The Blade Awakes

We weren’t going to make it.

Thorne was 20 feet from the vault door when we burst through the smoke. 20 feet and Aria was on the other side with only Roric and two healers between her and a 400-year-old Archmage.

He didn’t even look at us.

He just slammed his palm against the vault door and spoke a word in High Lycan that made the stone scream.

The door exploded inward.

“THORNE!” Darius roared and threw himself forward, but a wall of silver magic snapped up between us and the vault.

We hit it hard and bounced back.

Inside, I could hear Roric shouting, “Protect the child!” and the sound of a blade being drawn.

I pounded on the barrier with my fists until my knuckles split. “MOVE, DAMN YOU!”

Thorne stepped into the vault calmly, like he was entering his own study. His white eyes locked onto Aria’s bassinet in the back corner. She was awake now, wailing, silver hair standing up around her head like static.

“Moon’s true daughter,” he whispered, reverent and terrified at the same time. “300 years. And you’re even more than the records said.”

Roric got between him and the bassinet, sword up. “Step back, Magister. Or die.”

Thorne didn’t even break stride. He flicked his fingers.

Roric went flying across the room and slammed into the wall hard enough to crack stone. He didn’t get back up.

The two healers screamed and ran.

That left Aria.

Thorne knelt in front of the bassinet. “Do you know what you are, little blade?” he murmured. “You are the answer to a thousand years of Lycan weakness. You are the reason the old Council erased your kind.”

Outside the barrier, Elias was screaming and trying to claw through the magic. “ARIIIA!”

Aria stopped crying.

She looked up at Thorne with gold eyes that were way too old for a 2-week-old baby.

And the air in the vault changed.

Temperature dropped 30 degrees in a second. The torches on the wall went from flame to blue-white ice. The ground frosted over under Thorne’s feet.

Thorne’s smile faded. “What are you—”

Aria reached out.

Her tiny hand didn’t touch him. It didn’t need to.

A pulse of silver light exploded from her chest.

It hit Thorne like a battering ram.

He went flying backward into the stone wall with a crack that echoed through the whole Citadel. The barrier between us and the vault shattered like glass.

Darius was at my side instantly, pulling me into the vault.

Thorne was on the floor, bleeding from his nose and ears, staring at Aria like he’d just seen a god.

“What… what was that?” he gasped.

Aria sat up in the bassinet and cooed.

The Prophecy’s words echoed in my head: _Beware the blade, for it cuts both ways._

I picked her up, cradling her against me, and felt the power still thrumming under her skin like a second heartbeat.

She was 2 weeks old.

And she’d just thrown a Magister across a room without touching him.

Thorne forced himself to his knees, bowing despite the blood. “The blade wakes,” he whispered. “The Prophecy is true. The Moon’s daughter will remake or rend the world.”

Darius stepped in front of me, Lycan fangs bared. “She’s not your weapon, Magister. She’s our daughter. And you just tried to take her.”

Thorne looked up at him, and for the first time I saw fear in those ancient white eyes.

“No,” he said. “I didn’t try to take her. I tried to save her. Before the others do. Before she learns to use that power and destroys us all.”

“Save her by kidnapping her?” Kade snarled from the doorway, still bleeding from the battle.

Thorne shook his head. “By giving her to the only people who know how to control Moonblood. The Arcane Council.”

I held Aria tighter. She’d gone quiet in my arms, looking up at me with those ancient gold eyes.

“She doesn’t need your control,” I said. “She needs her family.”

Thorne stood, swaying. “Then you need to prepare, Queen Elara. Because what you saw here today… that was nothing. When her power fully awakens, every realm in this world will come for her. And if you can’t control her… she’ll destroy them. And herself.”

He turned and walked out of the vault, stepping over Roric’s unconscious body without a glance back.

The battle outside was still raging. We could hear it through the broken door.

But in here, it was silent.

Except for Aria’s soft breathing.

And the hum of power under her skin that hadn’t stopped since she’d thrown Thorne.

Elias ran to us and wrapped his arms around both me and Aria. “Are you okay? Is she okay?”

We’re okay,” I said, kissing the top of his head. “For now.”

But Thorne’s words stuck in my head.

_When her power fully awakens…_

We had no idea what we had just unleashed.

And the rest of the world was about to find out.