جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 130

KieranThe wound on his thigh is an ugly thing.A jagged, angry line of red against his skin, stitched together with black thread and magic. It looks violent. It looks like a mouth that tried to swallow him whole.I’ve been staring at it in fury for several minutes.“If you frown at it any harder,” Alexei says from the pillow, his voice raspy with sleep and irritation, “It’s going to get shy and stop healing.”I blink, the trance breaking. I dip the cloth back into the bowl of warm water and salve.“I’m not frowning,” I say. “I’m inspecting the edges for infection.”“I know what frowning looks like. You have that line between your eyebrows. The one that appears when you’re reading tax codes or contemplating murder.”I can’t deny wanting to annihilate everything in the world that attempts to hurt Alexei.I squeeze the cloth out and gently dab the skin around the stitches. My hands are steady now. They weren’t three days ago. Three days ago, my hands were slick with his blood, pressing

VorlagThe smoke from the pyres refuses to clear.It hangs low over the Keep, a gray, greasy shroud trapped by the relentless drizzle. I stand at the window of my study, watching the courtyard empty. The pack is bowed, but not broken.This was supposed to be a breaking point.Ten dead. Ten of Kieran’s precious, hand-picked "new generation" slaughtered in the mud. It was supposed to send the pack into a spiral of grief and blame. They were supposed to look at those bodies and ask why their Alpha was playing politics with the Council while their children were dying on the border.Instead, Kieran turned it into a forge.I saw them down there. I saw the way the pack looked at him when he lit the first torch. They didn't look doubtful. They looked impressed. He fed them wrath along with the sorrow, and they ate it whole.His obvious display of emotion should have made them see what a weakling he is. Instead, it seems to be endearing him to them!This new generation of wolves have no inkl

AlexeiThe training yard smells of frustration.I’m sitting on a bench near the weapons rack, my injured leg stretched out in front of me. I hate sitting here while the rest of the guard runs drills. I should be there with them.But the healer threatened to sedate me if I popped my stitches again, and Kieran threatened to tie me to the bed. While the second threat had some appeal, the glint in his eyes told me he meant the boring kind of tying, not the fun kind.So I sit. And I watch Tarek try to kill himself.He’s in the center ring, facing off against Joran, a veteran twice his weight. Tarek isn’t fighting, he’s brawling. He’s swinging his training blade with a reckless, frantic energy that has nothing to do with form and everything to do with the ten pyres we lit yesterday.Joran blocks a wild overhead swing, grunting as the wood connects. “Easy, pup! Watch your guard!”Tarek doesn’t listen. He roars, spinning into a backhand strike that leaves his entire ribcage exposed. If Jora

VorlagChaos is a ladder, the poets say. But in my experience, chaos is a forge. It melts down the weak, burns away the impurities of sentiment, and leaves only the hardest iron behind.Kieran believes he has quenched the fire. He believes that by suspending the Council and hunting for a phantom traitor, he has seized control. He walks the halls of the Keep with his head high, his Redmaw pet limping at his side, projecting an image of unshakeable unity. He wears his grief like armor, thinking that mourning makes him strong.He does not understand that I am merely letting him grow complacent.I stand in the center of my study. The heavy velvet drapes are drawn tight against the morning sun. I don’t want the light. I don’t want the cheerful, oblivious bustling of the courtyard below. I want the focus that only shadows can provide. Poor Rask. He was a loud instrument, brassy and prone to going out of tune. He served his purpose, but instruments that cannot hold a pitch must be discar

KieranThe Blind Woods live up to their name.The trees here are ancient, their canopies woven together so tightly that they strangle the moonlight before it hits the forest floor. It’s a world of gray shadows and black pits, smelling of wet rot and pine needles that have been decomposing since the First Pack ran these hills.The adrenaline in my blood is a physical noise, a high-pitched whine that drowns out the wind in the branches. The image of those ten pyres is burned into my retinas. The smell of the smoke is still stuck in the back of my throat, coating my tongue like ash.Tonight, we balance the ledger.“Two hundred yards,” Marcus whispers, pulling his mount alongside mine. “The scouts marked the perimeter at the river bend.”I nod. I don’t trust my voice. If I speak, I might snarl.I glance to my right, where Alexei is.He shouldn’t be here. I told him to sit this one out. His leg is still healing, the muscle knit but tender, and he sits in the saddle with a stiffness that