Chapter 9
The questions hammered against my skull, unanswered and suffocating.
A loud, thunderous boom echoed from the lower levels of the high tower, snapping me out of my trance.
The heavy, rhythmic thud of an iron-tipped battering ram striking the outer barricade.
*BOOM.*
The fortress shook. The silver goblets on the solar sideboard clattered to the floor, rolling across the flagstones.
Down on the landing, the shouting began.
"Hold the line!" Lucian’s voice tore through the stone flues, clear, commanding, and laced with absolute, lethal authority. "Cross your spears! Anyone who touches the third riser takes a blade to the throat!"
"Out of the way, little brother!" Fenris’s roar answered, accompanied by the terrifying chorus of fifty berserkers shifting into their half-wolf war forms. "The moon is bleeding! The eclipse begins! Break the outer gate! Bring the ram to the solar door!"
*BOOM.*
The final twenty-four hours had evaporated.
The storm outside had ceased, replaced by an unnatural, suffocating stillness. I turned toward the high lancet window.
The clouds were parting over the jagged black teeth of the Ironcrag peaks.
And there, climbing into the midnight sky, was the moon.
It was no longer pale silver. A dark, coppery shadow was creeping across its lower limb, staining the lunar face the color of fresh, arterial blood.
The crimson eclipse had begun.
***
The violence outside the solar doors was deafening.
*BOOM. CRACK.*
The outer barricade splintered. The sound of clashing steel, breaking bone, and the terrifying, wet snarls of shifting wolves echoed up the narrow spiral stairwell.
"Form the ring!" Lucian bellowed, his voice straining against the chaotic roar of battle. "Sentinel shields up! Do not let them bring the ram onto the landing!"
A wet, sickening scream cut through the air, followed by the heavy thud of a body tumbling down the stone steps. Lucian’s men were fighting like demons, but they were outnumbered ten to one. Fenris had brought the full weight of the pack’s vanguard—the blood-sworn warriors who had spent years feeding on raw meat and dark elixirs, bred specifically for the brutal close-quarters slaughter of a succession war.
*“Fenris! Fenris! Blood for the Mantle!”* the berserkers chanted, their voices vibrating through the three-inch ironwood doors of the solar.
Inside the room, the temperature had plummeted to freezing.
Oberon was on his feet.
The silver chains anchoring his wrists were glowing with a terrifying, dull orange heat, the supernatural friction of his muscles straining against the metal until the links began to warp and stretch. The black rot had completely consumed him. There was no bronze skin left—his entire body was a tapestry of swollen, pitch-black veins that pulsed with a dark, necrotic light.
His face was no longer human. His jaw had distended, his muzzle lengthening, his teeth jagged and monstrous, his golden eyes drowned in an absolute, rabid abyss that reflected no soul, no thought, no memory.
He was the ancient beast of Wraithwood. The primal nightmare that had haunted the northern forests for a thousand winters.
*“ROOOAAARRR!”*
The roar that erupted from his throat was not a sound; it was a physical shockwave. The stained-glass windows in the high lancets shattered outward, raining shards of colored glass into the courtyard below. The heavy oak desk flipped onto its side, scattering ledgers and parchments across the floor.
*SNAP!*
The left anchor ring tore completely free from the granite wall, taking a shower of pulverized stone with it.
Oberon’s left arm swung free, the heavy silver chain whipping through the air like an iron flail, smashing the stone altar in half with a single, devastating impact.
I backed away until my spine struck the solid stone wall beneath the shattered window, clutching the bone dagger with both hands, my knuckles white, my chest heaving in absolute panic.
*BOOM!*
The heavy battering ram struck the ironwood doors of the solar directly.
The massive iron bands groaned. The heavy oak crossbar bowed inward, splintering along the grain. Cracks appeared in the three-inch timber, dust and wood chips spraying into the room.
"One more strike!" Fenris’s voice roared from the landing, muffled by the timber but dripping with manic triumph. "The bar is splitting! Bring the ram back! Tear the threshold down!"
"Lucian!" I screamed, the name tearing from my throat unbidden.
"Rosa!" Lucian’s voice answered from the other side of the splintering wood, raw with agony. I heard the sound of steel parrying steel, the wet crunch of a blade meeting bone, and Lucian’s ragged gasp as he was slammed against the exterior of the door. "Rosa, get away from the threshold! Fenris has breached the stairs! I can't hold them—"
A brutal impact cut him off—the sound of Fenris’s massive fist striking Lucian’s jaw, followed by the sickening thud of Lucian hitting the stone floor.
"Tie the little whelp to the railing!" Fenris bellowed, his breathing ragged and victorious. "Make him watch! Make him watch me eat the heart of the father he loved so much!"
*BOOM!*
The ironwood doors shrieked as the ram struck again.
The heavy crossbar snapped in two with a sound like a thunderclap. The doors were thrown inward by three inches, held back only by the bent, screeching metal of the interior hinges. Through the jagged gap in the splintered wood, I caught a terrifying glimpse of the landing outside: torches blazing, the floor slick with wolf-blood, Lucian pinned to the stone railing by three berserkers, his face bloodied, his storm-gray eyes wide with horror as he stared through the gap.
And standing before the threshold was Fenris.
His half-shifted form was ten feet of bristling muscle and brown fur, his curved ceremonial blade gripped in his massive claws, his chest heaving, his fangs bared in a demonic grin of absolute conquest.
"The eclipse is full!" Fenris roared, pointing his blade at the splintered door. "Break it down!"
Inside the solar, Oberon’s final tether snapped.
*SNAP!*
The right anchor ring pulled free.
The Alpha was completely unchained.
He turned toward me.
There was no recognition in the black abysses of his eyes. No mercy. No memory of the girl he had raised, the girl he had protected, the girl he had fed from his own high table for fifteen winters. He saw only warm flesh, only a heartbeat, only an obstacle between him and the primal slaughter his poisoned blood demanded.
He lunged across the shattered flagstones.
I squeezed my eyes shut, raising the bone dagger in a pathetic, trembling defense, waiting for his massive claws to tear my chest open, waiting for the dark oblivion of teeth and bone.
*SLAM!*
Oberon’s massive frame slammed into me, knocking the breath from my lungs as he drove me down onto the steps of the broken altar.
The impact knocked my elbow violently against the hollow stone foundation beneath the altar's plinth.
*CLICK.*
A hidden spring mechanism within the stone released. A concealed floorboard—cut so precisely into the granite that it was invisible to the naked eye—popped open with a dull, hollow thud, sliding sideways into the floor.
I gasped, looking up into the face of death.
Oberon was on his knees above me, straddling my hips, his massive, corded neck entirely engulfed in swollen, pulsing black veins that throbbed with unholy fire. His golden eyes were gone, completely drowned in a sea of rabid, pitch-black madness, his elongated fangs dripping foam onto my cheeks.
