Chapter 9
It was not gold, as the Sanctum’s hymns claimed. It bore no solar crest, no imperial insignia.
It was an elongated casket forged of blackened celestial silver, scarcely larger than an infant's cradle. Its surface was carved with intricate, weeping runes that pulsed with a faint, heartbeat-like cadence. From every seam of the lid, dense ribbons of silver vapor poured into the cold air, pooling across the ice like spilled milk.
Every time the casket pulsed, the scar at my throat twitched in identical rhythm.
*Thump. Thump. Thump.*
My knees trembled. The air between us was charged with a suffocating, static weight.
I raised my dwarven crossbow, sliding a steel bodkin into the groove. My boots made no sound on the frozen lake bed as I stepped into the pale light.
"Step away from the casket, Lucian," I commanded, my voice flat, steady, stripped of everything save an assassin's intent.
The rogue Alpha did not turn around. He did not reach for a weapon.
"You didn't light the pitch trenches," he said.
His voice was quiet, but within the echoing vault of the ice cathedral, it struck like an avalanche.
"The mountain draft carries the stench of sulfur," Lucian said, lifting his chin toward the vaulted ice. "Glenn’s ravens are swift. He ordered the gorge purged, didn't he? He told you to collapse the roof on the whelps and elders in their sleep."
"That was an imperial mandate," I said, closing the distance by three paces, my sight centered between his broad shoulder blades. "My quarry is the thief of the Sanctum. The civilians are not my concern."
Lucian turned slowly.
He had discarded his tunic. His broad torso was bare to the sub-zero air, corded with thick muscle that showed no tremor against the biting frost. His skin was crosshatched with battle scars—claw-rakes, whip-welts, and the puckered white holes of imperial quarrels he had survived across years of warfare.
Over his heart, inked in dark ash, was a heraldic crest: a howling wolf beneath a crescent moon, entwined with a mountain rose.
The royal insignia of the Silver Line.
Lucian’s silver eyes locked onto mine across twenty yards of blue ice.
"You spared them," he murmuring, a faint, sorrowful smile touching his lips. "Even with eighteen winters of their venom poured into your skull, your blood remembers mercy."
"My blood remembers nothing!" I snapped, my composure cracking beneath the heat raging in my chest. "I have no bloodline! I am a scentless runt, given purpose by the High Sanctum!"
"You were never a runt, Aeloria."
"Stop calling me that!"
I squeezed the trigger.
*Thwack.*
The steel quarrel vanished from the rail at point-blank velocity. Against an unarmored chest at twenty paces, the bodkin should have punched through his sternum and shattered his spine before he could draw breath.
Lucian did not dodge.
His right hand flashed forward in a blur.
*Crack.*
He caught the quarrel out of the air.
The steel bodkin stopped an inch from his throat, seized between his calloused palm and fingers. The impact tore the skin of his hand, a bead of crimson Alpha blood welling along the shaft and freezing as it touched his wrist.
He did not flinch. With a casual twist of his fingers, he snapped the tempered shaft in two, letting the iron tips clatter against the ice.
"If you want my throat, little ghost," Lucian rumbled, his silver eyes flaring with raw, incandescent heat, "take it with your own hands."
Rage detonated behind my eyes.
I dropped the empty crossbow, letting it slide across the frozen lake bed. My hands crossed to my ribs, drawing my twin trench daggers in a reverse grip.
I lunged.
I hit the slick ice at a dead sprint, my balance flawless, crossing the space in three heartbeats. I feinted high with my right blade toward his throat, while driving my left dagger low toward his hip.
Lucian did not yield ground.
He pivoted inward, crowding my reach. His forearm caught my right wrist, knocking the high slash into empty air, while his hip slammed hard into mine, smothering the low thrust with brutal combat discipline.
The collision rattled my teeth, but I spun off his flank, driving my left elbow back toward his jaw.
He caught my elbow in his open palm.
The proximity was suffocating. His bare chest pressed flush against my shoulder, radiating a furnace-heat that melted the rime on my collar. His scent enveloped me like a tidal wave—crushed cedar needles, ozone, rain, and the raw musk of an adult Alpha.
The scar at my throat screamed.
A molten shockwave arced down my spine, pooling low in my belly, turning my knees to water. A ragged gasp caught in my windpipe.
"You're fast," Lucian murmured against my ear, his deep voice vibrating through my skull. "Faster than your father ever was. But you're fighting with an assassin's fury, not a wolf's pride."
"I have no wolf!" I hissed.
I threw my head back, slamming the crown of my skull into the bridge of his nose.
Bone cracked. Lucian grunted, his head snapping back, his grip loosening for a fraction of a second.
It was all the opening I needed.
I slipped under his arm, spun on the ice, and drove my left dagger across his chest.
The steel bit deep.
A three-inch gash split the dark ink of his royal tattoo. Crimson blood welled along the cut, steaming in the freezing draft.
Lucian did not strike back. He looked down at the blood dripping from his chest onto the ice, then raised his gaze to mine. There was no rage in his expression.
There was only a devastating, hungry sorrow.
"Eighteen years of hunting across the wasteland to keep my oath to your mother," he whispered, his silver irises flaring with liquid light, "and the moment the Moon Goddess finally awakens my mate bond in adulthood, she carves my chest with imperial steel."
"Stop speaking of mates!" I cried out, lunging again, blades flashing in a blur of black iron. "I have no bond! I have no scent! Glenn told me the Goddess turned her face from me!"
I drove my right dagger toward his chest.
This time, Lucian didn't parry.
He stepped directly into the strike.
The blade sank two inches into his left pectoral. Before I could wrench it free, his massive hand clamped over mine, trapping my fingers against the hilt and burying the steel inside his own muscle.
My breath stalled. "What are you doing?"
With his free hand, he caught my other wrist, twisting it until my left dagger clattered onto the ice. Then, with a single, unyielding pull, he hauled me flush against his bleeding chest.
We slammed together, heart to heart. The hilt of my dagger remained wedged between our bodies, his hot blood soaking through the linen of my tunic, searing against my skin.
Where his blood touched my collarbone, the dead scar caught fire.
It was not pain. It was a terrifying, blinding tide of sensation that wiped out all thought. My knees buckled completely. I would have collapsed to the frozen stone had his arm not banded around my waist, lifting me off my feet, pressing me against him until not a whisper of air separated us.
