The Eclipse Prophecy

The roar so loud the snow on the trees fell off.

It didn't come from a throat. It came from the earth itself. The frozen river, which had sealed shut behind me, bulged upward like something massive was punching it from below.

Kael grabbed my scruff - my fur was half white, half black now, and his hand hesitated on the black half - and yanked me back from the edge.

"He's out," he breathed. "Goddess, Elara held him for twenty-one years and you freed him in one night."

I shifted back, gasping, naked again in the snow except for the white cloak clutched in my teeth. The cloak was heavy, impossibly warm. The moment I touched it, it wrapped itself around my shoulders by itself, clasping at my throat with a fang-shaped brooch.

Lyra was panting inside me. But there was another breathing now too. Deeper. Slower.

_Stella,_ Lyra whispered, exhausted. _I tried to keep him sleeping. I did._

_You did well, little light,_ a second voice said. Male. Rough. Amused. _But you cannot keep night from falling forever._

I froze.

"Who said that?" I said out loud.

Kael stared at me, eyes wide. "What?"

"Inside - there is -" I pressed my hands to my temples. "Lyra, who is that?"

_Nox,_ Lyra answered, and she sounded like she was crying and angry at once. _Your black half. Your father's blood. He was sleeping inside us too. When you broke the chains on the second throne, you woke him._

Nox laughed, low inside my skull. _Hello, daughter of mine and Elara's. Finally._

I threw up. Snow and light and bile. The cloak tightened around me protectively.

Kael knelt, but didn't touch me. "Eclipse," he whispered again. "The prophecy -"

"What prophecy?" I snapped, wiping my mouth. My voice came out doubled again - one silver, one black. "Stop talking in riddles! My mother is alive under ice with a monster who says he's my father, I have two wolves inside me fighting, and you are calling me Queen when I don't even know what I am!"

Kael took a deep breath. The six guard wolves formed a circle around us, facing outward, ears flat. They could feel the thing under the river waking.

"The prophecy of the Eclipse was written on the walls of the White Kingdom before even Elara was born," Kael said quickly, words tumbling. "It said: When White mates with Cursed, a child of both will be born on a night of no moon. White fur and black fur, one silver eye and one blood eye. She will be able to wake the sleeping kingdom and free the Cursed, and she will have to choose - kill her father and save her mother, or kill her mother and become Queen of Darkness."

The blood in my veins turned to ice.

"Choose? I have to kill one of them?"

"The prophecy says the Eclipse cannot exist with both parents alive. One must die to balance her."

Nox laughed again inside me. _I vote the mother, little star. She is weak. She trapped me for two decades._

_Shut up!_ Lyra snarled at him, and for the first time I felt my two wolves fight physically inside my chest, claws raking.

I screamed and fell to my knees, clutching my mark which was now half silver, half black, burning.

Kael finally touched me - his hands on my shoulders, hot. "Fight it! Stella, you are stronger than both! Elara said you would be!"

At his touch, something in the cloak pocket burned. The letter.

I had forgotten the letter.

With shaking hands, I pulled it out. It was sealed with white wax, a paw print pressed into it. The paper was not paper - it was thin birch bark, still smelling like Elara.

I broke the seal.

_My Stella, my little star, if you are reading this, you are eighteen and you have found the river. I am sorry I could not be there to give you this cloak myself. I made it from my own winter coat and your father's - yes, his - first pelt. White on the outside so they see your Queen side. Black on the inside so you never forget his side._

_Two things you must know:_

_1. Kael is not your uncle. I told him to tell you that so you would not be scared of him. He is the son of the Veil Guard Alpha. The night you were born, I betrothed you to him to protect you. He has guarded the river since he was ten, waiting for you. He does not want a mate, he wants a Queen. If you do not want him, you may reject him. He will obey._

_2. Magnus does not have silver bullets. He has something worse. When he trapped me, he took my blood while I was freezing. He froze it into bullets. White Queen blood kills any wolf, even White. Even Eclipse. If his hunters find you, you will not heal. Run._

_I love you. More than light, more than dark. Be both, my star._

_- Elara_

The bark fell from my hands into the snow.

Betrothed. Since birth.

I looked at Kael. He was staring at the ground, jaw tight, unable to meet my eyes. The silver scars on his chest rose and fell fast.

"You knew," I whispered. "You knew and you let me -"

"I never wanted it!" Kael burst out, finally looking at me, angry, ashamed. "I was ten! Your mother made my father swear! I guarded you because you are my Queen, not because you are my - my -"

He couldn't finish.

Behind us, the river exploded.

Not a bulge. An explosion of ice and light and black water. A figure shot out, landing on the opposite bank, crouched on all fours. Too tall to be a man, too shaped to be a wolf.

The Cursed. My father. Free.

His fur was now fully black, dripping with black river water that steamed. His blood eyes locked onto me, onto the cloak, onto the letter at my feet.

"You read it," he said, and his voice was no longer double. It was only his now, deep and hungry. "Good. Then you know you belong to darkness. Come, daughter."

Kael shifted. He didn't have a half-form like me. He shifted fully into a massive grey wolf with silver scars, standing between me and the Cursed, snarling, but his legs were shaking. He was no match and he knew it.

Lyra and Nox both surged inside me at once, not fighting each other this time, but fighting to protect me.

_Run,_ they said together for the first time.

I didn't run.

I stood up, wrapped in my mother's cloak that was white and black, holding my mother's letter that said run, and I looked at the monster who gave me half my blood, and at the boy who had been forced to wait for me since he was ten, and I made my first decision as Eclipse.

"Kael, get up," I said, my voice steady, both silver and black. "We are not running."

I raised my left hand - the white side - and the snow around Kael turned to a wall of ice, protecting him.

I raised my right hand - the black side - and the black river water rose like a whip.

The Cursed smiled with my father's stolen face.

"That's my girl."

From far, far away, through the trees, I heard another howl. Not Kael's. Not the Cursed's.

Jaxon's black wolf howl, and behind it, dozens of hunters, and the unmistakable _click_ of rifles loaded with frozen blood bullets.

Magnus had found us.