Chapter 5_My father is the shadows king

~~Isolde~~

My father is the God of Shadows

The guard's words hung in the air like poison.

"My King, the Northern Alpha says he knows who Isolde's father is... the God of Shadows!"

Riven's hand froze on the crown he had just placed on my head. The crown was warm. Too warm. Like it was alive. Pulsing against my skin as if it had a heartbeat that was not my own, as if it recognized something in my blood that I did not.

The white wolf growled, a low sound that vibrated through the stone floor. The grey wolf that had followed Riven back into the room bared its teeth, hackles raised, eyes fixed on the doorway.

"Repeat that," Riven said, voice deadly quiet. The kind of quiet that comes before a storm breaks the sky.

The guard swallowed. He was young. Maybe twenty. His armor was too big for him, his knuckles white around his spear. He looked at me with fear. Not fear of me. Fear for me. As if I were already dead and he was the one who had to deliver the news.

"Alpha Jax of the Northern Pack... he says he will stop the attack if you hand over the girl. He says... he says her father is not human. Her father is Moros. The God of Shadows. The one who killed the Last Queen. The one who... who fathered the Forbidden Child."

Silence. The kind of silence that has weight. That presses on your ears.

I felt blood drain from my face. My fingers went numb around the edge of the fur cloak Riven had thrown around my shoulders. God of Shadows? My father? My father was supposed to be a farmer who died. That's what my grandmother told me, every night by the hearth. A farmer. Brown hair. Kind eyes. Dead in a plow accident before I was born. She told me so many times I believed the lie like a prayer.

Not a god. Not a killer of queens. Not the thing mothers warn their children about when the nights grow too long.

Riven slowly turned to look at me. His blue eyes were no longer ice. They were storm. Hurt. Anger. Confusion. A hundred questions he was too proud to ask. The crown in his hand caught the candlelight and threw it across his face in sharp, broken pieces.

"Isolde," he said. "Is that true?"

"I don't know!" My voice broke. It shattered in the cold chamber. "My grandmother said my father was a farmer! She said he died! She said—"

"Your grandmother lied."

The voice came from the doorway. Not the guard. A new voice. Deep. Cold. Amused. Like someone watching a play whose ending he already knows.

We all turned.

A man stood in the doorway. Tall. Black hair with silver streaks like moonlight caught in tar. Red eyes. Like rubies left in blood. Wearing black armor that seemed to absorb light, to drink it, so that the space around him was always a little darker than it should be. And behind him, shadows moved. Literally moved, like living things, like smoke with intention.

Alpha Jax. Northern Pack Alpha. The wolf who never bows.

And he was not alone. Behind him, two huge black wolves, eyes like molten amber, bigger than Riven's wolves, scarred, silent.

Riven moved before I could blink. One second he was next to me, the next he was in front of me, sword in hand, glowing blue. The Moon King's sword. The one said to be forged from a fallen star. It hummed, angry to be awake.

"Jax," Riven said. "You dare enter my chambers?"

Jax smiled. His teeth were sharp. Too sharp. "Riven. Old friend. You look... possessive. Over a girl who will kill you. How romantic. How stupid."

"She will not kill me."

"Will she not? The prophecy says a silver-haired girl of shadow blood will kill the Moon King. Look at her. Silver hair. Shadow blood. Her father is Moros. She is exactly the prophecy. The girl the temple burned its books to forget."

I clutched the crown. It burned hotter. It was searing now, but I could not let go. It felt like it was trying to hold me together.

"My father is not—"

"Moros fell in love with a Moon Priestess twenty-one years ago," Jax interrupted, looking at me with something almost like pity, and something like hunger. "Lunaria's granddaughter. A beautiful girl with brown hair who served in the temple. He wanted to be mortal for her. He gave up his shadows. For a year. Imagine that. A god trying to be a man. And they had a child. You."

His red eyes looked at my forehead, at my glowing bindi, at the mark that had never faded, not even when I scrubbed it raw as a child.

"That mark is not the Priestess mark, little girl. That is the Shadow God's mark. You are not the Forbidden Queen. You are the Forbidden Shadow. The child of light and darkness. The one that should not exist."

No. No. No. The word became a heartbeat.

"You're lying," I whispered. But my whisper had no power in it.

"Am I?" Jax stepped forward, shadows curling around his feet like obedient hounds. Riven's sword glowed brighter, warning, a line of blue fire between us and him.

"Ask your King," Jax said. "Ask him what happened to the Last Queen. Ask him how she died."

I looked at Riven. His back was to me. Rigid. Tense. The muscles in his shoulders like stone under his tunic. He had not moved, but I could feel his rage like heat.

"Riven?"

He didn't turn.

"Riven, how did Lunaria die?"

Finally, he spoke. Voice low. Scraped raw.

"She was killed by Moros. The God of Shadows. He ripped her heart out. In this castle. In the temple. A hundred years ago. In front of the Moon Altar. She was my great-grandmother's sister. She was the last true Moon Queen before..."

A hundred years ago. And now... now Moros had a child with her granddaughter? Me? The blood of the woman he murdered, mixed with his?

