POV: Sylra
The message I sent to Rovan's camp was five lines of calculated bait, every word chosen to pull a specific nerve.
‘Alpha Dareth. New information has surfaced relevant to both parties in this conflict. Evidence that, if verified, fundamentally alters the nature of the accusations upon which your coalition was built. I propose a second parley — neutral ground, full delegations, with coalition commanders present as witnesses. The crown guarantees safe passage. Refuse, and this information reaches every pack in the realm within the week.’
Caelen read it twice. "You're threatening him with exposure while offering him a stage to respond. He'll see the trap."
"He'll see the trap and walk into it anyway." I sealed the parchment and handed it to the waiting messenger. "Refusing a parley after two of his own allies demanded transparency makes him look guilty. And Rovan cannot afford to look guilty — not when the Redfang contingent is already halfway out the door."
"He could stall. Negotiate conditions. Delay until the evidence loses momentum."
"He could. But he won't." I leaned back in my chair, feeling the golden wolf stir restlessly beneath my ribs. "Rovan's entire campaign depends on the premise that he's the victim and I'm the murderer. A public parley is exactly the venue he'd choose to reassert that narrative — if he believed it was airtight. He'll come because he's spent weeks convincing himself his version is unassailable."
"And when he discovers it isn't?"
"Then ten thousand wolves watch their war leader crumble in real time."
The acceptance arrived before sunset. Rovan's response was terse — date, time, location, a demand that both sides bring no more than twenty armed escorts. Standard parley terms. No counterconditions. No requests for an agenda.
He was confident. Good. Confidence makes people careless.
Caelen set the response on my desk. "Two days. That gives us time to position Petyr and coordinate with Draven's people inside the coalition."
"See to it. Petyr within calling distance but not visible until I signal. Draven's Stoneclaw contingent is positioned to react if it breaks down into violence."
He nodded and moved toward the door. At the threshold, he paused without turning.
"I'm fine," I said.
"You're lying." He said it without accusation, the way a physician states a diagnosis. "The corruption advanced again last night. I felt it — a surge at the third hour. Your wolf fought it, but it gained ground."
He left before I could respond. Probably deliberate, because there was no response that wouldn't confirm what he already knew.
I waited until his footsteps faded, then pushed my sleeves past my elbows.
The black veins had spread. Not gradually — aggressively, in the branching patterns of roots seeking water. They'd crossed my elbows during the night, threading up my biceps in dark tributaries that pulsed with my heartbeat. More ground in a single night than the previous week combined.
I pulled my sleeves down and went to find Ithara.
She was in her workroom, grinding herbs with the mechanical rhythm of forty years' practice. She looked up, read my expression, and set down the pestle.
"Show me."
I extended my arms. She unwrapped the sleeves with practiced efficiency, her lined face tightening as each inch of corrupted skin revealed itself. Her fingers traced the leading edge of the darkness — halfway up my biceps now, the veins thick and prominent, visibly darker than they'd been even hours ago.
"The acceleration is worse than I projected." Careful neutrality — a healer who had stopped cushioning bad news. "The corruption responded to your last transformation. Every time you shift, the curse exploits the metabolic surge to push deeper. The golden wolf's power becomes a delivery system for the very thing killing her."
"How long?"
"Two weeks. Perhaps less. Once it reaches the core meridians in your chest, the connection between your human consciousness and your wolf severs permanently. The golden wolf goes dormant. Your ability to shift, your enhanced strength, to channel any form of lupine power — all of it dies. Without the wolf to resist it, the corruption reaches your vital organs within a month."
"And if the parley works? If I break the lie publicly?"
"The guilt the curse feeds on loses its power. But if the confrontation isn't enough, we explore more desperate options." Her expression made it clear she wasn't eager to define desperate. "Two weeks gives you time — barely."
I left without thanking her. Gratitude felt insufficient for a woman cataloging the speed of my death.
The next two days compressed into precise, interlocking preparations. Caelen coordinated with Draven through Vedran's network — Petyr extracted and hidden three miles from the parley field. Stoneclaw forces repositioned within striking distance. Sera reinforced the northern wall and established fallback positions in case the parley was a diversion.
Lady Voss assembled the evidence into formal presentation — documents in devastating sequence, each building on the last. Guard reassignment. Sealed dungeon detail. Petyr's eyewitness account. Wolfsbane toxicology. Supply log discrepancy. Rovan's unrestricted access.
A noose, laid out on parchment, waiting for a neck.
I didn't sleep the night before. The curse made certain — surges jolting me awake each time I drifted, dark tendrils reaching for the meridians in my chest. The golden wolf fought back with diminishing ferocity, her radiance flickering, patches of darkness spreading through her light like storm clouds swallowing stars.
Caelen lay awake in the adjacent room. Neither of us acknowledged the other's insomnia. Some vigils were meant to be kept alone.
Dawn arrived gray and cold. I stood before the mirror and dressed for war that would be fought with words instead of steel.
Black leather jacket, fitted close, embroidered with the Thorne crest in silver thread. Trousers tucked into polished boots. The royal pendant heavy at my throat. Hair swept back, secured with pins that doubled as weapons — a detail Caelen had insisted on. Gloves covering the corruption crawling up my forearms.
I studied my reflection. The woman in the mirror looked like a queen. Sharp. Composed. Dangerous. The kind of woman who could walk onto a field surrounded by enemies and dismantle a lie without raising her voice.
Then my reflection flickered.
Not the glass — the image. My face rippled as though the mirror's surface had turned to disturbed water, features distorting and reforming in a single nauseating pulse. And in the half second of distortion, my eyes changed.
Not gold. Not the warm, fierce luminance of the golden wolf.
Crimson.
Deep, arterial red — the color of blood pooling on stone, the color of the corruption threading through my veins. The Blood Wolf — the cursed transformation my mother's journal had warned of, the thing that lived on the other side of the golden wolf's light — looked back at me from my own face. Its gaze was ancient, hungry, stripped of everything human, and for one searing second it saw me with a recognition that made my blood crystallize in my veins.
Then it was gone. My eyes were brown. The mirror was still.
My hands gripped the edge of the dressing table. Wood creaked under the pressure. Knuckles white, jaw locked, breaths coming too fast and too shallow.
The Blood Wolf had surfaced. For one second, it had broken through every barrier the golden wolf maintained, every wall the bond reinforced, and looked out through my eyes at a world it wanted to devour.
One second. That was all it had needed.
Two weeks, Ithara had said. Two weeks before the golden wolf went dormant and the only thing left inside me was the creature I'd just seen staring back from the glass.
I released the table. Straightened my jacket. Pulled on my gloves.
And I walked out to face the man who had put it there.