“You and your enticing promises. It’s been eight months since I wet my blades. I will kill something before my respite ends.”

Not if I could help it.

Stella pondered Namtur’s face. “I don’t see the resemblance.”

“‘Great Uncle’ is an honorary title.” Explaining that he was my near-immortal grandmother’s sworn blood brother would only complicate things.

Namtur gave Stella his best smile. His eyes crinkled into tiny slits and he looked as sweet as could be. “I won’t be any trouble.”

Stella got up. “Please sit down. Would you like some tea?”

Namtur smiled even wider and took his time to waddle to the seat and gingerly lower himself into it. “Oh no, no. You’re very busy, and I don’t want to be a bother.”

I really wanted to clap in appreciation of his fine performance, but that would ruin things.

“It’s no trouble; I was going to make a cup for myself anyway.”

She reached into her desk and took out a small flag made out of a rag tied to a chopstick and a tiny pitcher. She thrust the flag at me.

I took it. “What’s this?”

“That’s your war banner. He has been in his office with his butt glued to his chair since this morning. He canceled all his meetings. Nobody can go in. He’s waiting for you. Wave your banner.”

I waved the banner. “Why?”

Stella picked up the small pitcher. “I’m going to sprinkle milk on it like the Mongols did before battle. That’s all I can do to help.”

“That’s so nice,” Namtur said. “You’re such a thoughtful friend.”

I held the war banner out, and Stella sprinkled some milk on it. Then I turned around and marched to Nick Feldman’s office.

I knocked on the door.

“Come in.”

I entered and shut the door behind me.

Nick Feldman looked like a human thundercloud.

I walked to his desk and sat in the chair.

He picked up a small glass tube from his desk. White powder floated inside it. Nick snapped it in half and tossed the powder on the floor. Orange lines ignited in the floorboards, forming a complex spell, and vanished. He’d sealed the room.

Seals like this came in several varieties. Some blocked sound, others blocked sight, a third type did both. This one was a trap. It had sealed us inside the room, blocking all sight, sound, and magic, and I would have to break it to get out.

Nick Feldman was going to kill me.

I didn’t want to hurt him. He was always kind to me. Once Nick started, he wouldn’t stop. I would have to cripple him.

He looked at Stella’s war banner. I put it on his desk and sat back.

“Ms. Ryder, do you know what happens when a foreign shapeshifter enters Pack territory?”

He wasn’t just calm. He’d turned into an icicle.

“They must present themselves to the Beast Lord in twenty-four hours.”

Nick fixed me with his stare. His eyes were filled with lead. “Do you know what happens if the visitor fails to observe the proprieties?”

“The Pack finds them and brings them in?”

“Yes. They are not always gentle about it.”

I waited. He was going somewhere with this.

“An average shapeshifter is at least three times stronger than the average human and twice as fast. Throw in the claws, the fangs, the accelerated healing, the hunting instinct, and what you have is an overpowered apex predator, armed with the intelligence of a human and the strength of a monster.”

None of this seemed to require a response on my part. If this was anyone else, I’d ask if I should be taking notes or if this was going to be on the final. But the main objective here was to keep him calm.

“Shapeshifters are insular, distrustful of outsiders, and deeply paranoid.”

Pot, kettle.

“Their humanity is often hanging by a thread,” Nick continued. “It takes very little prompting for that thread to snap. When they encounter a foreign shapeshifter in their territory and are met with resistance, they assume that that shapeshifter is up to no good. They will attempt to apprehend this invader. They may get excited and even kill them. When that happens, the pack this visitor belongs to retaliates. This is the point where rational thought and logic goes out the window and we have a shapeshifter war.”

He was working up to something. There was an explosion coming, I could feel it.

Nick crossed his arms. “What we have here, right now, is a foreign shapeshifter who happens to be the beta of the largest shapeshifter pack in North America. His mere presence in the Pack’s territory is an insult. If they find out he’s here and he escapes, the Pack loses face, and they will retaliate. If they apprehend him and he’s injured, Ice Fury will retaliate. Either way, this is a declaration of war. We are watching the beginning of a massacre. And that massacre won’t be fought in Alaska; it will be fought here, in this city.”

He pointed to the window.

“On those streets. Right out there.”

I sat very still. This conversation was like crossing an iced-over lake. One wrong step and I’d plunge into frigid water.

“Hundreds of shapeshifters will die. Thousands of innocent bystanders will be murdered. These are not some hypothetical statistics. This country has seen shapeshifter wars before. We know in gruesome detail what kind of casualties result from it. And those were small packs. Can you even imagine the scale of the slaughter when the two largest packs rip into each other?”

I opened my mouth to answer.

“I think you can,” he said.

The ice under my feet just cracked.

“I think you’re counting on it. To the people you serve, humans have no more value than mosquitoes.”

He picked up a folder from the corner of his desk and dropped it in front of me. It fell open. Pictures fanned out over the desk. A photograph of Erra on a horse, my uncle on her left and me on her right. Another image, me in a royal gown of Shinar, receiving a group of businesspeople, half of them glaring, the other half awkwardly trying to bow, on the sunlit terrace of Dosari, Erra’s California palace. The pale green gown hugged my body. My hair, caught by a golden circlet, cascaded down in a waterfall of golden waves. Gold bracelets, identifying me as the Heir, glinted on my wrists. A third image, a painting, so lifelike it was almost a photograph—me in blood armor and on a horse, splattered with gore and screaming.