The metal doorknob clinked as the queen's hand tightened. Isaiah's nerve nearly failed him. If anything was a more sensitive matter to his parents than even his marriage trepidations, it was Varna.

This was a mistake. He'd miscalculated: overestimated her willingness to search for alternative courses of action when talk of compensations didn't melt down the day before.

"What about Varna?" said his mother coolly.

The City Guard had said they were running out of options. He didn't have much sway in the palace, but he had more than they did. Isaiah fought to draw a steady breath. "I talked with the City Guard and both the Pereira and Pasternak families yesterday morning. Neither had any new leads—either on the newest disappearance, or the one before it. I understand that you and father want to address this with local talent, but there are lives on the line if that is not enough."

"And what does this have to do with Varna?"

She knew what it had to do with Varna. Already, Isaiah could hear the danger in her voice that appeared when he brought up something she disagreed with.

He continued with every nerve in his body trembling. If he could just pick his words right, this might not blow up in his face. "Varna breeds more than just messenger-crows. They train tracking-crows, too, and have handlers who—"

"How do you know all this?"

"I went searching."

"About Varna."

"Yes."

"Isaiah, by the power of the Talakova and every Talak therein, tell me you kept this a secret from any and all common people you fraternize with. I cannot believe this. A son of Calis, doing secret research on Varna—do you understand how this would look if Madeira got even the barest hint of it?"

Isaiah gritted his teeth. "I did all my research in the palace archives, mother, and yes, I understand full well how this would look."

"Then do tell me, what are you proposing after all this research?"

"An alliance with Varna."

Deathly silence suffocated the room.

When Isaiah's mother spoke again, her voice had dropped in pitch and volume. "Whatever you say next, I suggest you tread very carefully."

He was going to be sick. The temptation to bow out and apologize reached a searing point, but a fraction stronger remained the distraught voices of people in the market, backing his proposition.

They'd never backed his proposition. He'd only run it by Verde, who had worried over it, even as he'd said it was the right way. Isaiah had had Eliane scour the palace archives for every alternative. She'd come up empty-handed.

He took another breath. "I understand that our family has poor relations with Varna for a reason—"

"We have no relations with Varna for a reason."

"—And at the same time, I feel I would be failing the people of Calis if I did not explore other options." It stung not to say "we," but that was a conflagration Isaiah knew this conversation would not survive. At least his mother was still in the room now. "The Calisian wayfinders are struggling. Wayfinders in Madeira and Drevo have no more answers than we do. I do not know if Varna has also been seeing disappearances, but whether they have or not, they have a tool we have not yet tried. How would it look to Madeira if we managed to solve this? We'd be saving their citizens, too."

"Madeira's wayfinders found the hemlock wolf that attacked their fringe settlements four years ago. What we need is time, and four moons of it is scarcely any."

"I met a woman in the market last week who did not think that a beast was responsible for these disappearances, and she had support for her observations. She thought it was a Talak."

"Are you suggesting that the Calisian common people have gotten lax on their entrance rituals? You of all people should know how ubiquitous those have been since your grandmother—"

"That's not what I'm saying, no. People are still making the entrance rituals."

"There is no reason for a Talak to be preying on citizens with any regularity if they are making the entrance rituals, Isaiah."

"No, there is one way."

There was no going back now. The whole room was simultaneously chilled and stifling, half with the argument, half with what he had just suggested. The Talaks offered magic through contracts. The deals that gave barrowers their powers were struck on a Crow Moon between human and spirit, and sealed with blood. The cost of a new magic line was always a human life—willing or otherwise—but the magnitude of the powers conferred determined the scale of the maintenance offerings. Offerings required every Crow Moon, for every barrower, for the rest of the magic-line's existence. For minor powers, this might be a mouse or a songbird. For greater ones, the Talaks required larger prey. And in the darkest, most powerful cases, that Crow Moon prey was no longer an animal.

"I do not know what you are talking about," said Isaiah's mother darkly. She knew perfectly well.

