Chapter 1

Twenty-Five Years Later

The first time I smelled blood that night, I knew the universe was about to be a bastard about it.

Copper and salt slid through the market like a dirty secret, sharp enough to make my teeth ache. My pulse kicked. Hunger followed—fast, familiar, and deeply inconvenient.

I kept walking anyway.

Control isn’t a virtue. It’s a survival habit. Miss it once and you don’t get a second lesson.

Maereth’s voice surfaced, annoying and eternal. You don’t live by pretending you’re harmless. You live by deciding when to be dangerous.

The City Vireholt crawled around me—wet stone, smoke, sweat, fear. Vampires glided past like they owned the night. Wolves prowled in half-shifts they pretended were fashion choices. Humans did what they always did: kept their eyes down and prayed no one noticed their pulse.

I had my hood up. I was behaving. The night hated that.

The alley behind the apothecary stank of panic before I even saw the blood. Four people stood in a loose, ugly circle. One body was already cooling against the wall, the throat opened.

I stopped at the mouth of the alley.

They hadn’t seen me yet.

Lucky them.

I inhaled slowly, grounding myself in the cold stone under my boots. Told myself I could walk away. I told myself this wasn’t my problem.

Then the knife flashed.

“Fuck,” I muttered—and stepped in.

“Leave,” I said.

My voice came out flat and sharp, the kind that crawls under skin. They turned. The woman, dressed in pale blue, sporting an ugly mullet type hair cut. She had the knife, her porcelain skin went even paler when she saw me. One of the men panicked and started to shift—bones popping, claws ripping through skin like he thought theatrics would save him.

It wouldn’t.

He lunged.

I caught him by the throat and slammed him into the wall hard enough to spiderweb the stone. 

He gagged. His claws scraped uselessly at my arm.

“I said,” I told him, leaning in close, “leave.”

Something slipped then. A crack in the mask. Heat behind my eyes. Whatever they saw there made the wolf freeze mid-breath. The others bolted, dragging the woman with them, footsteps tripping over themselves as they ran.

I dropped him last.

He slid down the wall, shaking, staring at me like I’d just rewritten his religion. I didn’t stick around to be canonized.

The man on the ground was dead. Had been for a minute.

“Too fucking slow,” I said to no one.

Blood steamed faintly on my hands. I wiped it on my cloak and climbed.

Rooftops are better. The city makes more sense from above—lanterns like dying stars, chimneys breathing smoke, everyone pretending the dark isn’t full of death.

The wind helped. It dragged the blood-scent away, though the hunger stayed, needling at my ribs like it had opinions.

I breathed through it until my hands stopped shaking.

Maereth waited on the highest spire, looking like she’d grown there—moss-dark layers, bone charms, one blind eye aimed at the sky. The other tracked me without moving her head.

“You took too long,” she said.

“I was busy not murdering idiots.”

She snorted. “Same thing.”

I leaned against the stone railing, letting the cold bite through my gloves. “Next time, send literally anyone else.”

“There is no one else.”

I clicked my tongue. Fair.

Her gaze dragged over me, sharp and invasive. Not the eyes—everyone gets distracted by those—but the tension in my shoulders, the way I hadn’t quite come down yet.

“The world is stirring,” she said.

I laughed. “The world is always stirring. It’s like a pot that never learned to shut the fuck up.”

“Not like this.”

I straightened. “Explain. Slowly. Preferably without riddles.”

She reached into her cloak and pulled out a small sigil carved from bone and obsidian. Old. Heavy. The kind of thing that gets people killed for knowing it exists.

“Borders are cracking,” she said. “Crowns are moving. Creatures with long memories are paying attention again.”

I took the sigil. It was cold against my palm, like it already knew me.

“So?” I asked. “Let them look.”

Maereth’s mouth twitched. “That confidence will get you burned.”

“Been buried,” I said. “Burned sounds festive.”

Silence stretched. The city hummed below us.

“Hiding won’t be an option much longer,” she said.

“Good.”

She raised a brow. “That wasn’t fear.”

“No,” I agreed. “It was boredom.”

I closed my fingers around the sigil and felt the weight of it settle—real, solid, unavoidable.

Twenty-five years ago, I’d been hidden to keep the world safe.

Tonight, it felt like the world was finally stupid enough to come looking.

I smiled into the dark.

Let it try.