Chapter 10
"Look at me, Aeloria," he commanded, the deep rumble of his Alpha voice vibrating through the marrow of my bones.
I couldn't look away. My head fell back, resting against his broad shoulder, my eyes locked onto the silver brilliance of his stare.
"You believe you were born empty," Lucian said, his breath hot and ragged against my lips. "You believe the Goddess abandoned you, that Glenn forged you from gutter scraps to be his personal knife."
"I... that is what I am..." My voice was a shredded whisper. My fingers, trapped against his chest, had stopped fighting; they were curled into the hot skin of his ribs, clinging to him as if he were the only solid thing in a collapsing world.
"Listen to me," he said, his forehead resting gently against mine, his rough stubble scraping my skin. "Eighteen years ago, on the night of the Winter Solstice, the Western Throne fell. It was no honorable challenge between alphas. It was poison and treason."
A heavy tremor ran through his frame.
"Glenn came under a treaty banner," Lucian said, his voice dropping into a dark, grieving register. "He brought laced wine and forty templars. By midnight, King Valerius was paralyzed upon the dais. Queen Isolda fought to her last breath to hold the corridor outside the royal nursery."
In the dark behind my eyelids, a buried memory flared—a woman with long silver hair, blood on her silk gown, singing a frantic lullaby while heavy boots battered down an oaken door.
"I was sixteen winters old," Lucian choked out, his silver eyes wet with grief. "A junior sentinel of the royal guard. I swore a sacred oath to your mother as she fell—to protect her bloodline, to find her infant child, and to tear the stolen crown from the Elders' throats."
"No..." I whimpered, shaking my head against his temple. "No, Glenn took me from the winter crows..."
"He took you from a blood-soaked cradle!" Lucian’s voice boomed across the ice cathedral, shaking rime from the pillars. "You were three moons old, Aeloria! The true heir of the Western Throne! The only line born with the dual sovereignty—an Alpha’s dominion to command, and a Luna’s light to heal. A living child whose very existence proved the Council had no right to rule!"
My chest hitched. The fragrant resin was weeping from my collarbone in earnest now, soaking the wool of my shirt, radiating heat like molten silver.
"He couldn't slaughter you outright," Lucian murmured, his broad palm cupping the back of my neck to steady my trembling head. "The ancient blood-curse of the Moon Mother is absolute: murder a true royal heir in cold blood, and the slayer’s own wolf goes rabid within seven days. So Glenn chose a darker theft."
Lucian turned his head toward the plinth beside us.
The silver mist was swirling thick around our boots now, rising in luminous wreaths, humming in direct harmonic resonance with the pulse in my throat.
"He did not steal a relic from heaven," Lucian whispered. "There was no divine gift from the Moon Goddess. The Sun Sanctum’s golden myth is built on an atrocity. That casket holds no stone from the stars."
Slowly, deliberately, he reached down to my forearm.
Concealed within the interior track of my right bracer was my reserve pit-silver quarrel—a slender, razor-edged bodkin quarrel carved from unrefined pit-silver, reserved for an assassin's terminal strike.
Lucian did not strip the weapon from my grip.
Instead, his large, scarred hand closed firmly over my fingers, locking our hands together around the cold silver shaft.
"What are you doing?" I gasped, terror and confusion tearing through my chest.
He guided me two steps toward the stone plinth, keeping his body between me and the freezing draft.
The blackened casket lay inches away.
In the center of the celestial silver lid, there was no keyhole. There was no iron latch.
There was only a shallow, circular indentation carved into the metal—a biometric seal shaped precisely like the hollow at the base of a human throat.
And inside that groove, ancient, dried blood was etched into the runes.
The silver vapor poured violently from that cradle. It was not cold mist; it was an incandescent, radiant breath that pulsed in exact, agonizing symmetry with the seam beneath my collarbone.
*Thump. Thump. Thump.*
"Glenn brought you to the high altar eighteen years ago," Lucian whispered, his voice thick with raw hatred and grief. "He used cold blades to sever your birthright, mutilating your spirit and tearing your royal voice away before you could speak. He locked what he stole inside this casket, sealing the lid with your own infant blood so no other wolf could ever open it."
A ragged, animal sob tore from my lungs.
*The cold bite of silver. Torches flaring in the vaulted dark. A scream that ripped through an infant's chest until the light went out.*
"He hid the casket in the Sanctum, using its warmth to claim the gods had blessed his reign," Lucian said, his grip tightening over my fingers, his silver eyes searching my shattered gaze. "And he raised you in the dark, scentless and deaf to your pack, turning you into the very hound he used to butcher anyone who uncovered his secret."
"No..." The word was barely breath.
"He told you that you were broken," Lucian rumbled, pressing his forehead against mine, his heartbeat pounding against my bruised ribs. "He told you that you were an empty shell. But your soul is inside this silver, Aeloria. He could hide it, but he could never destroy it."
With slow, terrifying deliberation, Lucian raised our joined hands.
He did not guide the quarrel down toward the box.
He pulled my wrist upward, pressing the razor-sharp tip of my silver quarrel flush against the leaping pulse of his own jugular.
The silver point broke the skin of his throat. A single bead of his crimson Alpha blood crawled down the polished metal, searing hot against the skin of my index finger.
Lucian didn't flinch. His silver eyes remained locked on mine, steady, fearless, and entirely surrendered.
His hand held mine in an iron grip, locking the lethal quarrel against his own throat, while his other arm steadied my trembling wrist, positioning our locked hands directly above the crying blood-groove of the Sanctum reliquary.
He gave me the choice.
Drive the quarantine silver through his neck, or shatter the lie of the empire.
"The gods never blessed the Elders with divine light, Diana," Lucian whispered, his deep voice filling the freezing stillness of the cavern. "You gave it to them with your first scream. Cut the seal and take your stolen soul back."
And at that exact second, from the mouth of the canyon, a sound shattered the glacial ice.
*BRRRRRRR-HOOOOORN.*
The massive, iron-throated war horns of the High Inquisitor Legion tore through the gorge, their deafening blasts raining shards of frost from the vaulted ceiling.
Glenn had arrived.
