CHAPTER 1: A far from normal Tuesday

"You look exquisite, Aylin."

"I look like a dead woman walking," I said, tracing the thick frost on the windowpane. "Save the compliments, Vivienne. We both know they mean nothing."

Vivienne set her porcelain teacup down with agonizing slowness. "Must you be dramatic this early?"

"Must you pretend this is a normal Tuesday?" I faced my stepmother squarely. "You're sending me straight to my death. The least you can do is be honest about it."

For ten years, I had watched Vivienne dismantle everything my father built with that same calm, practical expression. She wasn't overtly cruel; she was worse. She was efficient.

Drusilla rustled into the parlor, her heavy silk skirts brushing the floorboards. "You're acting like you're the only girl going. Every noble house is sending someone to the pack. It's a legal obligation, Aylin. Get over yourself."

"Every other house drew lots fairly," I said, my fingernails digging into my palms. "You didn't even put your daughters' names in the jar. You just handed the lawyers mine."

Drusilla smirked. "Father's will was reinterpreted by the legal team. These things happen when the vaults are empty."

"Drusilla," Vivienne’s voice cut her daughter off, quiet and final.

From the window seat, Nyx sipped her berry juice, thoroughly entertained. "Look at it this way. If you survive the wolves, you come back a legend. If you don't... at least the family name dies with something interesting attached to it instead of boring bankruptcy court documents."

"Nyx," Vivienne warned, sharper this time.

I looked at the three of them, draped in expensive fabrics in a room heavily scented with funeral like white lilies. "My father loved this house, and he loved you. This is how you repay his memory, by discarding his only daughter."

Vivienne approached me, her leather heels clicking against the hardwood. She adjusted the lace at my collar with quick, efficient fingers, handling me like a merchant inspecting merchandise.

"Your father," she whispered, her face inches from mine, "Spent his last years talking to a dead woman in empty hallways and writing random numbers on the library walls. He left us with massive debt, a broken reputation, and you. At least you can be useful to this family for once."

Three heavy iron knocks rattled the front door.

"The carriage is here," Drusilla clapped.

"Pick up your bag, Aylin," Vivienne said, turning her back on me.

I grabbed my single traveling bag and walked out into the biting cold. Vivienne had insisted on a thin silk dress, appearances mattered, even at the end.

In the cobblestone courtyard, a black carriage waited, hitched to two unnaturally still dark horses.

On the balcony above, Nyx and Drusilla waved white handkerchiefs, laughing as if bidding farewell to a guest at a pleasant garden party.

The carriage moved. For two grueling hours, we climbed the steep road to Lupercal. The ordinary world faded, replaced by jagged rock, towering pines, and freezing wind.

Leaning my head back, I thought of my father, Alaric Lunaris. The villagers called him mad after my mother died, locked away with his charts and books. But I knew he was just looking for the only thing that made sense to him anymore.

"Don’t be the candle, Aylin,"he used to tell me when the winter storms shook the windows. "The candle fears the wind and burns down to nothing. Be the moon. The moon watches the darkness without fading."

The carriage jerked to a sudden stop. Outside, the Palace of Lupercal loomed a monstrous structure of black stone bursting from the fractured mountain. Blue fire flickered in iron cages, illuminating hundreds of shivering girls lined up in the courtyard.

The door flew open. "Out! Now!" a guard barked, grabbing my wrist.

"Let go of me," I snapped, breaking free into the freezing slush to take my place in line.

As I stepped into the crowd, the air pressure shifted. I didn't hear or see it, but I felt it in my bones. Something deep inside that dark palace had turned its heavy, suffocating attention directly onto me, locking around my chest like an iron band.