MasukSylvie's POVCaden returned a week after I overheard that conversation. His arrival was a quiet affair, a simple escort to the border to be ‘returned in light of the changed circumstances’. I watched from a high, narrow window as he unmounted the horse, his small shoulders rigid. With Caden’s arrival, the rhythm of the keep shifted subtly. Malrick’s training intensified. I’d see him in the weapons yard at all hours, practicing the same killing stroke a hundred times, two hundred, until his muscles trembled and the training master called a halt. He never protested. He just started again the next day, his eyes fixed on some invisible point of perfection only he could see.My work continued, a mindless cycle of grime and obedience. I began to notice a different pattern, one that had nothing to do with borders or treaties.It was the girls.The keep had its share of servant children—daughters of cooks, stable hands, lower guards. They were a ragged, busy lot, doing small chores, chasing
Sylvie's POV That first night, the freedom I had breathed at the tree line quickly hardened into a brutal, unblinking examination.Every rustle in the underbrush was a predator. Every snap of a frozen branch was a pursuit. I used the sliver of moon to navigate, my eyes—trained on dusty library maps and moonlit training dummies—straining to read the language of shadows and tree-shapes. When dawn finally eased in1 I found what I was looking for: a low, rocky overhang, curtained by thick frost-brittle ferns. It wasn’t a cave, but it was a break from the wind.I crawled in, my body trembling with exhaustion and cold. I ate a small, precise portion of journey bread. I did not allow myself to think of the warm kitchen I’d left behind. Instead, I thought of the geometry of survival. Shelter: acquired. Water: a trickle of ice in a nearby rock crevice, melted in my palm by body heat. Security: the knife in my hand, my back to the stone.For three days, I lived like that. A feral, focused cre
Sylvie's POVSix months of secret sweat and silent pages turning, the day of the transaction—the day of the trade—had come and gone. Caden Silvermane, a quiet, watchful boy with his father’s eyes, had arrived with a small entourage. I had stood in the receiving line, a perfect, polite doll, and curtsied. My father had clapped a heavy hand on my shoulder, a gesture meant to look proud, but which felt like a brand. Soon, it said.But ‘soon’ had stretched. Alistair, ever the strategist, had cited ‘logistical delays’ and ‘seasonal instability in the passes’. A moon cycle became two, then three. The delay was a gift, wrapped in the cold calculus of politics. It gave me time.My plan was no longer a desperate child’s fantasy, I birthed a tactical operation. The library maps were committed to memory, but I began to draw my own on stolen parchment, refining them with observations from the highest window in the east tower. I noted the patrol patterns of the perimeter guards—their boredom, thei
Sylvie's POVI ran.A silent, desperate sprint of a creature that had just seen the trap snap shut. The image of my mother on her knees, the red brand of my father’s hand on her face, chased me through the dark corridors. It was more than horror. It was a blueprint. A preview of the life that awaited me—a life of quiet kneeling, of accepting brutality dressed as duty, of having my own will hammered into submission until it was a useful, shape.I didn’t stop until I was back in my room, the door shut tight behind me. I didn’t throw myself on the bed. I stood in the center of the dark, my chest heaving, but no tears came. The well was dry.My father’s words echoed, but now I heard them differently. Not as a condemnation of my mother, but as a revelation. My eyes, adjusting to the gloom, went to the practice knife on my dresser. The blunt, useless thing Kai had given me. Then they slid to the window, and beyond it, to the dark, towering line of the western woods. The woods they said wer
Sylvie's POV The silence in my room after leaving my mother was not peaceful. It was a new kind of noise—a high, ringing emptiness where hope had been. I stood in the center of the dark, my arms hanging limp at my sides. The word ‘duty’ echoed in the hollow space she had left inside me. It didn’t feel noble. It felt like a stone tied to my ankles.For the next three days, I moved through the lodge like the ghost I was already becoming. I spoke when spoken to. I ate what was put in front of me. I went to my lessons with Mistress Helene, who taught me history and needlepoint and the quiet art of being pleasing. I traced the routes of old pack migrations on a map and felt a kinship with those dashed lines—always moving, never arriving, their purpose determined by a hand that was not their own.No one noticed the change. Why would they? To them, I was still the quiet daughter, the smaller, softer echo of my boisterous brothers. My father was absorbed in the preparations for the ‘fosterin
Sylvie's POVShe was there, as she always was in the evenings, seated in her worn velvet chair by the hearth. A lantern glowed on the table beside her, illuminating the tapestry she was mending—a scene of wolves running under a winter moon. The room smelled of lavender, from the sachets she tucked in the drawers, and of parchment, from the old books on her shelves. It was the smell of safety.She looked up, her needle poised, her gentle face framed by soft, fading auburn hair. Her smile, the one that had always been my sun, began to dawn. Then she saw me.“Sylvie?” Her voice was a melody of concern. She set the tapestry aside. “Sweetheart, what’s wrong? You’re white as a sheet.”I ran to her, collapsing against her knees, my small hands clutching the soft fabric of her skirt. The words tumbled out, a jumble of fear and betrayal. “Papa… there’s a man… the Silvermane Alpha… he wants to send me away! He said I have to go live with them! Papa agreed!”The warmth of her hands, coming to re







