Claimed by the cruel lycan king
Ashen had built her entire strategy around a simple, brutal assumption: that faced with this exact choice, I would simply comply, the crown for his life, exactly the story she wanted to tell.
She hadn't accounted for what I'd actually learned, across every crisis since that first night in the Great Hall, about what it meant to refuse to be simple leverage in someone else's plan.
"No," I said.
Ashen's composed expression flickered with genuine surprise. "No?"
"No," I said again, steadier now, understanding arriving with the same clarity that had once helped collapse Thorne's unstable gate. "You want a story about a King sacrificing his kingdom for love. I'm not interested in giving you that s