The Silence of AzariaNicholas’s POVThe days blurred.Sunlight streaming through the curtains flamed around her still face like golden halos, and went away in dusk. The stars had arrived and the moon shed silver tears of dew along the sea cliffs and yet she stirred not.Azaria.My flame.Silent. Unmoving.I sat beside her bed, as I had every day for weeks. The white linen sheets never changed. Her faint glow never dimmed, never strengthened. Just a steady, stubborn pulse of magic beneath her skin—like she refused to die, but couldn’t quite return either.And I was breaking.I hadn’t left her side.Ashley and Killian tried to take shifts. Tried to convince me to rest. To eat. To walk outside.I didn’t listen.How could I?What was the world without her?I once more took her hand and wound my fingers with hers, my thumb moving across the back of her hand. “You’d be mad if you saw me like this,” I whispered. “You’d tell me to shave. To stop brooding.”I gave a soft laugh that had no joy
The Sleeping FlameNicholas’s POVPain.The first thing I felt as I awoke was that. A sharp, hot burning pain in my side, and one that ached with every breath.The second thing I felt—was absence.She wasn’t in my arms anymore.“Azaria—” I croaked.I tried to move, but my body screamed in protest. Blinding light danced behind my eyelids. Every muscle felt torn, stitched together with fire and will.“Don’t move,” someone said gently.Ashley.She went on her knees beside me, her hands already charged with the white light trying to repair what she could. Her sleeves were covered with blood. Mine, I realized.“You're lucky,” she murmured. “A few more inches and Selene would’ve pierced your heart.”My head spun, trying to make sense of the chaos. The temple. The blade. Selene’s smile.Then—Azaria’s scream.That power.“Where is she?” I rasped.Ashley’s expression dimmed. “She saved us all.”I tried to sit up. She stopped me.“You’re not ready—”“Where is she?” I growled.Ashley hesitated.
The Shattered BondAzaria’s POVDarkness cradled me.Not the peaceful kind—but the cold, suffocating void of near-death. A place between breath and silence, between memory and oblivion.But something warm held me.Arms. Familiar. Strong. Alive.And then—a voice.“I promised… even in death, I’ll find you.”Nicholas.His voice tore through the fog like sunlight through storm clouds, drawing me back. Pulling me from the abyss.My eyes fluttered open. Like blood, the red fog of the temple pervaded the air. I drew a breath of relief, my blood very slow, my throat parched. Everything hurt, but I did not mind.He was here.I blinked, vision adjusting—and saw his face. Pale, tear-streaked, fierce. His eyes found mine.“Azaria,” he whispered, as if the name was salvation.But then—his eyes widened.Before I could speak, a flash of silver cut through the air.Shhkk.The sound was sickening.Nicholas jerked, his body stiffening.Behind him—Selene.Her smile was a crimson wound.She drove the obs
The Moon Will BleedNicholas’s POVThe moon turned red.Not the soft rust of an eclipse.But blood red—ominous and burning, as if the sky itself was weeping for what was to come.We all saw it.Wolves howled and then harkened frozen in mid-howl, they seeming to hear in the skies a knell of death. Witches left their incantations halfway through and spells stagnated in the air as though fire burned at the border of extinction. Earth itself took breath.At the edge of the forest there was a scream of wind--unnatural, dry, metallic. It smelled of sulfur, ash and something more ancient. Something was wrong.Killian’s eyes narrowed, lips tight. “The omen’s real.”Ashley stepped beside me, her tone like frost. “The prophecy’s begun.”I didn’t need to ask which prophecy. I already knew. I had memorized every line, every warning etched in the stars, because it all pointed to her.The moon will bleed, and light will fall. If the vessel breaks, the shadows will rise. If she dies… the world dies
The Corruption WithinAzaria’s POVDarkness cradled me like a mother. Cold. Merciless.I no longer knew how long ago that I was put in the chain here in this place a desolated ruin, filled with dust of bone and with the stench of ages of torment. Blood was smelled in the air, old but not recent enough to be forgotten. I was chained and my wrists were sore, chained by etched iron cuffs intended to oppress, not just wolf, not just witch, but me.Something writhed beneath my skin.Not mine.Not right.The tendrils had started small—threadlike veins of black curling across my arms, slithering like oil under glass. Now they pulsed, thicker, embedded in my flesh. I could feel them moving, feeding, dragging me deeper into something I couldn’t claw my way out of.A soft chant echoed through the cavernous space.Voices. Two of them.Selene’s was silk and venom.My mother’s… hollow and relentless.My eyes were opened, and I immediately wish they hadn't been.They came to meet me garbed in shado
Into the DarknessNicholas’s POVThe air got still thicker as we moved down deeper into the cave. It lay against his skin like a second skin, lights wet and electric and humming with something old and wrong-seeming. My wolf snarled under my flesh, pacing with restless fury. We were close. I could feel her.I could feel Azaria.“Ash,” I said over my shoulder, “tell the others to close off the western tunnel. If this goes sideways, we can’t risk the corruption spreading.”Ashley gave a sharp nod and disappeared down the branching tunnel with three wolves in tow. That left me, Killian, and a dozen loyal fighters—those who hadn’t flinched when I said we’d be walking into the jaws of death to retrieve someone who might already be gone.But I refused to believe that.There came a low growl deep out in the cavern system, and a shriek as unnatural as to raise the hair on the back of my arms.“They know we’re here,” Killian muttered.“Let them.”We moved fast. Shadows darted across the walls a