Chapter 1 — What Is My Price?

Elara Veyne

I knew something was wrong when Sahri stopped singing.

She never stayed quiet. She sang while I worked, stole bread from my plate, pulled my hair when I ignored her, and complained whenever I spent too many hours over the cauldrons.

That night, she sat rigid on my shoulder, her small claws hooked into my dress while she watched the dark garden.

“I know,” I whispered, touching her white feathers. “I’m scared too.”

After years imprisoned inside the Caldris estate, fear should have felt ordinary. Still, stepping onto wet grass almost made me cry.

Grass.

Sky without bars.

An unlocked door behind me.

For years, my world had been reduced to an underground laboratory, a locked room, guards, and the collar around my neck.

There was a particular kind of irony in that. The Caldris carried one of Aldervane’s old werewolf bloodlines, yet I—the human they had adopted—was the one they kept in a collar.

Julian had promised the back door would be open. He had studied the guards’ rotation, stolen a key, saved money, and arranged horses. A ship would leave before dawn.

All I had to do was cross the garden.

When the Caldris adopted me, they called my ability a blessing. I was human, without inherited transformation or lupine senses, but my affinity with Life could strengthen herbs, purify mixtures, and turn ordinary potions into things their best alchemists could not reproduce.

Being special earned me more work, more blood, and more reasons to wake on the laboratory floor.

The collar was worse. Originally designed to suppress mana and prevent captured shifters from transforming, Gideon had modified mine until it could punish, drain, and control me whenever he wished.

A family, he called it.

A roof. A surname. Protection.

Apparently daughters needed permission to leave their rooms.

The old tree near the wall appeared through the darkness.

“Julian?”

A lantern lit.

Gideon Caldris stood beneath the tree.

Amber flashed briefly through his eyes. His wolf was close to the surface.

Sabine, his wife, was behind him. His beloved daughter, Livia, was beside her. Two guards were blocking the wall. 

And Julian was there too.

He couldn’t look at me.

Something inside me went quiet.

“How much?” I asked.

“Elara—”

“How much did they pay you?”

Sabine sighed. “Don’t be dramatic.”

“I wasn’t talking to y—”

Pain exploded around my neck.

The collar burned through my spine and dropped me to my knees. I knew that pain too well to waste strength screaming.

Gideon waited until I looked up.

“After so many years, you still insist on this.”

“On disobeying?”

His gaze dropped to my mouth.

My body remembered before my mind did.

Blood. The taste of metal. Days unable to swallow. Flesh slowly rebuilding where it should never have been torn away.

Once, Gideon had ripped out my tongue as punishment for speaking back. I had used my blessing in secret until it grew again.

“On speaking,” he said.

Julian stepped forward. “That’s enough. You don’t need to hurt her.”

I laughed.

“Now you’re worried?”

His face crumpled, and I hated that part of me still remembered when I had loved him.

“Elara, I can explain.”

“Don’t ruin your betrayal with a bad excuse. At least let me believe I was expensive.”

Then I saw the vial in Livia’s hand.

Golden liquid pulsed inside it.

My mana.

My blessing.

“Where did you get that?”

Livia smiled. “I made it.”

Gideon looked satisfied.

“Finally,” Sabine said, “we no longer need to depend on you.”

Years of being drained until I collapsed, and now they had found a way to use what belonged to me without me.

Sahri tensed on my shoulder.

“Stay.”

She never obeyed when she should have.

She launched herself at Livia.

A guard moved first.

His eyes flashed amber. Bones cracked beneath his skin as one arm partially shifted, fingers lengthening into black lupine claws.

“Sahri!”

The claws cut through white feathers.

She fell.

The garden disappeared.

I crawled to her and lifted her tiny body. Too much blood soaked through my hands.

“Sahri? Please.”

No answer.

I remembered finding her years earlier near the Church gardens, cold and motionless. I had cried over her then, begging one more living thing not to leave me.

And somehow, she had breathed again.

For years, I thought it was a miracle.

Now she was dying in my hands a second time.

Someone grabbed my arm.

Julian.

His face held guilt, tears, pity.

I hated the pity most.

“You served us very well,” Gideon said.

I looked up. “Go to hell.”

“Maybe.”

The guard behind me shifted further.

I heard the tear of fabric and the low, rough sound of a wolf too close to human speech.

Then claws drove through my side and into my chest.

For one stunned second, there was no pain. Only pressure.

Then heat spread beneath my dress.

My legs failed.

I fell beside Sahri, still holding her.

Above me, the sky was painfully clear.

After years of seeing it through bars, I finally had the whole thing.

Apparently I only needed to die for it.

Voices blurred. Sabine spoke. Livia sounded nervous. Julian cried.

My fingers loosened around Sahri’s feathers.

I wasn’t afraid anymore.

I was furious.

I wanted time. Enough to watch Gideon lose everything. Enough to discover what they had done to my blessing. Enough to ask Julian one last time what I had been worth.

If any god was listening, I did not want salvation.

I wanted another chance.

“Elara Veyne?”

I opened my eyes.

My hand flew to my chest.

No wound.

Then my neck.

No collar. No torn skin.

I touched my mouth next, fingers pressing against my tongue as if I needed proof it was still there.

“Elara?”

Pale walls. Tall windows. An altar. A transparent evaluation crystal.

The Church of the First Light.

I stood too quickly and knocked over the chair.

“What has gotten into you, girl?” the sister demanded.

Girl.

The mirror showed a fifteen-year-old face. Full cheeks. Healthy skin. No scars. No exhaustion hollowing my eyes.

I was alive.

Then wheels sounded in the courtyard.

I reached the window.

A black carriage entered through the gates, the golden wolf crest on its side exactly as I remembered.

Caldris.

Gideon stepped out, younger and elegant, with no idea who I was.

Behind me, the sister cleared her throat.

“Elara. It’s time to discover what blessing the Light has granted you.”

I looked at the crystal, then back at Gideon.

In my first life, I had done everything I could to make that family choose me.

This time, I would do exactly the opposite.

They did not need to know who I was.

Not yet.

I only needed enough time to make them fall.