Sylra's POV
The full moon rose over the palace, and my blood turned to fire.
Heat scorched through my veins, burning from the inside out. My bones ached with a pressure that demanded release, demanded transformation, demanded something I didn't know how to give. My skin felt too tight, stretched over a body that wanted to become something else entirely.
The golden wolf was awake. And she was hungry.
I paced my chambers, unable to sit, unable to think about anything except the three women rotting in the cells below. Lady Vela. Neressa. Elene. By law, they should die. I had pronounced judgment. The council expected execution.
But every time I closed my eyes, I saw the blade falling. Saw blood spreading across stone. Saw myself becoming a queen who kills.
A knock at my door. I knew who it was before I opened it.
Caelen stood in the corridor, his gray eyes taking in my flushed skin, my restless movements. "You're feeling it."
"It's worse than before." I pressed a hand to my chest, where the heat pulsed strongest. "Much worse."
"It will be until you complete the transformation." He stepped aside, gesturing toward the corridor. "Come. Training will help."
The training yard gleamed silver under the moonlight. We drew our swords without ceremony, falling into the familiar rhythm of attack and defense. Steel rang against steel. My muscles burned with exertion instead of supernatural fire. The pressure in my bones faded to a manageable simmer.
For a few blessed minutes, there was nothing but the fight.
Then Caelen spoke between strikes. "You need to execute them."
My blade faltered. His sword sliced past my guard, stopping an inch from my throat.
"What?"
He withdrew, circling. "Lady Vela. Neressa. Elene. They need to die."
"I haven't decided—"
"You need to decide." He attacked again, driving me backward across the yard. "They tried to kill you. They hired assassins. They watched from the trees while their men put arrows in the air. If you show mercy, they will try again."
I parried desperately, struggling to keep pace with his sudden ferocity. "I'm not sure execution is—"
"You need to be sure." His strikes came harder, faster, each word punctuated by the crash of steel. "The council thinks you're weak. They whisper in corners about the girl who scrubbed floors at Blackmaw. If you pardon assassins, you confirm every doubt they've ever had."
"I'm not pardoning them." I blocked a blow that numbed my arm to the elbow. "I'm considering alternatives. Exile. Imprisonment."
"Alternatives that prove you're not fit to rule." Caelen pressed his advantage, his blade a blur of silver in the moonlight. "A queen who cannot execute traitors is a queen who invites treason."
"And if I kill them?" I ducked under a sweeping cut, rolled, came up with my sword raised. "What does that make me?"
"A queen." He didn't hesitate. "A ruler who demands respect through strength. A monarch who proves that defying her means death."
"I don't want to rule through fear."
Caelen's blade caught mine and twisted. My sword spun from my grip, clattering across the stones. Before I could react, his boot swept my legs out from under me. I hit the ground hard, the impact driving the air from my lungs.
He stood over me, sword point hovering at my throat.
"Then you won't rule at all." His voice was cold, clinical, stripped of everything except brutal truth. "Every enemy you spare comes back stronger. Every mercy you show becomes a weapon in someone else's hands. Lady Vela will escape or be rescued. Her allies will rally. And the next assassination attempt won't fail."
I knocked his blade aside and scrambled to my feet, chest heaving. "You don't know that."
"I know history." He didn't pursue, letting me retrieve my sword. "I know what happens to rulers who show weakness. They die, Sylra. Their families die. Their legacies burn."
"So I become a butcher instead?" I gripped my sword with both hands, knuckles white. "I order three women's heads removed and call it justice?"
"You call it necessity." He raised his blade again. "You call it the price of the crown you're about to wear."
We clashed again, but the rhythm had changed. His strikes weren't teaching anymore—they were punishing. Every blow drove home his point with physical force.
"Your father understood this," Caelen said between exchanges. "He executed his enemies when he had to. He didn't enjoy it, but he did it. Because a kingdom needs a ruler willing to make hard choices."
"My father is dying because of me." The words burst out, raw and bitter. "The prophecy is killing him. I've already cost him everything."
"Then don't let his sacrifice be meaningless." Caelen's blade caught mine in a bind, our faces inches apart. "Honor what he built. Protect what he gave you. Even if it means becoming something you don't want to be."
I shoved him back, creating space. "I'm not like you, Caelen. I wasn't raised to kill. I wasn't trained from childhood to see death as a tool."
Something flickered across his face. There and gone, but I saw it—a flash of genuine hurt beneath the cold mask. His jaw tightened. His grip on his sword shifted.
"No." His voice dropped, rough at the edges. "You weren't. You were raised to bend. To apologize. To hope that if you were good enough, people would stop hurting you."
"Don't—"
"But hoping doesn't stop enemies." He advanced again, each step deliberate. "Kindness doesn't stop assassins. And mercy doesn't stop the next blade aimed at your heart."
Our swords met with a crash that echoed across the empty yard.
"You need to learn," Caelen said, gray eyes burning into mine. "You need to become someone capable of doing what must be done. Or everything your father built—everything he sacrificed—dies with you."
I held his gaze. The moonlight carved shadows across his face, highlighting the tension in his jaw, the intensity in his eyes. He believed every word. He believed it because he'd lived it, because somewhere in his past, someone had taught him that survival meant becoming hard.
"And if I lose myself in the process?" I asked quietly. "If I become something I can't recognize?"
Caelen's expression didn't change. "Then at least you'll be alive to regret it."
He withdrew, sheathing his sword in one fluid motion. The lesson was over.
But the choice remained, pressing against my chest with the same relentless heat as the golden wolf.
Execute them and become a queen. Spare them and prove every doubt.
The full moon hung overhead, waiting for my answer.