LOGIN“Give me what you took, Aurora.”Victor’s voice crossed the chamber without rising.My body reacted before my mind did.My shoulders drew in. My gaze dropped towards the water. For one sickening moment, I was back in his study, waiting for him to decide whether I had disappointed him enough to deserve punishment.The clasp cut into my palm.I lifted my head.“No.”Victor looked at me as though the answer belonged to someone else.Behind us, water shifted around the Bloodstone wolves. The grey-jawed leader had moved closer to the wall, placing his men where they could reach either Ezra or th
The wall closed behind me.I kept moving.The passage sloped beneath the seal, narrow enough that the stone brushed both shoulders. The pendant and moon disc remained behind me, fixed into the outer wall. I could still feel their pull, stretched from the seal towards whatever waited ahead.A faint silver light marked the path.It did not come from a torch or a carving. It gathered along the edges of the stone, cold and thin, just enough to show where the floor dropped.The black line beneath my skin burned harder with every step.The passage curved once before opening into a small chamber.There was no altar. No ceremonial carving. No
Aurora stepped into the wall.Every instinct I had demanded that I follow.The opening narrowed around her shoulders as she turned sideways, one hand pressed to the clean silver edge. Darkness swallowed her almost immediately. For one second, I could still see the black line beneath the skin of her wrist.Then the stone began to close.I reached for her.Cassian caught my arm."Do not.""She is still there.""And if you disturb the seal, she may stay there."The gap narrowed to the width of my hand.
The black line stopped moving halfway across my wrist.I watched it long enough to be certain.It lay beneath my skin like a vein that did not belong there, dark against the pale inside of my arm. The pain had faded to a low burn, but each time I looked towards the seal, it sharpened.Cassian noticed.“Step back from it.”“I already have.”“Another step.”I moved farther into the water.The burning eased.Ezra stood between me and the wall, studying the black roots that twisted through the old carving. He had returned the moon disc to me, but hi
The water reached my ankles on the third step.By the sixth, it covered the tops of my boots.Ezra went first with the torch held low, testing each stair before he placed his full weight on it. The ceiling forced him to bend, one shoulder brushing the wall as the passage curved beneath the river.Cassian followed behind me.I could hear the change in his breathing whenever the steps dropped sharply. He made no complaint, but one hand remained pressed near the bandage beneath his shirt.The cracks above us leaked steadily. Thin streams ran down the walls and gathered around our legs, carrying grit over the stone."How much farther?" I asked.
The guards reached Victor's study minutes after the hearing ended.I went with Darius, though neither of us said why. Part of me expected to find Victor waiting, composed behind his desk, ready to argue that a suspended title changed nothing. He had always been better at staying than at running.The study was empty.Not ransacked. Not overturned. Emptied with the same care he brought to everything, drawers closed, papers squared, the chair pushed in. Whatever he had wanted, he had taken without hurry.Darius stood in the centre of the room and turned once, slowly."His travel case is gone," he said. "The locked one. He kept it beneath the window.""You knew about it.""I knew he never let anyone near it."A younger wolf appeared in the doorway, breathing hard from the stairs."Alpha. The east gate."We reached it faster than my legs wanted to carry me.Two gate guards waited, and I knew before either spoke that something had gone wrong, because neither of them would look directly at D







