Too Late for My Shifters' Regret novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Bride Price

Her father sells her to the Dragon of the Northern Reach, she announces she'll win the Crown Charter instead, and in the cellar she finds a dragon egg stamped dead.

My father didn't look up from his soup when I walked in.

"You're late," he said.

"The carriage was late."

"Then you should have taken an earlier one."

The dining room at Ashlock House was the only room in the house that still looked rich.

The rest of the house had bare squares on the walls where paintings used to hang.

He'd sold them one at a time, and told everyone they were being cleaned.

Delphine sat at his right hand in pink, with Lorne standing behind her chair like a footman.

The other two wolves stood by the sideboard.

They looked worse than they had three days ago.

Lorne's silver hair was dull, and there were shadows under his eyes.

My stepmother sat at the far end, picking at a roll, and didn't say a word.

She never did.

Cassius had come in behind me and stopped at the door.

My father's eyes went to his bare throat.

"Where's the collar?"

"In my room," I said.

"That collar cost forty crowns."

"Then sell it."

Delphine giggled into her napkin.

My father set his spoon down very carefully.

"Sit," he said.

I sat.

Cassius stayed by the door.

I could feel him there.

"You've made a fool of this family," my father said. "Trading three SSS wolves for a serpent. In front of the whole academy. Do you know what people are saying?"

"That Delphine got three wolves for free?"

"That my eldest has no sense." He picked up a folded paper from beside his plate. "Fortunately, it no longer matters. You're getting married."

I laughed.

I couldn't help it.

Nobody else laughed.

"To who?"

"To the Dragon of the Northern Reach."

The room went still.

Even the wolves looked up.

Everybody knew about the Northern Reach.

Cliffs and snow and a castle nobody visited.

The old stories said its lord was a monster who ate his servants and never came south.

"Is that a joke?"

"His steward approached me last month. The Reach wants an Ashlock bride. The bride price is twenty thousand crowns."

Twenty thousand crowns.

Exactly what we owed.

I knew that number.

I'd seen it on a letter in his study that he'd thought I hadn't read.

"Why not Delphine?" I said. "She's the one who shines."

Delphine put a hand on her heart.

"Papa couldn't spare me," she said.

"Delphine is too precious to send to the snow," my father said, as if that settled it. "You're older. You're plain. You're practical. You'll do well enough up there. The wedding is at the spring equinox."

The spring equinox was eight weeks away.

I looked down at my soup.

There was a long gold hair floating in it.

Delphine's.

"No," I said.

"I've already signed."

"Then unsign."

"It's a contract, Briony, not a dance card. I'm your father. I can sign for you until you're twenty-five or until..."

He stopped.

I knew the rest of that sentence.

Every keeper child in the kingdom knew it.

"Or until I hold the Crown Charter," I said.

My father's face didn't change.

But his hand closed on the paper.

"The Charter goes to the Spring Competition champion," I went on. "Any contract signed for her by her family is void. I read the rules every year. I'm going to enter."

Lorne snorted.

"With a garden snake?"

"With my partner."

"You'll be torn apart in the first round," my father said.

"Then you'll have your bride back in the first round."

Delphine sat up straight.

"Then I'll enter too," she said brightly. "With my wolves. Papa, wouldn't that be lovely? The Charter in our family? They'd have to put my portrait in the Hall."

"Lovely," my father said, and smiled at her the way he'd never once smiled at me.

He waved a hand at me without looking.

"Fetch the red wine from the cellar. The good one. We'll drink to your sister."

I went.

Cassius followed me down the stairs, though nobody told him to.

The cellar smelled like mold and old apples.

Half the wine racks were empty.

I found the good red at the back and reached for it, and my elbow knocked the corner of a crate on the floor.

The lid slid off.

Inside, on a bed of straw, was a stone.

No.

An egg.

It was the size of a loaf of bread, gray-green and speckled, and it was so cold my fingers ached before I even touched it.

The crate was stamped in black.

DEAD. SELL FOR SHELL.

Under that, my father's seal.

I picked it up without thinking.

That's my problem.

I pick things up.

It was heavy and smooth, and under the cold, somewhere deep, I felt the faintest flicker.

Like a heartbeat a long way off.

Behind me, I heard Cassius stop breathing.

I turned.

He was standing at the bottom of the stairs with the lamp in his hand, and his gold eyes had gone wide and strange.

"Put it down slowly," he said. "That's a dragon egg."

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