Guilt rolled from Grey Wind’s den like thick smoke gushing from a fire; Kershov wrinkled his scarred snout at the stench and narrowed his singular obsidian eye into a cutting blade. Caught you red-muzzled, didn’t I? This wasn’t the reaction the Alpha would expect of someone who had nothing to hide. Halina had brought others into Abendrot without his direct order before, as had other soldiers, but those had always been situations in which the welcomed wolf was a potential recruit awaiting Kershov’s approval anyway. This wasn’t a kingdom to hide people in—unless the glacial gladiator himself were smuggling them for a reason. For Grey to take this female into his den and react with instantaneous regret meant that he knew he’d acted out of order. Now all Ker had to do was stand here until the warrior admitted his folly.

While Grey Wind spoke, tones even and controlled despite the remorse sticking sludge-like to his fur, the Ice King remained perfectly still and silent. He gave no indication if his anger were abated or ignited by what he heard; perhaps the pitch-colored glass of his window grew a little harder, a little colder with each word, but otherwise Kershov refused to give his subject the relief of knowing his thoughts either way. Inwardly . . . he burned. Blue flames of rage licked quietly at his ribs, waiting to rush from his maw in a storm of righteous vitriol. What were you thinking?! Ker wanted to snarl. Why did you hide her? Why didn’t you share her? What were you doing?!

And then, beneath those roaring mental interrogations, smaller shouts of pain that could barely be heard. Little cries that felt like fingernails scraping pitifully at the door of Kershov’s diamond heart. Why didn’t you trust me? . . . What did I do wrong?

None of those things—furious or aching—escaped the serrated trap of the Czar’s tightly closed jaws. But he could feel them building like a storm, a blizzard of emotion that threatened to shred past its boundaries and lay waste to the calm he had worked so hard to restore within himself. For a brief moment Kershov turned his glacial glare away from Grey Wind’s apologetic visage, as if too disgusted with his underling to look at him a second longer. In reality he wrestled ferociously with the acute agony that was still so new and unbearable to him . . . this messy tangle of pointless, ugly nonsense that had shattered him—

No. Not quite. He was still here, wasn’t he? His pack unharmed and in one piece?

“If you’re having trouble with some simple poppy, I shudder to imagine how any other herb would affect your shortsighted brain.” With a brittle, frost-gilded growl, Kershov retrained his onyx lantern back toward Grey’s blurred yellow irises, as if he could punish the iron fighter with the sheer viciousness crackling behind his marble-carved mask. “By which I mean that I am seriously considering cramming something far more unpleasant down your gullet to prevent any other slips in judgment. Perhaps you’ve forgotten that Abendrot punishes insubordination? Or maybe you were so drunk off your new whore . . .”

A quiver of acid-tipped arrows waited in Kershov’s thundering throat—but then the female Grey Wind had selfishly hoarded made her entrance. The alabaster gangster took a step back, ears thrown forward aggressively and entire array of glittering knives flashing on deadly display in case this little slut decided it was her place to defend her protector. Saw Tooth was not an enemy pack, but there was only a single wolf Kershov actually respected within its boundaries; the others were all but useless to the frost-breathing Pharaoh, this fae especially since she evidently believed she could hide with Grey Wind right under his nose. Ker lifted his crown authoritatively and prepared to demand where she’d come from when the shadow-clad lass all but spilled her guts at his paws.

Horror cooled his rapidly escalating anger so rapidly he might as well have plunged it into a frozen lake. Muscles went rigid. His dark eye riveted with searing focus upon the girl’s ebony countenance. It took him several attempts to force a sound from his constricted vocal chords. “You’re Kahlan’s niece?” the Ice King rasped, suddenly feeling as if the planet were crumbling beneath him. “Does your aunt know you’re here? Or does she believe . . .”

His rage was an avalanche, a few pebbles that clattered downward and gathered strength and danger and death as they plunged ever onward into chaos, a tsunami of snow and stone and it bruised him and battered him and buried his self-control in a grave that had no bottom. “What have you done?” It was a tremulous hiss that dropped the temperature of the air around his demonically twisted muzzle about fifty degrees. Kershov lunged into Grey Wind’s space, hackles spiked and tail lashing over his spine and fangs glinting with the promise to kill. “Kahlan is the sole member of Saw Tooth responsible for saving Halina’s life after that cur Draven nearly poisoned her. And you have her niece here, in my territory, with no sanctions? Does her pack know she’s here? So help me, Grey Wind, if you’ve unwittingly created a rift—”

Kershov swallowed hard. All at once his posture slackened, emotion vanishing from his expression and leaving it dead and blank. His guts roiled violently, as if his anger had made him physically ill. Perhaps it had. “I shall decide what to do with you two later. If you step so much as a claw outside the border, I will order your immediate execution.” And with that the colossal monster turned and stalked away, the forest swallowing up his ghostly form and leaving Grey Wind and Macaria alone.