جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 9

The mirror rippled like spilled blood under moonlight. I stood frozen in the bridal suite, the silver needle still warm between my fingers, Cassius’s massive body crumpled at my feet like a fallen god. Twelve hours. That was how long the Lycan paralysis venom lasted on even the strongest Alpha blood. Twelve hours before the monster who murdered me woke up and realized his sweet little bride had played him first. But the mirror moved again. A second woman stepped through it, barefoot on the marble, wearing the exact same white lace wedding gown I had on. Same silver-white hair cascading to her waist. Same violet eyes that once made the entire kingdom kneel. Same face. Only her belly was swollen, round and heavy with child, stretching the delicate fabric until the seams screamed. She smiled at me, the same smile I used to give the court when I still believed in love. “Hello, little sister,” the real Elara Voss said, voice soft as a lullaby and sharp as broken glass. “Did you enjo

The dagger was already at my throat before I finished turning. Cassius moved like smoke and murder, the blade kissing the hollow beneath my jaw with the same tenderness he’d used to mark me as his mate only hours ago. His eyes were fully gold now, no trace of the man who had whispered forever against my skin. Only the Lycan King remained, ancient, ruthless, and awake. “Why,” he asked, voice soft as snowfall over a grave, “does the thing inside you reek of the Crimson Court?” I didn’t flinch. I leaned into the steel until a bead of blood rolled down my collarbone. Let him smell his own fear on me. “Because it isn’t yours,” I said. The lie tasted like honey and arsenic. His pupils contracted to pinpricks. The hand not holding the dagger shot to my stomach, claws pricking through the silk nightgown. I felt him search, felt the beast inside him snarl when it found the truth I’d buried under layers of glamour and venom. There was a child. But it was not a wolf. And it was not alon

The morning after the wedding feast, Elara woke to the taste of iron in her mouth and the weight of a crown that did not yet exist.Sunlight—thin, reluctant, the color of old bone—slid through the high arched windows of the royal bedchamber and pooled across the black furs. Cassius was gone. The sheets beside her were still warm, but the imprint of his body had already begun to fade, as though even the bed itself knew better than to hold onto him for long.She sat up slowly. The wedding gown lay crumpled on the floor like a shed skin: white silk slashed with crimson embroidery, the Lycan moon-and-claw sigil repeated a hundred times across the train. It had been beautiful once. Now it looked like something that had survived a massacre.Elara touched her face—her new face—and felt the unfamiliar smoothness of vampire skin beneath her fingertips. No scars from the silver chains Cassius had wrapped around her throat three years from now. No ragged mark where he had torn out her heart and

The blood moon rose swollen and obscene, painting the palace walls the color of a fresh bruise.Every corridor crawled with anticipation. Servants scurried with silver trays of raw hearts and crystal decanters filled with vampire blood laced with nightshade—just enough to heighten the senses without killing the drinkers. Musicians tuned instruments strung with werewolf gut. Torches burned blue, fed by alchemical fats that whispered when the flames licked them.Tonight was the Feast of the Crimson Coronation: an ancient rite held only when the moon bled. It celebrated the original pact between Lycan and vampire—before betrayal, before war. Tonight it would celebrate a marriage.And tonight, someone would die.Elara stood before the mirror in the queen’s solar, adjusting the final touches to her gown.It was a masterpiece of menace: black velvet so dark it drank the light, slashed with crimson silk that moved like spilled blood when she walked. The neckline plunged low enough to display

The war came faster than blood dries.By the third dawn after the blood moon feast, the eastern horizon bristled with torches. Queen Isolde Valcour—mother to the dead princess, widow of a hundred battles—had not waited for confirmation. She had felt the bond sever, felt her daughter’s soul ripped from flesh, and she had answered with steel and starvation.Ten thousand vampires marched under banners of black silk and bone. They moved only at night, vanishing into mist at sunrise, reappearing closer each twilight. Villages on the border woke to empty cradles and drained livestock. Messages carved into chapel doors read the same: RETURN WHAT WAS STOLEN.Elara watched their advance from the highest tower, crown heavy on her brow, beast quiet but alert inside her chest.Thorne stood beside her, face grim.“They’ll reach the Ashen Ridge by the next new moon,” he said. “Our scouts say they bring siege weapons forged of star-iron. And something worse.”“Worse?”“Mirror-bearers. Priests who ca