"Given this realm's history, we would be blind to ignore the possibility."

"Necromantic powers have been banned in the Ring of Thirty for two hundred and thirteen years without a lapse."

"That didn't stop Dinah."

The sharp intake of his mother's breath told Isaiah he'd pushed too far.

"We do not speak that name in this household," she hissed. Isaiah stepped back on reflex.

His mother advanced on him. "That is behind us, do you understand? Your father and I have spent our lives rebuilding an alliance from the shaky ground that my parents left it on thanks to that whole catastrophe. I will not have my own son spreading the suggestion that Calis has produced another royal with necromantic powers, or feeding that thought to our neighbors so that they can seize the excuse to scapegoat us and sever all ties. You take for granted the roof we have fought to put over your head. I give you freedom to mingle with the common people, and you come back with this? Madeira's punitive measures had this realm in shambles when your father and I took the thrones. Would you like to see us returned there?"

Isaiah wanted to say that Varna had been left in greater shambles after the damage Dinah wrought. It was weakened again now from the passing of both its monarchs four years ago, so soon after rebuilding from its decimation two generations prior. He wanted to say that an alliance would offer more than just a new way of tracking missing citizens. Two small realms banded together could stand against the big one that punished them both over Calis's mishandlings. But his mother's breaths came short and sharp, and that alone dried up his words.

"I think it would be best for everyone if you took the evening to yourself," she said. He was being ordered to his room. "And now, if you have nothing productive to discuss, I have preparations for a ball to attend to. Heaven forbid those fall to pieces by the word of the one they were designed for."

And with that, she wrenched open the door and strode out, slamming it behind her. The room's sudden decompression stripped all strength from Isaiah's limbs. He dropped to the ground behind the chair whose back he'd gripped. His whole body was shaking.

"You knew it would go this way," he whispered. The chastisement only hurt more coming from himself. Further self-deprecation caught in his throat. He was not the fool for broaching the subject. He couldn't be. Calis needed allies more than it needed appearances: a truth his parents had willfully blinded themselves to, and one that would cost the lives of citizens the longer it festered, unaddressed.

Heaven forbid those fall to pieces by the word of the one they were designed for.

But it could not be selfish, either, to cling to the last scraps of control he still had over his future by not stirring the pot more than it had already been stirred. His mother would not be opposed to stripping what power he still had over his marriage if he crossed a line again. He could continue to pursue this on his own for a little longer. He had to—at least until he had made a marriage decision of his own accord, robbing his parents of their power to choose for him. Then he could push them. Once he had a partner, he wouldn't be alone.

The terror that he was making all the wrong calls sank its teeth in deepest when he was alone.

Still shaky, Isaiah pulled himself up again. He moved to the door and stood with one hand on the wood, listening and feeling for the approach of anyone outside. The hallway remained empty. He slipped out and took servants' passageways to his room on the top floor. Here, stone walls and floors blotted out the sounds of ballroom preparations and left him in merciful peace. Isaiah sank down on his bed. Pekea uncurled from the mattress and bounded towards him. She stopped short, just shy of his hand. The tears Isaiah had held back earlier made a sudden bid for release as his guide dragon sniffed over his fingers with a velvet-soft nose. He stroked her wings—uneven, but both soft as peach fuzz. She butted his hand, so he picked her up and hugged her.

He couldn't cry. No matter his anxieties about the prospect of marriage to an unknown woman. He still had the power of choice; he had requested the ball for a reason, and his parents, caught in an amenable mood, had acquiesced. Or maybe they'd just been glad to see him showing anticipation for his own courtship process.

Isaiah had never been opposed to the principle of marriage. There was something comforting about the idea of having a partner: someone to confide in, to rule beside, and to get to know better than anyone else in the world. Someone to trust. He wanted that. Longed for it, even. He'd just hoped for time to find someone who shared his inclinations behind closed doors. Someone whose idea of an evening well spent was to raid the kitchen or stay up talking until the wee hours of the morning, and who would not find offense in his lack of attraction. Not because he was blind—there was far more to attraction than seeing—but because no matter how many times he'd been "reassured" that he was just a late bloomer, that flower had remained comfortably shut.

