CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

SKYE'S POV

The amber glow didn't keep the cold out.

Deep beneath the bedrock of Nighthaven, in a cavern where the air tasted of ancient dust and rusted iron, the warmth of the mountain’s core felt like a distant, mocking heartbeat. My bare feet slid against the gritty stone floor, my toes curling to find purchase on the uneven surface. Every muscle in my thighs trembled, a dull, throbbing ache that had settled into my bones hours ago.

"Again," Eryx’s voice cut through the dimness, flat and unyielding as the granite surrounding us.

I didn't answer. I couldn't. My lungs burned as if I were inhaling broken glass, and the sweat dripping from my hairline stung my eyes, blurring his silhouette. He stood ten paces away, his broad shoulders relaxed, a simple wooden training staff balanced lightly in his right hand. He wasn't wearing his royal furs or his heavy leather brigandine; he wore only a thin, dark tunic damp with his own sweat, and trousers that clung to his thighs. He looked less like a king and more like a predator waiting for its prey to tire itself to death.

I raised my own staff. It felt like a lead pipe in my blistered palms.

"The amber," I panted, my voice cracking. "Let me use it. If I can just bridge the—"

"No," he interrupted, his silver eyes flashing with a cold, protective fury in the gloom. "The sacred peaks are bound by the Old Pact. The moment you step past the threshold of the lower valley, those wards will clamp down on your magic like an iron collar. They will choke the silver light in your veins, Skye. They will smother the amber before it can even warm your skin. If you rely on the mountain to carry you through this, you will be dead before your foot touches the first step."

He moved.

He didn't use the unnatural, blurring speed of his wolf. He moved like a human—deliberate, heavy, and lethal. The staff whistled through the air, a dark blur aiming for my left ribcage.

My instincts, honed by eighteen years of dodging heavy copper pots and the backhands of pack superiors, made me flinch. I ducked, my center of gravity shifting too far backward.

Eryx saw the flinch. He adjusted mid-strike, the wood sweeping low to catch me behind the ankles.

The stone floor rushed up to meet me. The impact knocked the remaining air from my lungs in a violent, ragged gasp. The back of my head clipped the stone, sending a cascade of white sparks across my vision. For a terrifying three seconds, I forgot how to breathe. I lay there, staring up at the jagged stalactites hanging from the cavern ceiling, my chest seizing as my body scrambled to remember how to live.

Eryx was over me instantly. He didn't offer a hand. He knelt beside me, his scent—sharp pine, heavy musk, and the metallic tang of sweat—flooding my senses. His face was a mask of tightly controlled agony. I could see the muscle in his jaw leaping, a frantic pulse in his throat that betrayed the calm exterior he forced himself to maintain.

"You flinched," he whispered, his silver eyes dark with a desperate, quiet frustration. "Why did you flinch, Skye?"

"Because it hurts," I choked out, finally catching a ragged breath. I rolled onto my side, curling my knees toward my chest as the bruises on my hips screamed in protest. "Because my entire life, when something fast and heavy came at my head, the only way I survived was by getting smaller."

"You cannot get smaller anymore," he said, his hand finally coming down to rest on my shoulder. His fingers were hot, the calluses on his palm rough against my bare skin where my training shift had slipped. He didn't pull me up, but his touch was an anchor, a solid weight that kept the cavern from spinning. "The servant girl survives by hiding. The Queen survives by striking first. If you flinch at the Conclave, they will see the servant, and they will tear you apart."

"I am not a Queen yet," I muttered, pressing my forehead against the cool stone of the floor. The chill of the rock was a small mercy against the feverish heat of my skin.

"You are," Eryx said, his voice dropping to a low, fierce murmur that vibrated against my collarbone. "You became the Queen the moment you decided that your life was worth fighting for. Now, you have to teach your body to believe it."

He shifted, his shadow falling over me completely as he lay down on the gritty stone beside me. He didn't care about the dust or the cold. He lay on his side, his face inches from mine, his silver eyes searching my face with a raw, stripping honesty that made me want to cover myself. There were no guards here. No Kael. No Elders whispering in the shadows. Just two broken things clinging to each other in the dark.

"I am scared, Eryx," I confessed, the words so quiet they were barely a breath. It was the first time I had said it out loud. In front of Kael, in front of the messengers, I had been the storm. But here, in the dark, with the smell of his skin keeping the ghosts at bay, I was just Skye. "The amber... when I opened that connection, it felt like I was disappearing. It felt like the mountain was a great, black ocean, and I was just a drop of rain falling into it. If the wards strip that away, what is left of me?"

Eryx reached out, his thumb catching a tear I hadn't realized had escaped my eye. He wiped it away, his touch incredibly gentle, a stark contrast to the violence of the sparring ring.

