POV: Raevan
Grief has a smell.
It hangs in the halls like smoke, seeping into fur and stone. I remember it from old funerals, from fallen warriors, from the night my father died. This time it is thinner and sharper, threaded with something personal.
This time it smells like failure with Soraya’s name.
We rode back from the border in silence. No one met my eyes at the gate. Kaide went straight to the watchtower. I came here.
Now my chambers look like a storm tore through them. The bed is overturned, a table lies in splinters, pottery shards glitter across the floor. My knuckles are raw from punching stone until they split.
I stand in the middle of the wreckage, wolf pacing just under my skin. If I let him out, he’ll tear through the fortress looking for someone to blame.
A knock comes.
“Leave,” I growl
The door opens anyway.
Vienne slips inside. Her eyes are swollen. In her hands she holds a strip of blue cloth. Soraya’s scarf. The one with silver threads she twisted when she was nervous.
My throat locks.
“We held a vigil,” Vienne says quietly. “In the courtyard. For her.”
“Stop talking like she’s dead,” I snap.
Her fingers tighten on the scarf. “We saw the blood,” she whispers. “The trail. The cliff. Human arrows. Raevan, no one could have survived that fall.”
“We didn’t find a body,” I say. My voice comes out rough. “Until I see her corpse, she is not dead.”
Vienne flinches but doesn’t step back. “The pack needs a word,” she says. “Dead. Gone. Taken. Something. Right now all they have is fear and stories.”
“What do they want from me?” I rasp. “A blessing? Permission to move on?”
“They want an alpha,” she answers. “Not a ghost walking his own halls.”
Below, through the balcony door, I hear a drumbeat and low voices. Someone howls once, long and broken.
“How are they?” I ask, because talking about them is easier than facing the empty space where Soraya should be.
“Quiet,” Vienne says. “Tazir hasn’t made a single joke. He just sat by the fire and watched the sand. Some of the warriors burned incense and whispered her name. The healers left bowls of water at the steps.
“And Kaide?”
“Still on the tower. He told a guard that if she’s out there, someone should be awake to see her first.”
My chest tightens.
Vienne steps closer. “They’re talking about her differently,” she murmurs. “Not as a curse. Not as Zarek’s lost bride. As ours. The girl who healed the scouts. The wolf who took down raiders. The outsider who called our alpha an idiot to his face.”
A rough sound escapes me. “She did that.”
“More than once,” Vienne says. “Some of them regret how they treated her. It doesn’t fix anything. But when they say her name now, they say it with respect."
“Too late,” I mutter.
“Maybe,” she agrees. “But it’s real.”
I stare at the scarf. It still smells faintly like her—desert air and spice and something bright I can’t name.
“What about Azhara?” I force out.
Vienne’s jaw hardens. “Still under guard. When she heard, she laughed. Said the desert finally took back what never belonged to Ashra.”
Red flickers at the edges of my vision. My wolf surges, demanding teeth and blood.
Vienne grabs my arm. “Don’t,” she warns. “She wants you wild and irrational. She wants the elders to see you unfit. Don’t give her that.”
I breathe until the urge to rip the door off its hinges fades.
“What do they expect me to do?” I ask. “Stand over the fire and say, ‘She’s gone, accept it’? Pretend I accept it too?”
“They expect you to lead,” Vienne says. “To keep us from tearing each other apart while Zarek sharpens his knives. You don’t have to believe she’s gone. You just can’t drown.”
I look around at the broken furniture, the blood on my hands. “I don’t know how to lead without her.”
“Then don’t,” she says softly. “Lead for her instead.”
The words hit something raw. I see Soraya in flashes—arguing with elders, laughing with Tazir, standing between a trainee and a beating, walking into danger again and again because she refused to watch others bleed in her place.
She would hate this. Me tearing apart my own walls while Zarek forges alliances.
“What are they calling her?” I ask.
“The Moon-Marked,” Vienne whispers. “Some of them… the lost queen of the dunes.”
Queen. Not of a throne. Of choice. Of defiance.
I straighten slowly.
“Tell them,” I say, each word heavy, “that her name doesn’t stay at the vigil. It belongs in war councils and oaths. When we draw steel, we remember her. Ashra does not forget its dead—or its missing.”
Vienne nods. “I’ll tell them.”
“And you?” she asks. “What will you do now?”
I look one last time at the wreckage. It suddenly feels small compared to the war rising beyond our walls.
“Stop breaking things that can’t fight back,” I say. “Start preparing to break the ones who can.”
Relief flickers over her face. “We’re with you, Raevan. Even the ones too proud to admit it.”
She leaves, closing the door gently.
I step out onto the balcony.
Below, the pack clusters around the central fire. The drumbeat continues, steady and low. I can’t hear their words, but I know who sits in their hearts tonight.
My lungs ache.
My wolf presses against my ribs.
“Let them accept,” I murmur to the dunes. “Let them grieve.”
I grip the railing.
“But I won’t,” I whisper. “Not while Zarek breathes.”
I lift my face to the moon and make a promise into the sky:
If Soraya fell to the sands, I’ll make the desert remember her name for generations.
And if she still lives somewhere beyond my reach—I will find her.
One way or another, Zarek will pay for both.