Too Late for My Shifters' Regret novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Trade
Briony burns out making the wolf brothers SSS, they ask for her sister before she can stand, and she trades them under the bell for Delphine's collared serpent, whose dead rank stone flickers.
The last of my warmth left my hands, and the three wolves I'd fed for three years turned and looked at my sister.
I was on my knees in the middle of Bonding Hall.
The rank stones along the wall were all lit up.
Three new glyphs burned on three black stones, bright as noon.
SSS.
The whole academy had come to watch the Rite of Renewal, and the whole academy had seen it happen.
My hands were gray to the wrist.
My ears rang.
I tried to stand and the floor tipped, and I went down on my side on the cold tiles.
Nobody caught me.
I lay there and looked at boots.
Lorne's boots, scuffed silver at the toes, where he always dragged his feet on the turn.
His brother's red laces.
Jory's black ones, a step behind the others like always.
"Is she breathing?" somebody asked from the benches.
"She's fine," Lorne said. "She always does this. Dramatic."
I'd fed him every third night for three years.
I'd fed him the night he broke his leg in the spring trials, sitting up till dawn with my palms on the bone.
I'd fed him the night his mother died, while he cried into my lap and called me his whole world.
I pushed myself up onto one elbow.
My braid had come loose and was stuck to my cheek.
Lorne didn't look down.
He was facing the front of the hall, where the Headmistress sat under the bronze Exchange Bell with her cane across her knees.
"Headmistress," he said, loud enough for the back rows. "My brothers and I would like to request an Exchange."
The hall went quiet.
"Now?" the Headmistress said.
"Now. We're SSS. We'd like a keeper who matches."
He turned his head, finally, and smiled across the hall.
Not at me.
At Delphine.
My little sister was sitting in the front row in pink silk, with her blonde ringlets pinned up and her hands folded in her lap.
She put one of those hands to her chest like she was surprised.
She wasn't surprised.
She'd been sitting in the front row for a reason.
"Oh," she said. "Oh, Lorne, I couldn't."
Pink sparks danced up from her fingertips, pretty as a party.
The first-years in the benches sighed out loud.
"Delphine shines," Lorne said. "Everyone can see it. Briony's warmth is..." He finally glanced down at me. "It's like a kitchen stove. It works. Nobody wants to look at it."
A few people laughed.
The red-haired one laughed loudest.
Jory didn't laugh.
He was looking at my hands.
"So you got what you needed out of the stove," I said, "and now you'd like a lamp."
My voice came out flat and scraped.
Lorne shrugged.
"You'd only hold us back. You know you would. You can't even stand up."
I stood up.
It took two tries and a hand on the nearest bench, and my knees shook the whole way, but I stood.
The stones on the wall blurred and cleared.
Every face in the hall was turned toward me, waiting for me to cry.
I'd cried for these three before.
I didn't have any left.
"Fine," I said.
Lorne blinked.
"Fine?"
"You want an Exchange. An Exchange is a trade, Lorne. Two keepers, two sides. What's my sister giving me for you?"
Delphine's smile wobbled.
"I don't think that's how..."
"It's exactly how it works," the Headmistress said. She sounded almost interested. "Both keepers consent, both keepers give. Under the bell, before witnesses."
I turned and looked at the back corner of the hall.
There, where Delphine always left him, against the wall by the door, stood the shifter she'd been given a year ago and never once fed.
He was the tallest man in the room.
Black hair falling into his eyes.
Gray skin, a starved, wrong gray.
An iron collar locked around his throat, with a ring where a chain could go.
The academy called him the cold snake.
Delphine called him "it."
His eyes were open, and they were gold, and they were on me.
"Him," I said.
Delphine actually laughed.
"The snake? Bri, he's unranked. He's never even shifted for me. He just stands there."
"Then you won't miss him."
"You're giving up three SSS wolves for a dead stone?"
"I'm not giving up anything," I said. "They already left. I'm just making it official."
Lorne's jaw went tight.
I don't think he'd pictured this part.
I think he'd pictured me begging.
Delphine looked at him, and at the benches, and at all the people watching her be generous.
"Of course," she said sweetly. "Whatever makes you feel better."
We walked to the bell.
My legs nearly went out twice.
The Headmistress tapped the bronze with her cane and it rang through the hall, low and long.
"Briony Ashlock gives three," she said. "Delphine Ashlock gives one. Say it."
"I give them," I said.
"I give it," Delphine said.
The three gold rings on my left wrist burned.
It hurt, and then they were gone, and there was only pale skin where three years had been.
A fourth ring burned in, thinner, darker gold.
The tall man in the corner flinched.
Then he walked across the hall toward me.
The crowd got out of his way fast.
Up close he smelled like rain on stone, and he was even taller than I'd thought.
"Briony," he said.
It was the first time I'd ever heard his voice.
It was low and rough.
Behind him, a stone on the far end of the wall gave a soft crack.
It was his.
It had been dark the whole year Delphine had owned him.
Now a thin gold line ran across its face, flickering.
The hall went dead silent.
He didn't even turn to look.
He bent his head close to mine.
"You just bought the wrong snake," he said.
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