Sylra's POV
The council chamber erupted into chaos before I even took my seat.
Nobles crowded the gallery, their whispers sharp and venomous. Councilors lined the long table, their faces carved from stone and contempt. The throne sat empty—my father too weak to attend, too close to death to witness what his kingdom had become.
Three women murdered in the royal dungeons. Under my watch. Under my protection.
Lord Harren spoke first, his voice cutting through the noise. "This is a disaster. Three women dead without trial. It looks like a coward's assassination."
"Or worse." Lady Voss leaned forward, her cold eyes fixed on mine. "The princess lost control of her own household. If she cannot protect prisoners awaiting judgment, how can she possibly protect a kingdom?"
"The princess dithered for days." Another councilor, his name lost in my rising panic. "She couldn't make a decision, so someone made it for her. Responsibility without authority is the hallmark of a failed ruler."
I stood before them with nothing. No defense. No explanation. No suspect but the one whose absence damned him—and damned me by association.
Because part of me believed they were right.
Someone had made this choice for me. Someone had looked at my mercy and called it weakness. Someone had decided I was too soft to rule and taken matters into their own hands.
The doors burst open with a crash that silenced the chamber.
Rovan stormed through, his face pale as death, his eyes wild with a grief that had curdled into something far more dangerous. Guards moved to intercept him, but he shoved past them with supernatural strength, his gaze locked on me with murderous intensity.
"You." His voice shook with barely contained rage. "You murdered them."
"Rovan—"
"MY MOTHER." The words tore from his throat, cracking in the middle before rebuilding into something terrible and cold. "My sister. They were prisoners. They were supposed to face trial. And you had them butchered in the night like animals."
"I didn't order this." I stepped forward, hands raised. "I was going to exile them. I had decided—someone else—"
"LIAR!"
He was close now, close enough that I could see the tears streaming down his face, the veins standing out in his neck, the tremor in his hands that spoke of violence barely restrained.
"You're a murderer," he spat. "You couldn't face them in daylight. You couldn't look my mother in the eye and swing the blade yourself. So you sent your warrior to do your bloody work while you slept safely in your chambers."
The court murmured. Heads nodded. The accusation landed with the weight of truth—because it was exactly what I feared. Exactly what the evidence suggested.
"I swear to you—"
"Your oath means nothing." Rovan's voice dropped, the tears still falling but his words turning cold and ancient. "You killed my family. You destroyed everything I had left."
His hands rose slowly, forming shapes in the air. Precise movements. Deliberate gestures. Something old stirred in the chamber, a pressure building against my skin.
I recognized those movements. From my mother's journal. From the passages I'd read about curses and blood magic and the terrible prices paid by those who wronged the ancient bloodlines.
"Rovan, don't—"
"I loved you." His voice broke on the words, then hardened into steel. "I warned you about my mother. I testified against my own blood. I condemned my family to death with my own testimony." His hands continued their movements, power gathering around him. "I took an arrow for you. I nearly died saving your life. And THIS is how you repay me?"
"Please—"
But he was already speaking. The old words poured from his mouth, thick and venomous, resonating with power that made the air itself tremble.
"By the blood of my mother. By the blood of my sister." His eyes never left mine, burning with grief and hatred and something that might once have been love. "I curse you, Sylra of the Golden Line. I curse you to feel their blood on your hands until the day you die."
The pressure intensified. Something pressed against my chest, seeking entry.
"I curse you to become what you truly are." His voice rose, echoing off stone walls. "A wolf of blood, not gold. A queen of corpses. A ruler of ashes."
Something CRACKED inside me.
Where the golden wolf slept, where warmth and power had nested since the forest transformation, something went horribly wrong. I felt it—corruption spreading through my core, black ink bleeding into golden water. The warmth turned cold, then hot, then agonizing beyond anything I'd ever experienced.
I fell to my knees, a scream tearing from my throat. My hands hit the stone floor, and I stared at them as pain ripped through every nerve. The golden glow that had lived beneath my skin flickered, stuttered, turned dark.
"Rovan—" I gasped his name, but he was already turning away.
His tears had stopped. His back was straight. When he looked over his shoulder, there was nothing in his eyes but emptiness where love had once lived.
"You are not my mate." Each word fell like a hammer blow. "You are not my princess. You are nothing to me but the woman who murdered my family."
He walked toward the doors, his footsteps echoing through the frozen silence of the chamber.
"And I will make you pay," he said without turning around. "With everything you have."
The doors slammed behind him. The sound reverberated through my bones, through the burning corruption spreading inside me, through whatever remained of the golden wolf now twisted into something darker.
The court stared in silence. Councilors. Nobles. Guards. All of them watching their future queen kneel on the floor, gasping, broken, cursed.
I raised my hands before my face.
They looked darker than they should. Shadows clung to my skin where golden light had once glowed. And beneath those shadows, spreading slowly across my palms, I could see it.
Blood.
Not real. Not yet. But there—seeping up from somewhere deep inside, staining my skin with the mark of what Rovan believed I'd done.
The curse had taken hold.
And the blood was already there.