"Me," he said. "I am left. And the girl who survived the kitchens of Silvercrest is left. You think your strength comes from that silver light, or the fire in the bedrock. It doesn't. Those are just tools, Skye. The strength is the hand that wields them. The hand that took a heavy iron skillet to a pack enforcer's head when you were twelve years old because he tried to take your bread."

A tiny, wet laugh escaped me. "How do you know about that?"

"I read your file," he admitted, a faint, rare smile tugging at the corner of his lips. "The Silvercrest Alpha complained in his reports about a 'disobedient mute' who kept breaking his guards' noses. He thought you were defective. I knew, even then, that you were just waiting for a blade that was worthy of your grip."

He leaned closer, his forehead resting against mine. The proximity was a sweet torture. The bond between us, usually a roaring fire, was a slow, deep hum under the suppression of the cavern’s depth. It felt like a physical thread wrapping around my ribs, pulling us closer until there was no space left between his heart and mine.

"We have thirty-six hours," he whispered. "Thirty-six hours before we march. If you cannot master the staff, then we will master the knife. If you cannot master the knife, we will use your teeth. But you will not flinch, Skye. I will not let them take you from me. Not after eighty years of silence."

"Eighty years is a long time to wait," I murmured, my hand rising to cup his jaw. The stubble of his beard pricked my palm, a solid, human sensation that grounded me.

"It felt like eternity," he said, his eyes darkening as his gaze drifted to my mouth. "Until the day you walked into my hall with dirt on your cheeks and fire in your eyes."

He kissed me then. It wasn't the hard, possessive kiss of a king claiming his mate, nor was it the desperate, fleeting touch of two people about to go to war. It was slow, deep, and heavy with the taste of salt and iron. He tasted of the deep forest after a rain, of secrets kept in the dark, and of a promise that had nothing to do with crowns or thrones. I pulled him closer, my fingers tangling in his damp hair, ignoring the ache in my muscles as the heat of his body washed over me, a temporary shield against the freezing night waiting above.

Later, when the oil in the training lanterns began to sputter and die, I left Eryx in the armory.

I didn't go back to the royal chambers. Instead, my feet carried me down the winding, narrow corridors of the lower servant levels. It was a part of Nighthaven that the lords and ladies never saw—a labyrinth of low-ceilinged stone passages that smelled of boiled cabbage, laundry lye, and damp wool.

This was where the lifeblood of the castle actually pumped. Without the silence of the servants, the great halls above would choke on their own waste.

I stopped at the entrance of the main scullery. It was past midnight, but the fires in the great hearths were still being tended, kept alive to heat the water for the morning's wash. A lone figure was hunched over a massive wooden tub, her back curved into a painful arch as she scrubbed a heavy linen tablecloth. Her hands were red, the skin raw and swollen from the harsh lye soap.

She looked so much like me three weeks ago that my chest physically ached.

"You should use cold water for the grease stains first," I said softly, stepping into the dim light of the hearth. "Warm water only sets the fat into the fibers."

The girl gasped, spinning around so quickly she knocked her wooden scrub-brush into the sudsy water. She looked at my clothes—the simple, dark training trousers and the fine linen shift—and then her eyes traveled to my face. The recognition was instant, followed immediately by a look of sheer, unadulterated terror.

She began to drop to her knees, her wet hands clutching at her apron. "Your Grace—I didn't—I was only—"

"Don't," I said, stepping forward quickly to catch her by the elbows before she could touch the wet stone. Her arms were cold, shaking under my grip. "Please. Don't do that. My name is Skye."

"You're... you're the King's mate," she whispered, her wide eyes darting to the door as if expecting the royal guards to storm in and execute her for looking at me. "The one from the Silvercrest pack."

"I am," I said, letting her go gently. I reached into the tub, fished out the wooden brush, and handed it back to her. "What’s your name?"

"Marta, Your Grace."

"Just Skye, Marta. Please." I leaned against the edge of the heavy wooden table, ignoring the dampness that soaked into my trousers. "How long have you been at Nighthaven?"

"Four years," she said, her voice shaking less now, though she still held the scrub-brush against her chest like a shield. "My family... we couldn't pay the winter tithe to the Council enforcers. The Elders took three of our sheep and told my father that if he didn't send a daughter to work the kitchens, they would take the land too."

A cold, familiar anger stirred in my belly, distinct from the amber magic of the mountain. This was the quiet, human anger of the exploited.

"They do that to everyone," I said, more to myself than to her. "They make us feel like we are the ones in debt, when they are the ones living off our sweat."

Marta looked at me, a tiny spark of something dangerous flickering in her eyes. "The other servants... they say you broke the southern tower. They say the mountain screamed when you touched the stone."

