POV: Sylra
I had the guards drag Lord Maren and Lady Drey into the council chamber at first light.
Not to the guardhouse. Not to a private hearing. Into the chamber itself, where every remaining councilor sat in their appointed seats and the morning sun slanted through tall windows, illuminating every face with merciless clarity.
Maren stumbled when the guards released him. His robes were wrinkled from a night in detention, his thinning hair uncombed, his eyes darting between the seated councilors searching for allies. Lady Drey held herself better — spine straight, chin lifted — but her hands trembled where they clasped in front of her.
I stood at the head of the table. Sera flanked the door behind them, arms crossed, sword visible.
"Lord Maren." I laid the recovered letter on the table, smoothing it flat. "Do you recognize this document?"
His tongue darted across dry lips. "Your Majesty, I can explain—"
"I didn't ask for an explanation. I asked if you recognize the document."
"It's — yes. Yes, I recognize it."
"Read it aloud."
"Your Majesty, please, this is unnecessary—"
"Read. It. Aloud."
Maren's hands shook as he lifted the parchment. His voice cracked on the first word and never recovered.
"To Alpha Rovan Dareth, from loyal servants of the realm. We write to propose terms for a cessation of hostilities. The Crown's military position is untenable. We offer the following: withdrawal of all forces from the eastern wall, surrender of the palace's lower gates, and formal recognition of Alpha Dareth's grievances against the Crown. In exchange, we request personal amnesty for all signatories and retention of our lands and titles under the new—" His voice died.
"Under the new regime," I completed. "You were selling my throne, my soldiers' lives, and the defense positions of this palace to the man camped outside our walls. While my people bled on the battlements, you were haggling for the price of your survival."
"We were trying to save lives!" Drey's composure shattered. "Ten thousand wolves, Your Majesty! You've seen the fires. Every hour we delay negotiation is another hour closer to a massacre that will kill every person in this palace — including our families, including the soldiers you claim to care about!"
"I don't claim to care about them, Lady Drey. I buried three of them yesterday."
"And tomorrow you'll bury thirty! And the day after, three hundred!" Drey stepped forward, and Sera's hand dropped to her sword hilt. "We didn't act out of malice. We acted because someone had to be practical. Someone had to do what you refuse to do — acknowledge that this war cannot be won."
"So you sent our troop positions to the enemy." I let the words fall like stones. "You drew a map of our weakest wall and handed it to a man who wants to breach it. Tell me, Lady Drey — when Rovan's wolves pour through the eastern gate using the intelligence you provided, how many of those lives you claim to care about will your practicality have saved?"
Silence. Drey's mouth opened. Closed. Her hands stopped trembling because everything in her had gone rigid.
I turned to the seated councilors. Harren sat three chairs down, his silver beard immaculate, his expression carefully neutral. Lady Voss studied the table surface as though she'd never seen wood grain before.
"Lord Maren. Lady Drey." My voice carried to every corner. "By the authority vested in me as heir to the Lycan throne, I strip you of your council seats, your advisory privileges, and your access to all military intelligence. You will be confined to quarters under guard until the conclusion of this siege. If I discover the information you sent reaches Rovan's commanders before we can adjust our positions, you will face charges of high treason in wartime. The penalty for which, as I'm sure Lord Harren can confirm, is death."
Harren's jaw tightened. He said nothing.
"Remove them," I told Sera.
The guards escorted Maren and Drey from the chamber. Neither spoke. Neither looked back. The door closed behind them with a sound that settled into the bones of every person remaining.
I swept my gaze across the table. "Does anyone else have letters they'd like to send?"
No one answered. No one moved.
"Good. This session is adjourned."
The priestess arrived within the hour, as if summoned by something older than messengers.
Priestess Ithara moved through the palace corridors like smoke — silver-haired, ancient, draped in ceremonial robes that whispered against stone. She had served the Moon Goddess since before my father took the throne. Her eyes, pale as bleached bone, saw things that existed in spectrums most wolves couldn't perceive.
She found me in my chambers and didn't wait for permission.
"Sit," she commanded, and something in her voice bypassed every instinct I had to resist. I sat.
Her hands — dry, papery, surprisingly strong — gripped my wrists and turned my palms upward. The blackness from last night had faded to a faint shadow beneath my nails. Ithara studied it the way a physician studies a wound that hasn't yet begun to fester but will.
"Show me the worst of it. Don't hide what you've been hiding from your general and your soldiers."
"I don't know how to make it—"
"Think about the dungeons."
The darkness surged. It flooded up through my palms like oil through cracked earth — black, viscous, pulsing with my heartbeat. Ithara's grip tightened as the corruption spread across my hands, crawling past her fingers, reaching for my forearms.
"Enough." She released me and the darkness retreated, slow and reluctant. "How far did it reach last time?"
"My wrists. Maybe farther — I was asleep when it peaked."
"You won't be asleep next time." Ithara straightened, her pale eyes grave. "The curse is feeding on your golden wolf. Consuming her from the inside, like rot in the heartwood of a tree. The exterior looks sound, but the core is being hollowed."
"Can you remove it?"
"I cannot remove a curse placed by blood right. Rovan's grief and rage gave the old words power I cannot simply unpick." She paced to the window. "But I can tell you what feeds it. Guilt. The curse is parasitic — it attaches to the host's own belief that they deserve punishment. Every time you wonder whether those women died because of your decisions, you feed the corruption."
"Three women died in my dungeons under my protection. Whether or not I ordered it, I bear responsibility."
"Responsibility and guilt are not the same creature, child." Ithara's voice cut sharp as surgical steel. "Responsibility says: this happened on my watch and I will answer for it. Guilt says: I deserve to be punished. One is a queen's burden. The other is a queen's grave. The curse cannot distinguish between them, but you must, or the golden wolf dies inside you and what remains will be something neither gold nor wolf."
"The Blood Wolf."
"Yes." The word fell heavy between them. "The Blood Wolf is not a transformation — it is a collapse. Gold corrupted into something that feeds on its host rather than empowering her. If the curse reaches that stage, there is no reversal."
"How long do I have?"
"Weeks. Perhaps less, if the siege compounds your guilt with fresh casualties." Ithara gathered her robes. "Fight the guilt, Your Majesty. Not the grief — grief is honest. But guilt is the curse's doorway, and every time you open it, the darkness walks further in."
She left without ceremony. The door had barely closed when the sound hit — deep, resonant, shaking dust from the ceiling joists.
A war horn. Then another. Then a third, from a different direction entirely.
I was on the battlement in minutes, Sera already there, her scarred face set in stone.
The southern plain swarmed with movement. Rovan's army had broken camp and spread like floodwater — columns of wolves flowing east and west, encircling the palace in a massive crescent that tightened as I watched. The western approach, now bristling with siege engines being hauled into position. The eastern tree line crawling with infantry forming ranks three deep.
"South, east, and west," Sera said, her voice flat with professional calm that barely masked the dread beneath. "He's left the northern approach open."
"He wants us to run. Flee north and abandon the palace."
"Or he wants us to think that's the option, and he's got forces in the northern forest waiting for us to take the bait." Sera gripped the merlon with both hands. "Either way, Your Majesty, we're surrounded on three sides with no line of retreat we can trust."
Below us, the first siege engine released its payload. A boulder the size of a horse crashed into the outer wall with a sound like the world breaking, and the stones beneath my feet shuddered with the impact.