Chapter 11: The Dark Siphon

Cassian

The carriage rolled steadily over the frozen mountain track, but inside my chest, a dark, murderous storm was brewing.

Across from me, Seraphina had finally drifted off to sleep. Wrapped in my heavy bear-fur mantle, she looked so small she seemed to disappear into the seat cushions. Her face was pale, almost translucent in the dim amber glow of the carriage lantern, and her breathing came in soft, shallow rasps.

I stayed on the floor rug by her feet.

Slowly, carefully, I reached out and lifted her right arm from beneath the fur. I had already cleaned and bound her left wrist, but I needed to inspect the other side before we reached the northern blizzards.

I turned her arm gently under the lantern light.

My jaw tightened until my back teeth clicked.

Her right arm was worse than her left. The skin from her wrist all the way up to the inside of her elbow was covered in a dense web of puncture scars. But as I leaned closer, dabbing away a smear of soot near her inner elbow with a damp cloth, I noticed something that made my blood run cold.

These were not random needle marks from an impatient healer or crude bloodletting.

The punctures formed a strict, geometric circle. Eight distinct points, evenly spaced around the main vein, each marked by a tiny ring of purplish-black bruising beneath the skin. And connecting those eight points were thin, faded lines etched directly into the dermis with silver ink.

I traced the outer curve with the bare tip of my index finger.

The ink hummed against my senses. It carried a foul, rotting chill that smelled of dead flowers and stagnant marsh water.

*Dark siphon runes.*

My wolf surged forward behind my eyes, his fangs baring in a silent, savage snarl.

These runes were ancient. They had been outlawed by the Imperial High Council over three centuries ago, punishable by public execution and the total destruction of any pack that dared to scribe them.

Normal bloodletting took only the physical fluid. But a dark siphon was designed to butcher the soul. It bypassed the body's natural defenses, latching onto the spiritual core to forcibly drain magic, life essence, and vitality, filtering it cleanly into a recipient while leaving the donor hollowed out and dying.

Riverfang had not just treated her like a servant. They had turned her into a living, breathing tap.

Tyler and Beatrice had carved forbidden blood magic into a child's skin, slowly draining her soul year after year to feed their weak, rotting daughter.

"Barbaric cowards," I ground out, my knuckles turning white as I fought the urge to smash the carriage wall to splinters.

I dipped the cloth into the warm basin again, gently wiping further up her arm, clearing away the grime that clung to the inner fold of her shoulder.

As the soot and dried sweat washed free, another mark appeared beneath the lantern light.

Faint, silvery, and raised like an ancient birthmark, the skin formed a distinct crest: a delicate crescent moon cradling a blooming night lily with five petals.

The breath trapped itself in my windpipe.

The cloth slipped from my fingers, splashing quietly into the silver basin.

I stared at the pale crescent on her flesh.

The Imperial crest.

The lost line of the Dark Moon Pack—the sovereign rulers who had governed the four kingdoms before the Great War. Twenty years ago, the royal vanguard had been ambushed on the southern border. The Emperor and his court were slaughtered, and the royal nursery was burned to the ground. Our seers had spent two decades searching every province for a trace of the royal line, finding only dead ends and ash.

And all this time, the true heir had been locked in an attic three days from our border.

Tyler and Beatrice had found an imperial princess in the wreckage. Instead of taking her to the High Council, they had thrown her into rags, strapped her to an iron cot, and called her a stray while they drank her divine light like thieves in the dark.

I looked up at her sleeping face.

She wasn't an omega. She wasn't an abandoned nobody. The fragile girl resting before me carried the true crown of the Lycan Empire in her veins.

I lowered my head until my brow rested against her cold, scarred knuckles. The scent of moon lilies and celestial iron wrapped around my senses, anchoring the wild fury in my beast.

"They had no idea what they were holding," I whispered against her skin, an oath of iron and fire settling deep into my marrow. "They thought you were weak, little bird. But I will help you tear their valley down."