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Danika Byrne cried exactly the way she apologized: furiously, and with the expression of a woman who intended to discipline her own tear ducts later.

She saw me notice.

"Leave it be, girl." She flicked her hand at me as if that would stop me from making a comment. "You were going to comment on this."

"I absolutely was." I moved around the desk before I could reconsider what I was doing. "I was going to tell you that you look ridiculous."

Her glare was almost like getting a hug.

Then I put my arms around my grandmother for the first time since I was nine years old.

She went completely rigid.

For several seconds, I was fairly certain I had made a catastrophic error and was about to be turned into something decorative, filed alongside her jars of eyeballs and other parts. Then one of her hands came up and caught the back of my shirt. Her fingers tightened hard enough to pull the fabric against my shoulders, and she held on.

Neither of us discussed it afterward.

We're Byrnes. We have standards.

By Wednesday, the Council had lifted its sanction against Greywood, though it had nothing to do with mercy. Alex had spent nearly a week calling Alphas across the country, and nine of them had formally demanded a review. One controlled most of the eastern seaboard and, according to Alex, had never formally requested anything in his life. In the end, the Council apparently decided that punishing Greywood wasn't worth risking a confrontation with that many packs at once.

Amber reopened the Moon Howl Thursday morning. She sold out of everything before eleven and cried in the walk-in refrigerator where she thought nobody could hear her. Stella returned to school Monday and promptly earned detention for telling one of her teachers exactly what she thought of the previous fortnight. Jack got his stitches out and kept one in a jar on his bedroom windowsill, which he now showed to visitors with the solemn pride of someone displaying a war medal.

My sanction remained.

Nobody had lifted that one, and I wasn't expecting them to. Officially, I was still a problem any coven in any territory could act against without answering for what happened afterward. In practical terms, that meant the Greywood gate stayed closed, the fence stayed doubled, and I wasn't going shoe shopping on Euclid Avenue for the foreseeable future.

I'd survived worse.

Saturday came anyway.

Danika refused every offer of company with enough venom that eventually even I understood she meant it. I spent the afternoon on Alex's porch instead, because sitting inside the coven waiting to find out whether my grandmother was about to become property would have finished whatever remained of my sanity.

At ten past four, my phone buzzed.

The message was from Danika.

That alone was enough to get me upright. My grandmother believed phones were useful for emergencies, commands, and informing people they were late. She had never sent me a photograph in her life.

The picture was terrible. It had been taken at an angle by somebody holding a phone as though it were a mildly offensive object. Danika's desk filled most of the frame, and on top of it lay a single sheet of paper bearing a red wax seal that had been broken cleanly through the middle.

Beneath the photograph were four words.

It has been settled.

For a few seconds, I couldn't breathe.

Then everything I had been holding in my body for the last two weeks seemed to lose its structure at once. My hands started shaking, followed by my legs, and I sat down hard on the porch step before gravity could make the decision for me.

Alex was beside me before I registered him moving. One enormous hand settled against the back of my neck, warm and heavy, and stayed there while I shook.

He never said a word. He didn't tell me it was over or ask whether I was all right, and he didn't try to make twenty-six years disappear by pointing out that Danika was safe now.

He simply stayed with me, which is the kindest thing anybody has ever done for me.

River found me afterward.

He had been sleeping badly since Charon. Worse than badly. Frost covered the inside of his bedroom window most mornings now, and the cold around him had stopped banking down even when he rested. Neither of us had said the word grace aloud in nine days.