"The mountain didn't like what was being kept in its dark," I said. I reached out, gently taking one of her raw, swollen hands in mine. The skin was rough, identical to how mine had been before Eryx's healers had rubbed soothing salves into my palms. "Marta, if there was a choice... if you didn't have to scrub these linens to pay a debt that isn't yours... what would you do?"

She stared down at our joined hands, her lip trembling. "I’d go home. I’d help my father mend the fences. I’d run in the woods at night, under the moon, without having to ask a supervisor for a pass."

"Then keep your boots greased," I whispered, squeezing her hand. "And tell the others in the kitchen to keep their ears open. The lords in the Great Hall think they own the stone we stand on, but they forget who built the stairs they walk up."

She looked up at me, and this time, there was no terror in her eyes. There was only a quiet, desperate hope—the most dangerous thing you can give to a servant.

"We’re watching, Skye," she whispered. "We’re all watching."

The dawn of the third day did not arrive with a golden light.

A heavy, gray fog had rolled in from the northern marshlands, swallowing the valley of Nighthaven in a wet, freezing shroud. The air smelled of sulfur and wet pine as our small caravan assembled in the courtyard.

There were no banners. No drums. Eryx had insisted on a minimal guard—only Kael and ten of his most trusted personal sentinels, all of them dressed in dark, unpolished iron that didn't catch the light.

I stood by the lead wagon, wrapped in a heavy woolen cloak of deep charcoal. Underneath, I wore a suit of boiled leather that Eryx had personally fitted for me, reinforced with thin strips of silver-steel along the forearms and thighs. It was light enough to move in, but thick enough to turn a blade if I wasn't fast enough.

Attached to my hip was a short, straight blade—not a ceremonial sword, but a heavy, functional hunting knife. It had no gems on the hilt, no engraving on the steel. It was a tool for survival, and it felt right in my hand.

Eryx walked up to me, his face set in stone. He wore his full battle armor, the silver wolf-head of Nighthaven embossed on his breastplate, but his head was bare, his dark hair damp with the morning mist.

"The wind is coming from the north," he said, his voice low. "The scent of the peaks is already heavy. The wards are active, Skye. Can you feel them?"

I closed my eyes and reached inward, searching for that warm, amber hum that had been my constant companion for the last forty-eight hours.

It was gone.

In its place was a dull, heavy ache in the center of my chest, like a cold stone resting on my lungs. The connection wasn't severed, but it was being choked, a invisible hand squeezing the magic until it was nothing more than a faint, dying ember. My body felt heavy again, sluggish and brutally human. My bruises, which had been dulled by the mountain's ambient energy, flared with a sharp, localized pain.

"I feel them," I said, opening my eyes. "It feels like being buried alive."

"That is what they want," Eryx said, his hand sliding under my cloak to find my fingers. His hand was warm, but even his grip felt different—less electric, more solid. The mate bond was a thin, fragile thread now, a whisper across a dark room. "They want you to feel weak. They want you to turn back before we even reach the valley floor."

"I am not turning back," I said.

"Then let us go," he said, releasing my hand and turning to the carriage. "The Conclave is waiting, and we have a throne to defend."

As the iron gates of Nighthaven groaned open, the fog swallowed us whole. The road down the mountain was steep, the stone wet and slippery under the horses' hooves. I looked back once, but the great fortress had already vanished into the gray, its towers lost in the mist like the bones of an ancient beast.

The air grew colder with every mile we descended, a biting, damp frost that settled on our eyelashes and turned our breath into plumes of white steam. The silence of the forest was absolute—no birds called, no small game scurried through the underbrush. Even the trees seemed to lean away from the path, their black branches reaching toward the gray sky like skeletal hands.

By midday, the valley opened up, revealing the jagged, towering silhouettes of the sacred peaks. They rose out of the mist like broken teeth, their black granite walls streaked with veins of white quartz that caught the dim light.

At the base of the central peak, a massive, natural amphitheater of stone lay waiting.

Even from a mile away, I could see them. The remnants of the old houses.

There were hundreds of them, their colorful banners—faded, torn, and heavy with moisture—dripping in the cold wind. They stood in silence, a sea of gray and black cloaks, their faces hidden behind masks of iron, bone, and shadow.

And there, in the center of the stone ring, stood the altar of the First Purge.

My hand instinctively went to the hilt of the knife at my hip. My heart hammered against my ribs, a fast, frantic rhythm that Eryx could no longer hear through the choked bond.

*No magic,* I reminded myself, my fingers tightening on the leather grip. *No silver light. No amber fire. Just me.*

I looked up at the black peaks, and for the first time, I didn't ask the mountain for help. I looked at the crowd waiting for my ruin, and I took a deep, freezing breath of the northern air.

"Let's break the board," I whispered.