Chapter 2: The Execution Order

Cassian

The woman who is going to kill me is sleeping in my dungeon, and I can't stop my hands from shaking.

I hide them behind my back. Captain Bram is watching, and so are the two guards at the cell door. Ten years of ruling the north have taught me one lesson above all others: never let anyone see you bleed.

Except I'm bleeding now. Not in my body. Somewhere deeper.

Mate.

My wolf has said that one word a thousand times since midnight. He won't say anything else. He doesn't argue, and he doesn't listen. He just repeats it, over and over, like a man pounding on a locked door.

"Alpha," Bram says quietly. "She's awake."

"Did she say anything?"

"Only that the blood isn't hers." He hesitates. "The healer confirms it. Wolf blood, fresh, no more than a few hours old. But there's no wound on her. And no body."

"Whose?"

"We don't know yet."

Of course we don't.

I take a slow breath. In through the nose. Out through the teeth. The calm settles over me like armor, and I hold it there with everything I have.

"Open the door."

---

The cell is small and cold, and the moment I step inside, the air hits me like a fist.

Rain and lavender. Woodsmoke and something warm and sweet underneath, something I can't name and don't want to.

My wolf goes crazy.

Mine. Mine. Mine.

I lock my knees and stay where I am, just inside the door, a full ten feet from her.

Lyra sits against the far wall with her chained hands in her lap. Someone has scrubbed the blood off her, but pink still stains her nail beds. Her dark hair is a wreck. There's a bruise on her jaw from where the guards grabbed her. She looks smaller than she did in the cellar.

She also looks furious.

"You," she says. "Congratulations. I've been awake for an hour, and I already hate this place."

"I'm not here to discuss the décor."

"Shame. It could use a rug."

Something twitches at the corner of my mouth. I flatten it immediately.

"You were found with blood on your hands," I say. "Whose?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know."

"I woke up in this cell covered in it. The last thing I remember is your Oracle telling me to sleep." Her eyes narrow. "Which, by the way, is a crime. You can't just knock people out with your fingers."

"The Oracle would never."

"Then explain the blood."

"That is what I'm asking you."

We stare at each other. It's the strangest thing. She's chained. I hold every card. And yet I feel like I'm the one standing in a cage.

I decide to cut through it.

"In the cellar," I say. "You saw something."

Her whole body goes still.

"I felt it," I press. "Something passed between us when I took your wrist. Then you went white as a sheet, and you screamed. I want to know what it was."

"You don't."

"That was not a request."

"Fine." She lifts her chin. Her eyes are dark, exhausted, and absolutely unafraid, and I hate how much I admire that. "I saw you die."

The words drop into the silence like a stone into a well.

"When?" I say.

"I don't know. I see what, not when."

"How?"

"You were standing in a burning city. Towers coming down. There was blood all down your chest." She swallows. "You were dying. And I was standing in front of you."

"Who killed me?"

She meets my eyes. It's a steady, unflinching look, and I know before she says it that I will hate the answer.

"I did."

My wolf howls.

Not in my head. Everywhere. Every muscle in my body clenches. My vision flares gold at the edges, and for one long second the world narrows to the sound of my own pulse.

No. No. NO.

"You expect me to believe that?" My voice comes out like gravel.

"I don't expect you to believe anything. I'm chained to a wall." She holds up her wrists so the iron clinks. "But you asked."

"You have a motive."

"I really don't."

"You are a Death Seer. Illegal. Hunted. I signed the law that makes you a criminal." I take one step forward before I can stop myself. "That is motive enough."

"Oh, I see. So you know you'd have a reason to hate me, but I'm the one who has to prove I don't have a reason to hurt you." She laughs, short and bitter. "That's not evidence. That's guilt."

"Watch your tongue."

"Or what? You'll kill me?"

"Yes."

The word comes out flat. Certain. It's true, and we both know it.

She goes quiet. For the first time, something flickers across her face that isn't sarcasm.

"You've survived three assassination attempts," she says slowly. "Everybody knows that. You didn't get to be Alpha by trusting anyone, did you?"

"No."

"Then I'll say this once." She leans forward. The chain rattles. "I don't want to kill you. I've never wanted to kill anyone in my life. I spend my nights with corpses so somebody, somebody, can find out who murdered them. Do you think a woman like that walks into a city and slits an Alpha's throat?"

"I think a woman like that knows how."

"Let me touch you again."

I stiffen. "No."

"I can look closer. Study the vision, find something —"

"No."

It comes out harder than I intend. She flinches.

I turn away. I need the wall. I need the door. I need the cold, clean logic that has kept me alive since I was seventeen.

Facts. Evidence. Only what can be proved.

Fact: she was found in an unauthorized area, using illegal power.

Fact: her hands were covered in blood no one can explain.

Fact: Seraphine, my Oracle, my oldest and most trusted advisor, warned me for months that my mate would kill me.

Fact: the woman in front of me just admitted, to my face, that she saw herself do it.

The evidence is overwhelming. The evidence is clear.

"Captain Bram," I say.

He steps in behind me. "Alpha."

"Prepare the block. Tonight. Have the executioner wait in the courtyard."

The silence is enormous.

"Cassian," Lyra says. Not Alpha. Not sir. Just my name, quiet, and it goes through me like a blade. "You're about to kill your mate."

"I'm about to kill the woman who kills me."

"You don't know that."

"I don't have to." I nod at the guards. "Unchain her. Bring her up."

The guards move toward her. Keys clatter. Bram's face is stone. Lyra doesn't fight. She just sits there and looks at me, dark eyes fixed on mine, and I realize she's not begging.

She's memorizing me.

Like she's already decided what to say when the blade comes down.

The first shackle falls.

And my wolf snaps.

---

It's like being hit by a battering ram from the inside.

Agony explodes through my ribs. My spine arches. My knees hit the stone before I know they've moved. I hear my own roar, and it's barely human, and around me guards are shouting.

"Alpha!"

"Get back — get back!"

Claws tear out of my fingertips and gouge the floor. My teeth lengthen. I can taste iron on my tongue, and I realize I'm biting through my own lip.

I said no, I think at the beast in my chest. She is a threat. She is the enemy —

NO.

The word is a roar. It drowns everything.

My wolf has never defied me. Not once. Not in twenty-eight years.

He is defying me now.

Lyra is on her feet, one wrist free, staring at me across the cell. Her face has gone the color of chalk. She doesn't run, though the door is open. She takes one step toward me, then stops, like she's afraid to come closer and afraid to look away.

"Cassian," she says, almost gently. "Cassian, what's happening to you?"

I can't answer. The floor is tilting. The world is narrowing to a single point of golden fire, and out of that fire, in a voice I have never heard before, low, ancient, and utterly calm, my wolf speaks.

If she dies, he says, so do we.