LOGINMIRA'S POVCorvin said I should not be out of bed.He listed the reasons — the residual toxin still clearing my system, the strain on the pregnancy, the fact that two days of unconsciousness was not something a body simply walked away from without consequence.I told him I understood all of that and I was going anyway.He looked at Rowan. Rowan looked back at him with an expression that said clearly he was not going to be the one to stop me, and Corvin exhaled through his nose and went to get the wheelchair he had been hoping not to need.I accepted the wheelchair. That was my concession and it was the only one I was making.~~~They brought Isla to a secure room on the second floor — not a cell, but close enough in feel. Stone walls, one window too narrow to be useful, a table and two chairs and guards stationed outside and inside the door. Rowan walked beside me and said nothing about the chair or the pace or any of it, which I appreciated more than I would have said out loud.When
ROWAN'S POVI had been trying to find the right moment to say it for two days.While she was unconscious, I had rehearsed it more times than I could count — sitting in that chair with her hand in mine and the healing chamber quiet around me, going over the words until they felt like something I could actually say out loud without the usual mechanisms of control getting in the way. I had had a lot of time to think. Too much, maybe.But now she was awake and looking at me and the rehearsed version was gone, so I said the real version instead."When you were seizing," I said. "When Corvin was working and your body was fighting the treatment and I didn't know which way it was going to go." I looked at our hands. "All of it — the distance, the careful check-ins, the guilt I'd been carrying around like it was something noble — it felt like the stupidity it was. For the first time since I brought you here, I couldn't dress it up into anything reasonable."Mira watched me and didn't speak."I
MIRA'S POVMy consciousness returned slowly, trying to slowly making pieces sense of what had happened and where I was. I heard the sound first. Voices somewhere at a distance, lowly speaking, the particular murmur of healers going about their work. Then the smell of herbs, something bitter underneath something clean, the specific air of a room that had been occupied for a long time without being aired out. Then pain, spreading and general, the kind that doesn't have a single point of origin because it's coming from everywhere at once and has been doing so long enough to feel like the baseline rather than the interruption.Then warmth, the hands around mine, rough and warm and still.I worked on opening my eyes. It took longer than it should have.The ceiling of the healing chamber came into focus first, then the lamp on the table to my left, then the figure in the chair beside the bed with his forearms resting on the edge of the mattress and both hands wrapped around mine.Rowan lo
TOBIAS'S POVI had been at this table for two hours before Rowan arrived.The evidence from Vessa's chambers was extensive — more than I had expected when the search team first brought back the box. I had gone through everything twice before I was ready to present it, because I wanted to be certain I understood what I was looking at before I put it in front of Rowan. Getting this wrong was not an option.By the time he came through the door, I had it all laid out in order.He stood at the edge of the table and looked at it. His jaw was set and his arms were folded and he didn't touch anything yet, just looked at the spread of letters and documents the way you look at something you already know is going to be bad before you start reading."Walk me through it," he said.I started from the left. "Correspondence between Vessa and at least six court members. Some of it goes back over a year." I moved along the table. "These are strategy documents — specific plans to undermine your author
ROWAN'S POVI killed Vessa quickly and I won't account for it further than that.Then I was across the room as Mira was sliding down the wall and I caught her before she reached the floor.Her weight against my chest was too light as it had been too light since I first carried her into Helena's castle and since the river.I had been telling myself it was the pregnancy taking from her body but now I understood what had actually been taking from her body for weeks.Her hands were shaking in mine with her eyes being open but the focus in them was wrong.It was present but distant like looking through glass as I told her to stay with me.She blinked and said she was here then I told her to stay here.Elara was already moving despite the wound in her shoulder as she pressed a cloth to it with one hand and reached into her belt kit with the other.She looked at me over Mira's head with an expression that told me to move fast and not ask questions.She called for the master healer and told m
MIRA'S POVElara moved faster than I expected her to as she put herself between me and the figure with both arms out.She was blocking and said something sharp that I didn't fully hear because the figure was already moving with a blade that came sideways.The steel caught Elara's shoulder as it was not a killing blow but an obstacle removal.Elara made a sound that I felt in my chest then she went down hard against the bedframe.I called her name but there was no time as the figure was still moving and I was the target.I felt my wolf rise with it being not clean and not controlled but just raw and immediate and desperate then I moved.We collided and the impact sent both of us into the writing table.It went over with a crash that I hoped was loud enough for someone in the corridor to hear through a closed door over their own dying as the figure was stronger than me.They were significantly stronger and I felt it in the first second of contact with the difference in mass and training
Mira’s POVThe silence was almost louder than the screaming. It was a heavy, terrible pressure that seemed to weigh down on my eyelids and ears.Outside, the world was still ending, but inside the room, it felt like the air had been sucked out by a vacuum, leaving a hollow lightness in its wake. I
Tobias’s POVThe air out here tasted like pine needles and impending violence. I stayed low, my stomach pressed against the damp earth, watching the chaos unfold through the thick veil of the tree line.From this vantage point, the Nightshadow Pack territory looked like a disturbed hornet’s nest.T
Mira’s POVThe door didn't just open; it practically flew off the hinges. I didn't even have to look up to know the healer had arrived, mostly because the sound of her heavy breathing and the frantic clatter of her medical bag preceded her by a mile.She looked like she’d run a marathon just to get
Rowan's POVI stood there, completely paralyzed in the center of the room, staring at Mira as if I were seeing her for the very first time in my life. The air between us was thick, charged with the kind of volatile electricity that precedes a massive, catastrophic storm. My chest felt agonizingly t







