Chapter 163: You Protect A Traitor!
The implication settled between them like a third presence. The attack had not come from outside the borders alone. It had used knowledge that only a handful of people in the south possessed, and it had been delivered by a boy who lived inside their own walls.
Thorne looked toward the rising light. "Lila needs to hear this before the elders start calling for blood."
Elara already turned. "Then we don’t make her wait."
They walked the length of the passage together, the stolen root and the blackened seeds heavy in Thorne’s hand, the bitter scent still clinging to his clothes like an accusation that had finally found a name.
Lila received them in the small yard behind the healing halls, away from open ears. The first light had cleared the walls. Soren was already in the lower cells under double watch. The stolen root and blackened seeds lay on a low stone table between the three siblings.
Elara spoke first. "The root is called quiet-thorn. Southern healers keep a controlled version for shifts that turn violent. In its raw form it confuses the moon’s pull exactly the way we saw. It doesn’t belong in Frostfang. Someone carried it north."
Thorne kept his arms folded. "Soren’s scent is all over the older cache and the bowls, but the notes he described aren’t with him. No paper, no second handwriting. Either he’s lying about the notes or someone cleaned up after him."
Lila looked from the root to her brother. "Did he give a name?"
"No. Only that the notes told him it was a test to show the younger wolves needed stricter training. He looked ready to vomit the whole time. I don’t think he’s the one who planned it."
A runner appeared at the gate, out of breath. "My queen. Elder Hadrin is in the main courtyard with six others. They’re demanding the boy face Trial by Fang before the sun clears the wall."
Lila’s jaw tightened. "Of course they are."
She left the yard at a walk that made the runner scramble to keep up. Thorne and Elara followed. The courtyard was already half full. Hadrin stood on the lower steps, voice carrying.
"The moon was insulted in front of the pack. The boy admitted handling the ash. Blood answers blood. That is the old law."
Lila did not raise her own voice. She simply stepped onto the same level and waited until the murmurs died.
"The boy will answer for what he did," she said. "He will not answer for what we have not yet proven. The root came from outside our borders. The notes he claims guided him are missing. Until both are accounted for, there is no Trial."
Hadrin’s face darkened. "You protect a traitor!"
"I protect the truth," Lila answered. "If you want a Trial, bring me the hand that wrote the notes and the hand that carried southern root into my keep. Until then the cells remain closed and the investigation continues. Anyone who lays a finger on the boy without my word answers to me."
The silence that followed was heavy. A few of the younger wolves looked openly relieved. Several elders stared at Lila with flat dislike. But no one stepped forward.
She turned away first. Thorne fell in on her right, Elara on her left. They did not speak until the courtyard was behind them.
In the map room Lila closed the door and let out a slow breath. "That bought us a couple of days at most. Hadrin will not let it rest."
Elara set the quiet-thorn on the table. "There’s something else. The controlled version of this root is logged in the southern outpost stores. When I left, the count was exact. Someone has been removing small amounts for months and covering the loss."
Thorne’s head came up. "Months. Before the Moon Blessing."
"Yes."
The three of them stood with the knowledge that the attack on the rite was not a single night’s work. It had been prepared long enough for someone to learn the keep’s rhythms, replace the ash, and leave a frightened boy holding the blame.
Lila looked at her brother. "You know the southern stores better than anyone. How many people could take that root without the healers noticing?"
Thorne’s answer was slow and unwilling. "Fewer than ten. And one of them is already in this keep."
He did not say the name. He did not have to. The implication settled over the room like a fourth presence.
Outside, the pack had begun to move again, but the voices were still too careful. The failed rite and the public confrontation with Hadrin had left a crack in the ordinary morning.
Something had walked among them for months, using their own sacred ash and a southern plant, and the only person they had in chains was a boy who might not even know the full shape of what he had done.
Lila closed her hand over the quiet-thorn.
"Then we find out which of the ten is here," she said, "and we do it before Hadrin decides the pack needs a different kind of justice."
Thorne did not wait for full daylight.
He took the list of southern healers and store-keepers who had handled quiet-thorn in the last year and walked it against the names of every wolf currently inside Frostfang walls.
Most were still in the south. Three had traveled north with the last trade group. One of those three was already gone again. That left two.
The first was an older healer named Bren who had come north to teach a short course on wound packing. He had been in the healing halls every day since the failed rite, open and helpful. His scent carried none of the bitter note.
The second was a quiet store-keeper named Mila who had arrived six weeks earlier claiming she needed northern herbs for a southern sickness. She had been given a small room near the outer stores and had kept mostly to herself.
Thorne found her room empty.
The bed was made. The personal chest was gone. A single scrap of paper lay on the table, weighted by a smooth river stone. The handwriting matched the style Soren had described.
*The boy served his purpose. The next lesson will not be so gentle.*
No signature. No scent left behind except the faintest trace of quiet-thorn and cold iron.
Thorne took the note straight to Lila. Elara was already with her, checking the three injured wolves one more time before they were moved to a quieter wing.
Lila read the note twice. Her face stayed calm, but the air around her sharpened.
"She’s gone," Thorne said. "Packed and clear before the courtyard confrontation. Someone warned her."
Elara looked up from the bandages. "Or she was never meant to stay once the rite failed. A clean exit."
Lila folded the note. "Then we stop chasing the boy and start chasing the hand that wrote this. Thorne, take whoever you trust and walk every gate log from the last two nights. I want the exact hour she left and who was on watch.
She turned to Elara. "Elara, go back through every southern letter and supply request from the last three months. If quiet-thorn was leaving the outpost in small amounts, someone here was requesting something that gave them cover."
Thorne was already moving. "And if the gate guards were paid or threatened?"
"Then we find that too," Lila said. "Quietly. Hadrin is still looking for a public sacrifice. I will not hand him one until I know the full shape of this."
The keep had begun to stir with ordinary morning noise, but it was thinner than usual. Conversations stopped when the siblings passed. A pair of young wolves near the training yard watched them with open worry. One of the elders who had stood with Hadrin the day before deliberately turned his shoulder as Lila walked by.
The crack from the failed rite was still widening.
Thorne reached the main gate logs before the sun cleared the highest wall. The night guard on duty the previous evening was a steady woman named Petra who had served under Kane in the old days. She did not flinch when Thorne asked for the records.
"Mila of the southern stores," Petra said, running her finger down the page. "Left two hours before dawn. Claimed she had an urgent message for the outer farms. I logged it. She had the proper pass."
"Who signed the pass?"
Petra’s mouth tightened. She turned the book so he could see. The signature was neat, familiar, and belonged to one of Lila’s own junior stewards — a young man named Oren who had been promoted only that spring.
Thorne closed the book hard enough to make the binding creak.
"Where is Oren now?"
"Still in the steward’s hall, far as I know."
He then went ahead and found Oren alone, copying inventory lists. The young steward looked up with a polite smile that died the moment he saw Thorne’s face.
"The pass you signed for Mila," Thorne said. "Why?"
Oren’s throat worked. "She said the queen had approved an early departure. She had a sealed note. I didn’t open it. That’s protocol for southern runners."
"And what about the note?"