LOGINIsabella POV"Hold still," said Clover, through a mouthful of pins."I am holding still.""You are breathing.""People breathe!""Not when I am measuring." She tugged the tape tight around my waist. "There. Done. You are the same size as last month. Which is very rude, considering how much you eat."I laughed. Wren, tucked warm and happy in my chest, said, She is right. We ate three pies yesterday.Two and a half.Rounded up.It was the sixth day after the full moon. The sun was bright, and the palace smelled like fresh bread and sawdust, because Aelion's soldiers and the palace carpenters had been rebuilding the north gate all week. Somewhere downstairs, a very loud argument was going on about napkins."The wedding is in spring," Clover announced, sticking her tape measure in her apron. "That is what the Princess said this morning. On the west balcony. Under the arch.""Of course it is.""Spring! That is five months! I need to make forty dresses.""You do not need to make forty dress
Killian POVThe sun rose over a palace full of broken glass.I stood on the north wall at dawn, with a blanket around my shoulders and a bandage on my ribs, looking down at what was left of the gate. A watchtower lay in pieces. A long black scorch mark ran across the stones like a scar. Soldiers in red and gold coats were already clearing rubble, and the smell of smoke hung over everything."He is gone," said Marcus, coming up beside me."Where?""North. Over the mountains. Two of Aelion's scouts followed him as far as the pass." He rubbed his eyes. "He left a trail of burning pine. One of his eyes is gone, Alpha. The Princess's arrow took it.""She hit it?""Dead center. In the old scar."I let out a breath that was half a laugh. "She said she was bad at aiming.""She says a lot of things."We stood in silence a moment."He will come back," I said."Yes.""With whatever is left of his rogues.""I would be surprised if he did not." Marcus straightened. "But not this season. He is hur
Isabella POVIt did not hurt the way I expected.It hurt worse.The moonlight pouring through the ceiling did not feel like light at all. It felt like a thousand cold hooks sinking under my skin, in my chest and my wrists and my spine, pulling. Pulling something out of me, gently and steadily, the way you would pull a thread from a seam.I screamed. I could not stop screaming.Somewhere far away, I heard Killian roaring my name. I heard Matilda chanting in a low singsong. I heard Darius sobbing.And inside me, in the silver hallway I had walked so many times, I felt Wren howl.Isabella!The hallway flickered. I was suddenly standing in it, barefoot on the warm stone. The iron door stood open. The chains had fallen away. But across the threshold, coiled around the frame like a snake, was the thin black line, and it was growing.It was not thin anymore. It was thick as my arm. It writhed and tightened, dripping purple light, sinking black roots into the walls and floor. And at its cente
Isabella POVThe moon chamber looked exactly as it had on the night of my wedding ritual. The black obsidian floor. The wolf runes carved into the walls. The great round glass ceiling, open to the sky, with the full moon hanging in it like a silver coin.But the beauty was gone. The runes glowed a sick purple. The air tasted like metal and old flowers. And in the center of the floor, drawn in thin black lines, was a circle as wide as a carriage, filled with tiny crescents.I was lying in it.I could not move. Thin purple threads ran from my wrists, my ankles and my throat down into the stone, holding me like a fly in a web. I could breathe. I could blink. I could speak, if I tried hard enough. But my body felt like a heavy glove.Wren, I whispered, for the hundredth time.Silence.I turned my head. Barely, an inch at a time.Across the circle, kneeling on the floor, was Darius.He looked worse than he had in Valerie's description. His clothes hung off him in rags. His hair was matted.
Killian POVI had never been so afraid in my life.Not when my mother died. Not when Darius ran. Not even when I fell off that cliff with Vaelin Frost's claws in my chest. This fear was different. It had nothing to do with swords or fire. It was a thin, cold wire of terror pulled tight between my ribs and the tower, and it hummed with one sound over and over.Isabella."Alpha!" Marcus shouted. "The gates!"I was already running. I had shifted halfway across the garden, and my wolf tore across the grass faster than any man could follow. Behind me, Aelion's soldiers were pouring out of the barracks in red coats, shouting orders. Valerie ran at Aelion's side, her cloak flying, a little glass jar clutched in her fist."The tower!" I roared in my mind, to anyone who could hear. Someone get to the tower!Thane's men are already running, said Marcus, in the pack link. Go! We will hold the wall!I did not slow down. The bond was screaming now. Pain. Cold. A sudden, awful silence where her wol
Isabella POVThe west tower smelled like old stone and candle smoke.It was a round room at the top of a winding staircase, with narrow windows facing the forest and a ring of low beds against the wall. Someone had hung bundles of dried herbs from the beams. Shelves held jars of salve, rolls of clean linen and a row of tiny glass bottles. It looked like a place where people got better.I sat on the edge of a cot in my plain gray dress, with my hands folded in my lap. Across the room, Winifred Aldous was snoring gently in a rocking chair, her stick across her knees. Twelve guards stood along the walls, silent and straight. Thane was by the door, arms crossed, eyes sharp.Wren paced inside my ribs. It is too quiet, she kept saying. It is much too quiet.They are good guards.I do not like it.You do not like anything tonight.I like Killian.Yes. I know.I rubbed my wrist. The little black crescent had not stopped itching since sunset. Under my skin, it pulsed in slow beats, cold as a d







