Before the Queen: 2

Lira (POV)

The priest who did the first cleansing whispered something I can’t forget. “You were born for this altar.” His breath smelled like copper and lies. I still hear it in my sleep. Still, taste it in the back of my throat.

I haven’t seen daylight in—I don’t know how long. Days? Weeks? Maybe more. There’s no sunlight down here, not even a fleeting whisper of it. Time doesn’t pass. It bleeds like my skin did during their so-called cleansings. It’s a ritual like they’re scrubbing the filth of a floor while carving symbols into my chest and bleeding me out on their stone altar.

I breathe in stupidly—and immediately regret it as my lungs seize, shards of silver slicing me up from the inside like broken glass swirling through my veins. Every breath is like inhaling razor blades, and they   know. That’s why they burn wolfsbane like it’s incense; it smolders in the corners of my prison cell thick enough to chew, coating my mouth in rot, my throat in bile. My stomach turns on itself. It keeps me floating just high enough to see things, hear things, and feel everything—but never enough to pass out. Never enough to die. It’s smart. Cowardly but smart.

I shift my body a little and instantly regret it. The silver cuffs have melted the raw meat off my wrists; there’s no skin left, just raw tendon and exposed bone grinding against metal. When I sleep, if it can even be called that, the flesh fuses to the steel like wax, and when I move, it tears again—it rips open with a sick, wet sound, and the blood starts oozing all over again. It never   stops. There’s a pool beneath me now, endless, growing as blood drips in rhythm with my pulse.

The blood underneath me is thick, black in the little light that seeps through the cracks. It’s shiny and warm enough to remind me that I’m still alive in this rotting piece of hell. I stretch one toe downward and trace it through the puddle in lazy figure eights. It’s hypnotic. Almost beautiful. The only thing in this place that’s mine. A low chuckle escapes my throat, hoarse and broken. It hurts to laugh, but I do it anyway; I laugh as the blood parts, pools, and reshapes like it’s playing with me.

I cackle even louder. Let them think I’m losing it. Let them   pray I don’t find a way out.

I keep dragging my toe through the blood, slower now, watching it ripple and curl like it’s alive. The warmth makes my skin twitch. The blood is thick as oil, and I swear it responds. Each figure eight spreads wider, then tighter, pulsing in time with something that isn’t my heartbeat—it’s too slow.

The blood ripples where I touch it. Then again. Then… it moves on its own. It spirals. Twists. Takes shape. At first, it’s nothing—just shadows in the red.

But then?

Eyes. Teeth. Mouths locked in silent screams.

I smile—wide. The dry skin on my lips splits and bleeds, but I don’t stop. It’s beautiful—my own personal gallery in red and black hues. The blood isn’t just blood anymore. It breathes. It listens. And now, it talks—not in sound, but meaning. Rage. Hunger. Power. Old power. Forgotten. Waiting.

I don’t just bleed—I conjure. The figures in the pool whisper without mouths, and the more I hurt, the clearer they become. My blood isn’t just leaking. It’s listening.

One shape starts to mouth a word I can’t hear—but I understand. It wants out. It wants revenge. One of the faces opens its mouth and whispers something that I can’t quite hear, but I know. It wasn’t words; it was a simple, unbridled rage. My wolf stirs sluggishly beneath my skin as if it wants to see what I see. It growls low in the base of my skull, muffled, restrained, but there. It remembers the pain, the rituals, and the ones who did this.

I lean my head back against the stone and let the metal bite into me; blood seeps from the cuffs again, thick and slow, and I watch as it joins the pool below. It ripples and shifts into his face—the one who bound me in this hell hole.

I grin, not because I’m happy but because I’m close; I can feel it in my bones. The line between hallucination and prophecy is paper-thin in this place. The blood twists into a face that I know. The one I hate. The one who still owns a part of me.

And then— A boot slams against stone. Torchlight flares through the cracks, and the world tilts back into reality. At least two are on the other side of the thick silver door that encloses me in this hell.

As the footsteps approach, I brace, not out of fear, but strategy. One of the guards, the taller one, hesitated last time. He used to serve in my father’s pack. Maybe he remembers. Perhaps he’s just a coward.

I freeze, not out of fear but calculation. My blood painting slows, and the figure eights distort into something more jagged, like teeth.