Corvus Nightshade's Arc

Chapter 8 of 11

They reached the courtier's camp at dusk. Corvus had meant to go alone. He had no one to leave Elara with, and the bond would scream if they parted now. So she walked in beside him, hood up, the kingmaker mark hidden under her sleeve. He held her wrist and pulled a thin sheet of shadow across her skin. The mark dimmed to plain flesh. Lord Adrian Blackmere waited inside the silk tent. One lantern. Two chairs. Wine already poured. He looked at Elara first, then at Corvus. "You brought her." Corvus did not sit. "I had no choice." Blackmere nodded once, as if he had expected it. He drew a tarnished silver disc from his coat and set it on the table. The chain pooled around it. "My seal. Wear this and you are my niece, come from across the water. The shadow trick on her arm will not hold under court eyes. This will." Elara lifted it. The metal was cold and scratched deep. "And him?" Blackmere's gaze slid to Corvus. "Your husband. A quiet man. A trader. No one looks twice at married kin." Corvus's jaw tightened. Elara felt it through the bond before his face moved. She set the necklace around her throat and let the disc rest against her collarbone. "Then we marry," she said. Plain. Final. "Before the gate. Tonight, if it has to be." Blackmere allowed himself the smallest nod. "Tonight." They walked out under the lanterns with a story stitched around them and a vow waiting at the end of it. Corvus felt the shape of his plan bend again — not break, bend. Twenty years alone, and now he would cross the gate as someone's husband, with a kingmaker on his arm wearing another man's seal. He kept his hand on Elara's wrist. The shadow held. For now, that was enough.