Lyra’s POV~I skimmed my fingers over the torn edge of the ledger, squinting, my heart beating too loud for my liking. Dust settled like ash in the air. The archives in the basement of the Academy were colder than I remembered.The one I was holding bore Sabrina’s sigil.I hadn’t meant to find it. I’d been searching for more information about the Broken Protocol, about something that could help Jasmine. But the words startled me in the instant I saw them.Unstable Assets – Crownless Tier IICategory: Twin-Blooded WerewolvesNotes: Emotionally sensitive. Bond dependent. Highly sensitive to loss and isolation. Best used during pair assignments or mission partners. Breaks easily under prolonged stress. Recover slowly. Great for ritual channels. See the attached name log.Subject 03L: Lyra Vale.My throat closed.I read it twice, wondering if I had read the name wrong. But it was mine. There, in this tasteful paper, to have me shoved like I were an item. A warning label.Not because I was
Jasmine’s POV~I was seated hunched over the shattered Silver Veil tablet, tracing my fingers along the rough runes. Most of it could not even be read due to age or heat, but one line caught my attention.“Crownless Protocol— Contingency Bloodline: J. H.”My breath clouded the air in front of me.J.H.Jasmine Hale.I didn’t blink.Didn’t breathe.Didn’t need to.Well, as soon as I saw it, I knew.They hadn’t just raised me.They hadn’t just trained me.They had built me.Not to win.Not even to survive.But to be a switch.The last lever. The contingency weapon is concealed beneath flesh and bone. One that they would switch on only if everything else failed.I was the insurance policy. The fallback.The Crownless Queen.And now I was loose.Unleashed.I attempted to swallow, but found the air was stuck — like glass — in my throat.They had never intended to release me.I didn’t inform the others about the tablet immediately. Not Elara, not Lyra, not even Caspian.But Lyra saw me linge
Elara’s POV~Before sunrise, I found a letter under my bed.No name on it. No signature.But only some recently folded parchment with soft edges and still warm, like it’d been kept there not long ago.At first, I thought it might be from Jasmine or Lyra. Maybe my mother. Another update, another lead. But as soon as I opened the thing, I knew the truth.The handwriting.The slant of the letters, the pressure of the ink.Damien.The words were few.If you knew what I have done, I don’t think you’d let me continue to breathe next to you.There was no flourish. No plea. Only guilt, tightly packed into a sentence that felt like a wound.I read it once.Then again.I didn’t cry.Didn’t scream.Didn’t clench it into a ball that I threw into the fire or boiled up in my fists like I should have.I set it down neatly alongside my sword, instead.Because if Damien believed for one moment that I didn’t know what I saw in his eyes the last few weeks—the way he’d flinch if I got too close, and the
Damien’s POV~The cold didn’t bother me.Not tonight.Not when I felt this way. I didn’t leave a note. Didn’t inform anyone beforehand that I was going. I left camp in the dark that predawn morning, boots crushing old snow and half-dead pine needles on the ground, my fists balled in my coat pockets like they were keeping something in place.Because I was.I’d hiked a mile when I stopped.And I broke. My knees hit the snow first. Then my hands. I felt as if my bones had failed me, and they might have. I heaved once. Then again. And then I vomited.Not from sickness. From memory.Because I saw her again. Elara.The first time. The only time.She just stood there, icicles forming in her breath, mouth hanging open, eyes wide — no fear, just betrayal. Not you, her eyes had said. Of all people, not you.But it had been me.The trembling hands. The loaded weapon. The quiet gasp. I remembered what I’d said. “I’m sorry.”And I meant it.Gods, I’d meant it. But it hadn’t changed anything.“I wa
Elara’s POV~The voice resonated in the cave.“You are … the one”.We froze in place. Every fiber of my body ached to move, to unsheath my blade, to flee—but what good would any of that do us?Because the voice wasn’t that of a threat stalking its prey.It was uttered by someone who had already been broken.I looked at the other side of the room. Dim runes along the wall throbbed beneath the surface of the stone, showing the tiniest break in what would have appeared to be solid rock. But as we rounded a corner, the stone faded—an illusion, a flick of magic long dormant—and there, buried in a secret antechamber, was the cage.A sphere.Thick glass with a thousand-layered runes, a few of which were beginning to split. The containment magic glow was shallow and gave off a faint flickering. Inside, hanging in midair, in a swirl of pale energy, was a man.He was tall, broadly built, still too thin, and his skin was so pale it bordered on translucent. There were dull blue veins of light ru
Lyra’s POV~There are places in the world where silence does not feel empty.It feels alive.Like it’s listening.We arrived at the valley at sunrise. The air had been colder here. Below us was all that was left of the Silver Veil mines were shattered ground, metal and bone poking through the snow.Sabrina had drawn a circle around the location on her map. A small image, the name had Nox written below in red ink.There were no trails down. One false move and you’d be gone under it.“This is the last area for sure?” I questioned, showing the paper to Elara.She nodded. “Winifred confirmed it. But no one has walked into this mine in more than a decade. Not even scouts.”“Because it’s cursed?” Jasmine muttered, adjusting her gloves.“It’s dangerous, that’s why,” Damien crouched by a rotted post with a containment rune on it. “But if Nox is below us… It’s more risky to leave him.”Caspian paused a couple of feet back and swept his glare across the trees with the kind of tension that remin