When the Palace Learned to Fear Me

Winnie’s POV

​The darkness was not just an absence of light. It was a sentient, breathing thing, an ancient beast that had been slumbering in the hollows of my bones, waiting for the right moment to scream. It coiled around my ankles like a living snare and climbed up my spine, a cold, heavy silk that whispered promises of retribution into the very marrow of my soul. The ballroom, which only moments ago had been a place of glittering pretense, royal gold, and the suffocating scent of expensive perfumes, had been transformed into a tomb of absolute shadows.

​I could hear the panicked breathing of the wolves around me. The sound was frantic and wet, a chorus of apex predators suddenly turned into helpless prey. I could hear the desperate, ragged scrape of claws on the polished marble as some of the elite guards shifted in fear, their instinctual terror overriding years of military training. But for the first time in my miserable life, I was not the one trembling. For the first time, I was the thing the world feared.

​“Where is she?” someone screamed into the void, the sound bouncing off the high ceilings like a trapped bird. “Find her! Someone find the witch!”

​“I cannot see! My wolf is blind!” another guard yelled, his voice cracking with a high, thin terror that seemed to delight the shadows dancing at my fingertips. “There is something in the dark with us! Something cold!”

​I looked through the gloom and saw them with a clarity that defied every law of nature. Their heartbeats were no longer mere sounds but visual anchors, glowing pulses of visceral red light in my vision that throbbed in perfect time with the rhythm of their fear. I saw the lead guard reaching for my shoulder, his hand shaking so violently that the silver of his gauntlet rattled against his skin like a death knell.

​“Do not touch me,” I whispered.

​The words did not just leave my mouth as sound. They erupted into the stagnant air and echoed off the stone walls like a physical blow from a titan. The guard was thrown back as if he had been hit by a moving truck, his body slamming into a massive stone pillar with a sickening crunch of bone meeting unforgiving rock.

​“Winnie?”

​Cassian’s voice sliced through the chaos like a blade of pure, untainted light. He was moving toward me, his golden eyes the only familiar, grounding thing in this unfolding nightmare. He was pushing through the crowd of panicked nobles, his aura burning like an internal sun that could not quite break through the obsidian curtain I was casting across the room. He looked regal even in the face of the abyss, his strength radiating outward in waves of heat that fought against the unnatural chill of my presence.

​“Cassian, stay back!” Lila’s voice shrieked from the periphery, sharp and irritating as a shard of glass. “Do not let her touch you! She is using dark magic! She is trying to kill us all! She is the monster we always knew she was, the freak with no soul who hides in the corners!”

​The lights suddenly flickered back to life, humming with a violent, electric intensity that made the chandeliers rattle before settling into a dim, sickly glow. The shadows retreated instantly, pulling back into my skin so fast it made me gasp as if the air had been sucked from the room by a vacuum. I fell to my knees, my breath coming in ragged heaves, my hands pressed against the cold floor to keep the world from spinning away into the nothingness.

​“Winifred.”

​Cassian was there in a heartbeat, his large, warm hands gripping my shoulders. He did not look afraid of what he had just seen. He did not look disgusted by the darkness that had poured out of me. He looked at me with an expression that was a terrifying, intoxicating mix of awe and hunger. It was the look of a man who had finally found a lost treasure in the middle of a bloody battlefield, or perhaps a man who had finally seen his own reflection in the dark.

​“I did not do it,” I choked out, looking at the guards who were now surrounding us with drawn silver blades, their eyes wide with a mixture of hatred and confusion. “I did not poison you, Cassian. I swear on my mother’s life. I came here to help you, not to end you. You have to believe me.”

​“Silence, traitor!” The lead guard, nursing a bruised chest and a shattered ego, stepped forward into the dim light. “We found the vials in your room hidden beneath the floorboards. Pure, concentrated wolfsbane extract. Enough to kill a True Blood Alpha ten times over. You were seen entering his private chambers with the tray, and now we find this filth in your possession. Do you deny the evidence found in your own quarters?”

​“I was framed,” I said, looking past the wall of armored guards to where Lila stood.