"I am not— I am not his daughter," I said, but my voice was small. So small. Because deep down, something felt true. Horribly, beautifully true. The shadows in the room, they seemed to like me. They reached for me. Since I was a child, shadows never scared me. Darkness felt like home. I used to talk to the corners of my room. I thought all children did.

Jax smiled, seeing my doubt bloom like ink in water.

"Give her to me, Riven. The Council demands it. The prophecy must be stopped. If she stays, you will die. And if you die, the kingdom falls. You know the law. A King without a Queen cannot hold the moon. A King who loves the Forbidden Shadow loses both."

Riven laughed. It was not a nice laugh. It was terrifying. It was the laugh of a man who has been told he cannot have the one thing he has decided is his.

"The law?" he said. "You come into my castle, attack my people, threaten my Queen, and you talk to me about law?"

He stepped forward. His wolves flanked him, white and grey, light and dusk, snarling in unison.

"My law is this," Riven said, and his voice was not human anymore, it was the wolf and the king at once. "Anyone who touches her, dies."

And he swung.

Blue light exploded. Sword met shadow. The room shook. Tapestries tore from the walls. The guard fell to his knees, covering his ears. I screamed without sound.

Jax blocked with his own shadow sword. Black vs blue. Light that should not exist vs light that should have died out. They moved so fast I could barely see, two blurs, two kings, two monsters who had once called each other brother.

"Riven! Stop!" I shouted.

But they were already fighting. Sword against sword. Wolf against wolf. Magic against magic. The white wolf pushed me back, protecting me, its massive head nudging me behind the altar. The grey wolf jumped into the fight, biting at Jax's black wolves, yelping and snarling.

A shadow tendril shot past Riven, straight for me. Fast as thought. Hungry.

I screamed.

Instinct. I raised my hands. No magic. I had no magic. I was human. Or half-god. Or whatever cursed thing I was.

But the crown on my head flared. Bright. So bright the whole room turned white. So bright I saw the bones in my own hands.

And the shadow tendril... stopped. Mid-air. Shivered. Then turned. Then went back to Jax, wrapping around his own neck like a snake recognizing its true master.

Jax choked. His red eyes bulged. His black sword clattered.

Riven froze, mid-swing, staring at me. At the crown glowing on my head, now pulsing both blue and black. Moonlight and shadow, together. At the shadows now bowing to me, literally bowing, like I was their master. Like I was their queen.

I looked down. Shadows pooled around my feet, affectionate, like cats. Loving me. Curling around my ankles. Purring without sound.

Oh goddess.

He was right. Jax was right. I am Moros's daughter. I am shadow blood. I have been hiding from my own nature my whole life.

"I— I didn't mean—" I whispered, hands shaking so hard the crown slipped, but did not fall. It held itself on.

Riven walked to me, ignoring Jax gasping on the floor, ignoring his own wolves whining, ignoring the guard who was now praying out loud.

He touched my face. Gently. Despite the blood on his hands. Despite the war outside our walls that had stopped because the sky itself had stopped.

"Isolde," he said, voice soft, but eyes blazing like twin moons. "Do you know what you just did?"

"I— I controlled shadows?"

"You commanded them. No one commands Moros's shadows. Not even Moros's own generals. Only..."

"Only what?"

"Only his blood. His true heir. His daughter."

He looked at the crown, now glowing both blue and black. Moonlight and shadow. The impossible made real.

"You are not just the Forbidden Queen, Isolde," he whispered, forehead touching mine, his blood smeared on my cheek, his breath warm against my trembling lips. "You are the Shadow Queen. The Queen of Light and Dark. The first in a thousand years. The one they said could never be born."

Jax, on the floor, laughed weakly, shadows still choking him, but his eyes were triumphant.

"You think that's good, Riven? She is Moros's daughter. Moros will come for her. He will kill you to get her. He killed Lunaria because she refused him. He will kill you because she chose you. You cannot keep what a god wants."

Riven didn't look at Jax. He only looked at me. As if I were the only real thing in the world.

"Let him come," he said, each word a vow carved into stone. "I have been waiting for someone worthy to fight. I have been waiting my whole life for a war worth bleeding for."

He kissed my forehead, right over the glowing mark. Possessive. Claiming. Branding. The kiss burned, not with heat, but with belonging.

"Mine," he growled, loud enough for Jax, for the wolves, for the shadows, for the whole castle to hear. For the gods to hear. "My Queen. My Shadow. My mate. And if her father is a God... then I will become a Godslayer to keep her."

Outside, the battle stopped. Not because we won. Because the sky... the sky turned half blue, half black. Moon and shadow. Split down the middle, just like my crown. The soldiers on both sides fell to their knees.

And far away, in the deepest part of the shadow realm, where no light has ever touched, something woke up. Something that had been sleeping for twenty-one years, waiting.

A voice, ancient, cold, amused, whispered through the shadows around my feet, curling around my heart like it knew my name before I did:

"Found you, little star."

My father. Moros. The God of Shadows.

He had found me.

TO BE CONTINUED..