MasukRemi POV"Stop breathing so loud.""I'm not breathing loud," Mordor said. " You're just cold and angry and looking for something to be mad at.""I have plenty to be mad at. Starting with you."The wind came through the gap in the wall again, and I pulled the blanket tighter and it did nothing because it was one blanket and the wall was open, and the cold out here was not the polite indoor cold of the palace in winter. This was the kind of cold that found gaps and pushed through them and sat inside your bones like it had paid rent.I had stuffed my extra clothes into the lowest gap. My socks into another one. I was currently sitting with my boots on inside the cabin because taking them off felt like giving up."It's getting worse."Mordor looked at the wall. At the gap where the corner used to be. At the cold coming through it like it owned the place."Then, Do something.""My hands are tied.""I know your hands are tied." I shoved another piece of fabric into the gap. It stayed for ab
Nero POVThe log did not split.He hit it again.It still didn't split.He looked at the axe. At the log. At the axe again.He'd watched men chop wood his entire life. Every winter. Palace staff, palace grounds, the men who kept the fires going. You raised the axe. You brought it down. The log split. That was it. That was the whole thing.He raised it again and swung harder.The axe buried itself in the wood and stopped.He pulled.Nothing.Pulled harder. The entire log lifted off the stump still attached to the blade and he had to kick it off, which sent it spinning sideways directly into the cabin wall.The wall made a sound he did not like.He turned around.A new crack. Running from the corner down to the floor."...okay," he said.From inside the storage room mordor spoke: "Something fell.""Nothing fell.""Something definitely fell. I heard it.""Go back to sitting.""I was already sitting. That's all there is to do in here." Silence.Nero looked at the collpase.He opened the
Remi POV"Mordor."I said it the way you say something when your brain is still catching up to your eyes.He was standing behind me. In the forest. Fully present and unaccounted for in a way that made no immediate sense because the last place I had left Mordor was a storage room with a locked door and root vegetables and Nero's specific instructions about how the rest of his existence was going to go."How," I said."Nero let me out."I stared at him."He let you out.""Yes. After he sent you into the forest." Mordor looked at me on the ground with his wrists still bound in front of him and then at the rogue standing at the tree line. "It seems I arrived at a reasonable time."He looked at the rogue."Identify yourself," he said. "And let her go."The rogue looked at Mordor with the particular expression of someone who was deciding whether the new arrival was a threat or a complication or just entertainment."Bram," he said. After a moment. Like the name cost him very little but he wa
Remi POVThe first three I couldn't hold the shift past eight seconds before my concentration broke. The fourth I got to fifteen. The fifth I lost it at twelve and that was worse somehow — going backward felt worse than not getting there.He said nothing during any of it.Just: "Again."We are going to do this, Parrot said. After the fourth."I know."He's right that again is the only option."I know that too."You've been thinking about whether you're doing it right instead of just doing it."I know," I said.Stop knowing and start doing.The fifth attempt I stopped thinking.Just reached for the wolf. Let her come forward. Held it.One second. Five. Ten.Fifteen.Twenty.The clearing looked different. The smell of the frost different. Everything sharper.Twenty-five.He held up his hand."Thirty," he said.I shifted back."Good," he said.One word.It was the right word."Again," he said.We went again.The forest task started at midday."North path," he said. "Silverwood. Moving wa
Remi POV"One bed," I said.Nero looked at the bed.Then at me."Yes," he said."One bed in the whole cabin.""It's a small cabin.""There are two rooms.""One is a storage room.Which Mordor is apparently going in."I looked at the bed. At the fireplace that had been used hundreds of times — the stone around it darker than the rest, worn at the edges from years of hands resting on it. At the single window facing east. At the ceiling lower than anything I'd lived under since Riverside.Everything about it said someone had loved this place. Used it carefully. Come back to it repeatedly."Your grandfather built this," I said."Maintained it," Nero said. Setting down the bags. "It was already here. He just. Kept coming back."I looked at the fireplace.At two letters carved into the stone beside it. Small. Not decorative. Just. There.D.B.Like he needed to mark it as his."He said it was the only place he could hear himself think," Nero said.I looked around."I can see why," I said.Out
Remi POVThe room took it. Chanting Dark LunaAnatoria sat down. Then she tracked me. She'd been watching me the whole time I was speaking. And when the room turned back to Nero she turned to the guard beside her and said something very quietly.The guard moved towards me.Pipper grabbed my arm."East passage is blocked," she said fast. "Grandmother just sent people. Go left. Kitchen corridor. NOW."I went left.The guard behind me was faster than he looked.I went faster.Through the kitchen door. Down the corridor that smelled like food and old stone. A door at the end that—Locked.I turned.He was twenty feet away and closing.Then from a side passage Kade appeared.He looked at the guard.The guard stopped."Full authority," Kade said. Very flat. "The Dark Alpha left me full authority. Stand down."The guard looked between Kade and the direction Anatoria was in.Then stood down.Kade looked at me."South gate," he said. "Now. Nero is already Leaving ."The south corridor.Kade b







