LOGINDerek Price stood in the entrance of the crypt which housed the Gothic Castle on Shadow Ridge road, and for the first time since he'd arrived in Valemont, he felt something other than contempt.He felt fear.The flagstone was displaced, the opening gaping like a mouth that had swallowed his rival whole. He shone his flashlight into the darkness, saw the stairs descending into blackness, and thought of every horror movie he'd ever mocked Kelsey for watching."Kelsey?" His voice echoed, came back empty. "Kelsey, if this is some kind of prank…"No answer. Of course no answer. Her car was still parked where the road ended, driver's side door dented, glass cracked in a pattern that looked like claws. He'd found her phone in the underbrush, screen shattered, the last text visible through the damage:The dead don't sleep in Valemont.He'd tried to call the police. They'd laughed…. The Valemont PD had a file on Kelsey Jones, "that reporter who cried wolf," and they'd stopped responding to her
She found Silas in the garden.Not the transformed garden of the blood debt, but the real garden, or what passed for real in the Gothic Castle, overgrown hedges and moss-covered statues and a fountain that flowed with water too clear to be natural. He sat on a stone bench, dressed in simple black, his hair still damp from washing, the scar on his face livid in the morning light.He looked up when she approached. His eyes were silver, human, exhausted."You should be resting," he said. "The Echo Price…""I know what it took," she interrupted, sitting beside him, close enough to feel his heat, far enough to maintain the illusion of safety. "My father's face. I can't... I can't see it clearly anymore. I know I had a father. I know his name starts with…" she stopped, frustrated. "I know facts. But the feeling of him is gone. Like he died years ago instead of being alive, being worried, being someone I should remember."Silas was silent for a long moment. Then "I am sorry.""Are you?"He t
She woke in her own bed.She didn't remember walking back. Didn't remember Elira appearing, or guards carrying Silas, or anything after the gray light of dawn. But here she was, in the silk sheets, in her dress stained with blood and dirt and something else she didn't want to identify.The dagger was on her nightstand. The blood-red stone pulsed faintly, slower than her heartbeat, as if satisfied.She sat up. Her head ached. Her hand—the one that had touched Silas's muzzle—burned, and she looked at it and saw a mark: a circle of faint silver, like a brand that hadn't fully formed, centered on her palm.The Echo Price.She knew it immediately, the way you know things in dreams. The library's knowledge, bleeding through. Every time she calmed the beast, the bond deepened. Every time the bond deepened, her human life unraveled.She flexed her hand. The silver circle faded, but didn't disappear.And then she tried to remember her father's face.She could. She was sure she could. Dark hair
She'd seen him before, on the first night of the first day. But nothing could have prepared her for the this sight. This was close, immediate, the full reality of what centuries of cursed existence had made him.He was massive—eight feet at the shoulder, maybe more, his body a nightmare hybrid of wolf and man and something older. Fur black as the crypt stone, matted with blood that might have been his own. Claws that scraped sparks from the floor. And his face—his face—stretched between forms, the sharp aristocratic bones warped into a muzzle, the silver eyes human and desperate in an inhuman skull.He looked at her. She saw recognition. She saw hunger. She saw the man inside screaming against the beast's control."Silas," she whispered.The name hit him like a physical blow. He staggered, claws raking the stone, a whine escaping his throat that was almost canine, almost pleading."Silas," she said again, louder. "I know you're in there. I saw you. I saw what she did to you. I saw wha
Kelsey flinched. She hadn't made a sound.Silas turned, and his eyes found her immediately—silver in the moonlight, but rimmed with red, the pupils still dilated from feeding. "I smelled you the moment you entered the garden. Your fear has a particular scent. Sharp. Citrus. Almost appetizing."She stepped from behind the statue, dagger raised. Not to attack—to remind herself she had something, some weapon, some boundary. "You didn't kill her.""Didn't I?" He gestured to the blood on the stone. "She will die within the year. The debt takes more than blood. It takes time. Years compressed into seconds. She gave me ten years of her life tonight. I will give her family protection for a generation. A fair trade, by the standards of my world.""That's monstrous.""Yes." He didn't flinch from the word. "I am a monster, Kelsey Jones. I have told you this. I have shown you this. The question is not whether I am monstrous—the question is whether my monstrosity serves a purpose you can accept, o
The sun dipped below the jagged Carpathian peaks, bleeding the sky in deep crimson and violet. Kelsey stood on the eastern balcony long after Elira had left her, gripping the cold stone railing as if it could anchor her to reality. The distant howl she had heard earlier had multiplied. Now the forest below the Castle echoed with a chorus of restless wolves — the packs sensing the growing power of the eclipse.She rubbed her arms against the dropping temperature. The Echo Price was no longer subtle. When she tried to recall the layout of her tiny apartment back in Valemont — the creaky floorboard near the kitchen, the ugly green mug her mother had given her last birthday — the details blurred like an old photograph left in the rain. Fear twisted in her gut. How much of herself was she already losing?Footsteps approached from behind and when she turned, it was a woman dressed in a gown of pale blue that matched her eyes—human eyes, Kelsey realized, not silver. Young, maybe twenty, wit