​She was tucked safely behind Jason, her face a carefully constructed mask of horrified innocence, her small hands clutching his arm as if she were the fragile one in danger. Jason looked at me, his eyes wide and wet with a disappointment that felt like a hot iron pressed against my bare heart. He looked like he wanted to vomit, like the very sight of me was a sickness he could not cure.

​“Winnie, how could you?” Jason whispered, his voice carrying over the fearful murmurs of the crowd. “I know I hurt you, I know I broke our promise and destroyed everything we had, but to try and kill the Alpha? To kill Lila’s brother out of some petty spite? Is this what you have become in your bitterness?”

​“I did not do it, Jason,” I snapped, my voice cracking with the sheer, agonizing weight of the betrayal. “Use your head for once in your life. Why would I kill the man who is currently paying for my mother’s life? Why would I kill the only person in this entire godforsaken pack who treats me like a human being instead of a servant or a freak of nature? Tell me, Jason, does that make any sense to you?”

​“Because you are a bitter, wolfless freak who wanted revenge!” Lila shouted, stepping out from behind Jason’s protective shadow like a snake emerging from the tall grass. “You saw us together, you saw the life you could never have, and you finally snapped. You have been using your position as his healer to slowly drain his strength, masquerading as a saint while you poured liquid death into his veins! You are a murderer!”

​“Enough!” Cassian roared.

​The room went silent instantly. Even the air seemed to stop moving, suspended by the sheer, terrifying force of his command. He stood up slowly, pulling me with him, his hand never leaving my arm, anchoring me to the spot as if he were the only thing keeping me from floating away into the ether.

​“The Council will hear the evidence,” Cassian stated, his voice like iron grinding against mountain stone. “Until then, she is to be held in the High Tower. Not the dungeons. The High Tower.”

​“But Alpha,” the guard protested, his hand hovering over the hilt of his sword. “She is dangerous! You saw what just happened! She nearly killed me with a single word! She needs to be in silver chains in the pits!”

​“I saw a girl defending herself against a mob of terrified cowards,” Cassian growled, his golden eyes flashing with a predatory light that made even the bravest guards flinch. “Move. Now. Or you will be the next one hitting a pillar, and I will not be so gentle when I throw you. Do you wish to test my patience further?”

​He looked down at me, his obsidian eyes searching mine with a depth that made my soul ache with a longing I could not name. “Do not fight them, Winnie. I will find the truth. I will peel back every lie until only the bone remains. Do you trust me?”

​“Will you?” I asked, my heart breaking into a thousand jagged pieces as the guards moved in to take me. “Or will you eventually listen to your sister? Blood is thicker than whatever this is, Cassian. History is written by the winners, and I have always been the loser in this world.”

​“I listen to my blood,” he whispered, leaning close so only I could hear the rough, dark timber of his voice. “And right now, my blood is telling me that you are the only honest thing in this room full of vipers. My wolf recognizes you, Winnie. Even if you do not recognize yourself.”

​The guards moved in, their silver shackles cold and heavy against my wrists, the metal biting into my skin as if it were hungry. As they led me away through the gauntlet of judging eyes and whispered curses, I looked back one last time. Jason was looking at the floor, unable to meet my gaze, his shoulders slumped in a coward's defeat. Lila was smiling, a small, cruel curve of her lips that only I could see, a silent promise that this was only the beginning of my end.

​I was led through the winding stone corridors of the palace, the clink of my chains the only sound in the oppressive silence. Every servant we passed pressed themselves against the walls, their eyes wide with fear, crossing their fingers to ward off the evil they thought I carried. I wanted to tell them that I was the same Winnie who had helped them carry heavy trays and shared her meager rations, but the words died in my throat. I was not that Winnie anymore. That Winnie had died in the ballroom, smothered by the very shadows that had saved her.

​The climb to the High Tower was long and arduous. By the time we reached the heavy oak door at the summit, my legs were shaking from exhaustion and the lingering aftereffects of the shadow flare. The guards shoved me inside without a word, the heavy door slamming shut behind me with a finality that echoed in my soul. I heard the rasp of the iron bolt and the hum of the protective runes as they were activated, sealing me in a gilded cage at the top of the world.

​I was alone.