I would have dragged you out of that cellar, slapped a crown on your head, and married you off to one of my generals."
Rowan looked up at him, her brow furrowing. "Then why?"
Cassian sighed, running a hand through his dark, messy hair. "Because when I looked into your eyes down in that hall, I didn't see a victim. I didn't see a broken scrub. I saw a wolf who had been starved, beaten, and buried alive for ten years, and still had the strength to stand up and demand the blood of her enemies."
He reached out, his large, calloused fingers gently brushing the side of her neck, just inches from her birthmark. His touch was incredibly light, a stark contrast to his lethal nature.
"I don't want a pawn, Rowan. I want a queen who understands exactly what the dark looks like. Because the court in the capital is a snake pit. The lords smile at you while they poison your cup. I need someone at my side who sees through the velvet and the gold. Someone who knows how to survive."
Rowan stopped breathing for a second. The word queen hung in the air between them, heavier than the iron in his armor.
She looked at him. Really looked at him. Cassian wasn't offering her a fairy tale romance. He wasn't promising to kiss her scars and make the nightmares go away. He was offering her a partnership born of necessity, a tactical alliance. He saw her trauma not as a defect, but as a weapon.
For the first time in a decade, Rowan didn't feel useless.
She pulled back slightly, breaking the contact with his hand. She wasn't ready for softness. Not yet.
"I don't know how to be a noble," Rowan said, her voice steady. "I know how to scrub lye. I know how to skin a rabbit. I know how to stay quiet."
"I have enough nobles," Cassian replied, a grim smile touching his lips. "I can hire a hundred tutors to teach you which fork to use at a banquet, but I cannot teach them the iron in your spine. That is forged."
He finished his cider and set the empty mug on the windowsill. "Get some sleep, princess. The ride south is long, and the capital is much warmer, but it is infinitely more dangerous."
Cassian turned and walked down the stone corridor, his heavy cloak billowing behind him.
Rowan sat alone in the alcove. She looked out at the falling snow. She was leaving Frost Peak, the only hell she had ever known. She looked down at her hands, at the raw red skin and the broken nails. She wasn't a scrub anymore, and she wasn't a pawn.
She took a slow, deep breath, feeling the air fill her lungs without the sharp, stabbing panic of survival. For the first time, she allowed the dormant, starved wolf inside her to open its eyes fully, looking toward the south, toward the Iron Citadel, toward a crown.