Mag-log inLUCIANThe heart hit the stone with a sound I will never forget. Wet. Final. Eya was gone before it stopped beating. One breath she was there, her small hand red to the wrist, her black eyes calm. The next, the air folded in on itself and she wasn’t. No light. No smoke. Just empty space where a girl who could kill a god had been standing. Darius didn’t move again. For a long time, no one did. The lake was still. The cavern was quiet except for water dripping from the broken ceiling, and Isla breathing against my side, and Ruby sobbing into her father’s chest. Then Jace exhaled. Loud. Like he’d been holding it for years. “Is he—” “Dead,” Caelan said. He was standing over the body. He nudged it with his boot. No reaction. “He’s dead.” The words didn’t land right away. Dead. Darius Vale. The brother who lived for three hundred years wanting to be a god. Dead on a wet rock with his own heart three feet away from him. I felt Isla’s hand tighten in mine. “It’s really over,” she
LUCIANThe boulder fell like a judgment. It was bigger than the carriage we’d ridden in from Blackstone. Bigger than the gate at the academy. It came down slow, or maybe that was just my head, the way time stretches when the only thing that matters is about to be crushed. Isla was under it. Chained. Bone shackles burning her wrists. No way to move. No way to shift. Her eyes went wide when she saw it. Not scared. Resigned. Like she’d been waiting for something to finally finish the job. Darius saw it too. We both moved. Not at each other. For the first time since I’d hit that water, we weren’t enemies. We were just two things running toward the same girl. He was closer. He was faster. He should have gotten there first. He didn’t. I don’t know how. The bond. The wolf. Something older than both. My body hit the air and it bent. I was across the island in a step that wasn’t a step. I hit the chains with my claws, with my teeth, with everything I had left. The bone wards screamed
LUCIANThe water let go of me like a fist unclenching. I surfaced into black. Not the black of night. The black of deep places. The kind that lives under mountains, under oceans, under skin. It was cold. It was wet. It smelled like iron and salt and something older—something that had been bleeding for a very long time. I dragged myself onto stone. My lungs burned. My hands were numb. The knife was still in my fist. I didn’t remember holding onto it. The cavern opened up. It was huge. Bigger than the academy’s great hall. The ceiling was lost in shadow. The walls wept water. In the center, a lake. Black. Still. Like glass poured over the world. And in the middle of the lake, an island. Small. Bare. And on the island, her. Isla. She was on her knees. Her wrists were shackled above her head, chained to a spur of rock that jutted from the ground like a broken tooth. The chains weren’t iron. They were bone. Etched. Glowing faint red. Wards. They burned where they touched her skin.
LUCIANThe sky hadn’t healed. It was still broken. Red bleeding into black, orange eating the edges, yellow like old bruises. The elders’ light. It hung over the column as we moved, and every man with a wolf in him felt it. It made our teeth itch. It made the air taste like metal. War was coming. I could feel it in my bones. Not the good kind. Not the kind you train for. The kind that ends bloodlines. We rode north. Hard. Eighty men. Six carriages. Outriders circling like crows. The academy guard in front, volunteers behind, the elders’ carriage in the middle like a tumor we couldn’t cut out. The horses knew. They didn’t need spurs. They ran because the air told them to. Jace rode to my left. Elias to my right. Caelan behind me, watching the elders’ carriage like it might sprout teeth. No one talked. What was there to say? Ryder rode behind us. President. Headmaster. Father. Traitor. He kept his distance. Smart. If he’d come closer, I might have pulled him off his horse. Migh
DARIUSThe stone was cold under my back. It always was. This deep. This far from the sun. The cave didn’t care that tomorrow was the day. It didn’t care that in less than twenty-four hours the moon would go red and I would carve the power out of the omega’s veins and pour it into mine. It was just stone. Old. Hungry. But I cared. god, I could feel it. In my bones. In my blood. In the place where Elara used to sit before I killed her and took her name out of my mouth. The anticipation was a fever. It made my teeth ache. It made my hands shake. Tomorrow. Tomorrow I stop being Darius Vale, the broken brother, the shadow, the second son. Tomorrow I become what I was always meant to be. A god. The sound of footsteps pulled me out of it. Not Isla’s. She was on the island, chained at the ankle to the bed. Not with iron. Iron was for men. She was chained with warded silver and bone, etched with words that burned if she shifted. She hadn’t spoken in hours. She just lay there, staring
PRESIDENT RYDERThe sky was wrong. Red, blue, yellow, black, orange, green. Not the regular colors. The elders never came in person. They sent letters. They sent judgments. They sent death. But they never came. Not unless the world was about to end. Or unless they didn’t trust you to end it yourself. I left the yard. The wind was up now, pulling at my cloak, making the flags snap like gunshots. The troops watched me go. I felt their eyes. I felt Lucian’s most of all. He knew what that light meant too. I went to the gates. They were already open. Six figures stood just beyond the threshold. No horses. No carriage. They’d walked. Or appeared. With them, that was the same thing. Five in gray robes. Faces hidden. Hands hidden. Silent. One in red. He was taller than the others. Not by much. But it was enough. His robe moved like it was alive, like it was drinking the light around it. The cowl was deep. I couldn’t see his face. I didn’t need to. I’d see it in my nightmares anyway.
I tried to deflect the intensity of the moment, hoping to steer the conversation back to safer waters. "Is it just me, or does it feel hot in here?" I asked, attempting to sound nonchalant, but my voice came out husky and uneven.Lucian's eyebrow arched, a hint of amusement dancing on his lips."Yo
I walked out of Lucian's room, feeling a mix of emotions swirling inside me. The almost-kiss still lingered in my mind, and I couldn't help but wonder what would have happened if Jace hadn't interrupted us. As I made my way back to my dorm, I quickened my pace, eager to get out of the hallway and p
As we walked in silence, the only sound being the soft crunch of gravel beneath our feet, I couldn't help but let my mind wander to the situation with Ruby. I was still reeling from the news that she had been poisoned with wolfsbane. Who could have done such a thing? And why?My thoughts drifted to
As we broke through the surface, Lucian's strong arms wrapped around me, holding me close as he walked out of the water. "Isla, Isla," he called, his voice low and husky.I clung to his body, my arms wrapping around his neck as I buried my face in his shoulder. His skin was warm and smooth, and I







