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“Nice place,” he says, pointed to the frescoed ceiling. “Now, I feel like kind of a dick for not springing for a hotel room, at least.”
“You weren’t expecting company,” Nathan says, gesturing at a group of chairs near one of the two fireplaces in the massive room. “Let’s have a seat.”
I take one of the wing chairs beside Nathan and Jonah drops into one across from us. He sits sideways and throws his legs over the arm, sneakers planted firmly on the cushion of the chair beside him. He pulls a joint from behind his ear and asks, “You cool?”
“Not that cool,” Nathan says dryly.
“Fair enough.” Jonah puts the joint back.
The less time spent with this guy is probably for the better, so I cut to the chase. “What did you find out about the binding?”
“Well, first of all, you were right,” he tells me. “It was a thrall spell.”
“Xiao is the one who suggested that,” I say, then wonder if that crossed the professional line.
“Then Xiao was correct.” Jonah’s eyes dart to Nathan’s. “You’ve been under the binding the longest.”
“How long?” Nathan asks.
Jonah shrugs. “Twenty-five years, give or take a few, looks like.”
Twenty-five years? I wasn’t even born then. “How long have I been under the spell?”
“About six years now? They’re not exactly time stamped. These are rough estimates.” Jonah looks between us. “Anything substantial happen to the two of you thirty and six years ago.”
My stomach flips over.
Five years ago, I invoked the Right of Accord and left my pack.
Twenty-five-ish years before that, Nathan had done the same thing.
I expect to see those facts register on his face, but they don’t. My thoughts are such a jumble, the only way I can express what’s going through my mind is to whisper, “The Right of Accord.”
He blanches.
Intrigued by the change in tone, Jonah sits up, giving us an interested incline of his head. “All right, you two. Spill the beans.”
Nathan casts a questioning glance at me, but I can only shrug. I have no idea what the rules are about disclosing this information to a human magician. I wouldn’t tell a random human on the street about it, but he knows about werewolves already. Not telling him won’t keep our existence a secret.
Nathan apparently comes to the same conclusion. “The Right of Accord is a rarely invoked law among our kind. Before accepting a place in the pack and transforming at the full moon, a young werewolf can leave their family and spend five years in the human world.”
“Rumspringa,” Jonah says. “But for werewolves.”
“I don’t know what that is,” Nathan says irritably. “I invoked the right twenty-five years ago. And Bailey is the only other werewolf I’ve ever heard of who’s invoked it.”
“Five years ago,” I finish for him, though I’m sure Jonah already got there. “Invoking the Right of Accord is what put the binding on us?”
“Not necessarily.” Jonah reaches into his back pocket. Xiao makes a move toward him as he does so, and he puts his hands out. “Easy. It’s an iPhone, not an IED.” He slowly retrieves the phone, shakes it a little, then turns back to us. He scrolls his finger across the screen. “Your kind is familiar with runes, right?”
“Of course,” Nathan answers for both of us.
Personally, I slept through that class in school.
“The spell on the queen uses runes from Tyr’s aett; you’re familiar with Tyr?” Jonah pauses to check.
“The Norse god of war. He sacrificed his arm to trap Fenrir,” Nathan says.
“That,” I agree quietly.
“Well, Tyr’s aett is all over her.” Jonah points his finger at Nathan. “And you are bound with etheric chains.”
Nathan shakes his head. “I’m unfamiliar with the term.”
“I think I can get it from context.” I lift up my stump and gaze at it in horror. “Whatever this spell is, I’m representing Tyr. You’re Fenrir.”
The wolf, bound by the gods until the end of time itself.
“Someone wanted you chained up. Someone from your pack.” Jonah confirms for Nathan. “And they used her to do it.”
“That’s absurd,” Nathan scoffs. “We’re already bound. The thralls control whether or not we change our forms. They could have simply denied me.”
“Nathan and I didn’t know each other. He’s from a powerful family, but I’m not. And the spell they put on him, they did that before I was even born,” I point out. “Nobody knew I was going to exist, so how did they figure this spell would work? Really effective divination?”
“I assume they weren’t looking for you, specifically. As an individual, I mean,” Jonah revises. “Chances are, they were waiting for someone else to come along and invoke the Right of Accord, or whatever. They enchanted the Right, not you.”
“That’s quite a gamble,” Nathan notes. “No one had invoked the Right for centuries before I did.”
“Then whoever did this was patient,” Jonah says with a condescending nod. “Maybe they were working on it for a long, long time? Maybe since an agreement was put into place between your two species?”
