POV: Kai Riven
Prophecy tastes like iron on my tongue.
Aric’s words hit the room like a knife thrown point-blank—“One of your wolves dies before dawn”—and my pulse drops into a hard, cold stall. I move without thinking, a breath from crossing the space and breaking his jaw—
Rena’s hand lifts, glowing, and the gesture stops me dead. Not a push. A tether. Her power doesn’t command; it catches. My body stills because she asked it to without speaking.
Aric’s split lip pulls into a grin that deserves breaking. “See?” he breathes, delighted. “Even your King bends.”
“Careful,” I warn, low.
“Why?” he purrs. “Because the end has manners?”
Rena’s aura tightens like a storm winding itself to a point. “Say it again,” she whispers, voice laced with thunder.
“One of your wolves dies before dawn,” he repeats, savoring each word. “The prophecy never lies.”
Air stutters. Walls vibrate. Light gathers in the seams between stones like frost. I angle my body to shield her out of habit, out of need, out of love that doesn’t care who hears it in my bones. Auren steps up on her right, close enough that our shoulders almost align around her. For once we’re not fighting; for once we’re a wall.
“He’s trying to get into her head,” Auren whispers, tight with fury. “Don’t let him.”
“I won’t,” I say, even as fear gnaws, teeth on nerve. Prophecies bend. Prophecies break. I told her those words like prayer. Hearing his version feels like swallowing glass.
Rena steps off the final dais stair and the light around her shifts—less blaze, more blade. Eyes like hammered gold, hair flashing white-gold, crown humming quietly against a city still singing from her Ascension. Her power has a sound now; it threads my name through the air even when she doesn’t speak it.
“Where,” she says, each letter a rung down into something colder, “is my father.”
Aric breathes out, pleased by his own importance. “Where the prophecy ends,” he answers, and lets his voice drop to winter. “In blood.”
Auren flinches. My teeth clamp. Rena’s aura flares in a rippling ring—chairs rattle, torches bow, banners snap on their poles. She’s not just furious; she’s wounded in a place no hand can touch. That look crosses her face—the one I’ve seen when she stands over maps and chooses where to place young wolves she’d rather keep home. Mercy dragged into war by necessity.
“Wrong answer,” she says.
Aric spreads his manacled hands, mock-pious. “I only deliver messages. Destiny writes them.”
“I write mine,” Rena snaps.
“Not tonight,” he says, and smiles like a man who knows exactly which vein to press to make a heart misfire.
My control thins. I feel my wolf shove hard at the bars I keep him behind. Kill the mouth, he snarls. Stop the rot. I lock my jaw until it aches and focus on what matters: her. Always her.
“Rena.” I keep my voice low. Gentle, but edged—steel wrapped in cloth. “Look at me.”
Her head turns the smallest fraction. Gold eyes cut to mine. The world falls quiet inside their bright.
“He’s bait,” I say. “Hooks everywhere. Don’t give him your throat.”
Breath shudders through her. She nods once. The light around her relaxes a hair; the banners stop complaining. For one heartbeat, control returns—thin silk stretched across a storm.
Aric ruins it with a single taunt. “Tell your wolves to start praying, Luminous Queen. Love is expensive. You’ve chosen two currencies.”
Auren laughs once, broken and sharp. “You’ve got one trick, old man. You point at fear and hope it grows.”
“It always grows,” Aric replies, eyes glittering. “Especially in Kings who love like boys.”
“That’s enough,” I say, stepping closer, letting my shadow fall over him. He should see exactly what hunts him if he breathes wrong. “You’re done speaking.”
“Am I?” He tilts his head, conspirator’s delight curdling his mouth. “Then consider this my last kindness. When dawn breaks and one of you is cooling on her marble, who do you think she’ll choose to bury?”
Rena’s breath hitches. I hear it. I hear everything now. My wolf gnashes against bone. Auren’s fingers twitch toward his sword. My hand lifts, palm open in warning. Not yet.
“Don’t,” Auren whispers to me, barely sound. “He wants you to snap.”
“I don’t snap,” I murmur.
“Same,” he says, jaw tight. “But I’m thinking about exceptions.”
“Gentlemen,” Aric mocks, rolling the word in blood. “Decorum at funerals.”
Rena moves.
One step forward. One step into range. Light peels off her like wind off cliff rock. She isn’t shouting; the roar lives under her skin. “You will take me to him,” she says, voice layered with the hymn of every Luminous who ever refused to lie down. “Or you will choke on your secrets right here on this floor.”
Aric lifts his chin, showing throat as if daring us to carve it. “A floor cleans easily,” he says. “A prophecy does not.”
Something in Rena buckles—an old fracture line pressed too hard. For a blink it looks like grief; the next, it looks like rage. Gold brightens to white at the rim of her irises. Her aura coils tight as a spring. The air thins. Even the flames hesitate, like they know they’re about to be asked to kneel.
“Rena.” I put my body between her and the man who wants to unmake her. “Breathe with me.”
She drags in air through her teeth. “He has my father. He has my mother’s locket. He has the city by the throat and he keeps smiling.” Her hands shake. “How do you want me to breathe.”
“Together,” I say, and take in a breath big enough for two lungs. “In. Hold. Out.”
Auren mirrors me, voice ragged. “In. Hold. Out.”
For three heartbeats, it almost works. The light eases. The columns stop creaking. My wolf steps back a pace, willing to wait if she asks.
Aric ruins it with a whisper. Not to her. To me.
“Do you know which one you are?”
I don’t look at him. “What.”
“In the riddle,” he says, smiling like winter knives. “Love and loss, kneel and die. Do you know which wolf she buries? I do.”
Sound cuts. Blood surges. Rage flashes a white sheet behind my eyes. I see my hands on his throat, my claws out, my teeth in, and I don’t move because Rena—always Rena—still has a hand lifted in that glowing gesture that holds me back from my worst choice.
She turns to him, every line of her terrible and holy. “Where is he,” she asks again, softer. Softer is worse.
“Where the prophecy ends,” Aric answers, a sermon delivered at a grave he already dug. “In blood.”
The world tips.
Her power slams outward before any of us can catch it—before I can catch her. Not a wave this time. A hammer. Stone screams. Light detonates in a ring that lifts dust like weather and picks up bodies like toys. Columns crack down the middle with a sound like ribs breaking. Auren throws his arms around Rena’s shoulders, trying to anchor her; I wrap from the other side, bracing, dragging, pleading wordless into her hair.
“Rena,” I bark, voice shredded. “Pull back.”
She can’t hear. Or won’t. Or both. The blast races for the far wall, hits ancient marble dead-on, and erases it. Night crashes through the wound in the palace. Cold air howls. Shards of stone fan out over the terrace like snow that cuts.
Torches flare outside. Shouts rise—a thousand throats all at once, raw with hunger and hate. Banners trample. Boots thunder. Runes skitter off armor like sparks off wet steel.
The gap yawns wider, choking on smoke and chant and metal.
Enemy lines pour forward, faces slick with moonlight and malice, voices surging into one sound that rolls through my bones and makes my wolf bare his teeth.
Rena loses control and unleashes a blast that destroys half the throne room wall—letting the enemy army surge in.