In his private thoughts, Isaiah suspected this made life easier for him, at least on balance. He still thanked the mental capacity it had freed up in his teen years while others his age built their lives around ever more elaborate mating rituals. Many had assumed he had a male preference. They were incorrect, but Isaiah supposed it might have been easier if there had been truth to that presumption. Then, at least, there would be no conversation about progeny.

But while he'd found others like himself, they were desperately rare. None he'd met had that spark of compatibility that would make partnership so appealing. And so he had delayed on the marriage question for as long as he could, even as Madeira and Drevo sent suitors through his parents' formal courtship machinations. Pekea had ensured none stayed longer than a pair of days.

Pekea, ever the good distraction, snuggled further into his arms, arranging herself like a baby rather than a cat-sized dragon with a formal job. Isaiah got up before tears got the better of him. As he moved to the door to his balcony, though, Pekea stiffened. The moment Isaiah's hand landed on the handle, she flipped over and scrambled to his shoulder instead, where she hunched up like a wet bird.

"It's fine," he murmured, stroking her. She did not relax. "I know you don't like her, but she's hurt right now."

That did not stop Pekea from hunching down further as Isaiah opened the door to the cool evening air. The nesting-box to the side of the door remained silent. Isaiah's brow creased. He was normally met by the soft rattle of a crow's greeting. He moved to the nest-box and felt inside. Luva was still there. She shifted under his touch, feathers fluffed to full volume and chest tucked deep in her nesting material. The down beneath her body feathers was fever-warm.

Pekea growled.

"Stop it." Isaiah plucked her off his shoulder and tossed her unceremoniously back inside. She dashed back out, ran up his leg to return to his shoulder, and growled again. She ducked Isaiah's hand when he went to stifle her face. Isaiah dipped a finger in Luva's food and water bowls to check that she had both, then returned to his room with another swat at Pekea as she hissed instead. "I'm calling a crow-keep, okay? If she's sick, they'll say for sure whether or not it can pass to you."

As soon as the balcony door closed behind him, Pekea shook herself and hopped off his shoulder, good as new. Isaiah suspected she was jealous of the attention he'd given the crow since Luva returned with a limp two mornings ago. She'd stayed in her nest-box ever since, but this was the first time she'd seemed to take ill, rather than simply resting.

"Pekea, pen."

Isaiah ran a hand along the wall to his desk and pulled a piece of paper from his pile there. Pekea appeared at his elbow with the pen she'd knocked to the floor while playing fetch the day before. Isaiah squared the paper with one hand and slid the inkwell close to minimize the chances of drips on his desk. The palace servants had told him of enough inky Pekea claw-prints over the years to make him cautious. It would be easier, of course, to simply visit the palace rookery himself, but his mother had implied that she wanted him in his room for the evening, and Isaiah had every intention of complying. He didn't want another encounter with her, either.

The note to the palace crow-keep was a short one. When the smell of wet ink dispersed, Isaiah tested the paper to ensure the words were dry, then rolled it up and tapped the desk beside him. Pekea hopped off his lap onto it. Isaiah tucked the message into the ring on her collar, then said, "Take that to Tirzah," and slipped her a treat in promise of the bigger one she'd receive when she returned. Pekea hopped to the floor and scooted through the Pekea-sized flap pinned open at the corner of his door. Her scampering vanished down the hallway.

Isaiah capped his inkwell and checked his cuffs for the stiffness of stray ink. There was none. He returned to his bed and kicked off his shoes to wait to Pekea's return. Jealousy might explain some of her response, but the more he considered it, the less sure he was that it covered everything. If Tirzah didn't find what was wrong with the crow, Isaiah had one more thing to add to the list of questions already making him hope Niccola from the market would turn up at the ball.