Chapter 9
"Put the crown down," I hissed, my teeth bared, my inner wolf snarling in an agonizing frenzy of fear and desperate recognition. "Put it down, or by the Moon Goddess, I will open your jugular before you take another breath!"
Lord Malakor did not flinch from the silver.
He did not release an Alpha roar to shatter my ribs. He did not call for the guards stationed outside the heavy doors.
With agonizing, unhurried slowness, he lowered the white-gold crown back onto the marble pedestal behind him.
Then, his massive right hand rose into the silver moonlight.
His scarred fingers did not clamp down on my wrist to break my grip. He did not disarm me.
Instead, his broad, warm palm settled gently over the back of my hand.
He pressed his rough fingers against mine, holding the silver blade firmly against his own throat, willingly trapping the lethal metal against his pulse.
The contact shot through my veins like lightning.
The dormant thread in my chest surged, expanding into a searing, golden warmth that stole the breath from my lungs. The scent of pine, snow, and rain-washed earth poured off him, clean and overwhelming, stripping away the bitter smoke of war.
My fingers trembled against his throat. "You..."
"Tell me," I choked out, desperate to steady the weapon between us, desperate to stop the spinning in my head. "Tell me why a butcher hands me the crown of my house! Tell me why a warlord who holds the continent by the throat offers it to a ruined princess! Why do you bear the brand of my father's kennels?!"
He looked down at me through the hollow darkness of the skull.
His grip on my weapon hand did not tighten into violence; it remained steady, anchoring my trembling fingers against the beat of his lifeblood.
"I promised you once," his voice scraped out—no longer the guttural, manufactured growl of a northern barbarian, but a soft, ruined rasp that sounded like it had been dragged through years of silence and ash, carrying the forgotten cadence of a broken child whose tongue had been scorched by fire.
*“When the frost melts, Princess... I will bring you back the stars.”*
The world went violently silent.
The blood drained from my face. My lips parted in paralyzed, breathless shock.
*The cellar.*
*The midnight bread.*
*The stolen hairpin that broke the iron ring.*
Before my paralyzed mind could form a thought, before my lungs could draw in the freezing mountain air, his free hand reached up to the iron clasps at the sides of his head.
His scarred fingers caught the heavy metal buckles securing the dire-wolf skull to his temples.
With a sharp, definitive click that echoed through the high armory like a snapping branch, the clasps released.
