The Night Prince (The Wolf King, #2)(111)

“Darling, people like you and me, we do not let go.” He bumps his forehead against mine, and the wolf blazes in his eyes. “We unleash.”

He breaks away from me and draws his sword. He meets Alexander’s blade. There’s a ring of steel as he throws the Borderlands lord back before advancing upon him. A growl reverberates in his chest.

The serpentine beast rears up above us all, and I stagger back onto my palms as it turns its obsidian eyes on me. I no longer feel pain, nor my blood, nor heat. I’m numb. It’s like looking into an endless abyss. Its scent ambushes me, ancient and primordial, and my clothes stick to my skin. It laughs, a raspy sound that vibrates through me and makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

“He will be so angry with me, when he finds out what I have done to you,” it hisses. “It will be our little secret.”

The darkness crashes down upon me, and something in my body rises up to meet it. A scream builds in my chest. My skin is clammy and everything is far away. The fever, it’s coming for me, as deadly as the serpentine creature that hurtles ever near, its mouth opening, its fangs dripping with blood. Every instinct in my body braces itself.

Blake is right. I have started to suspect something. I have read through his books filled with experiments on Wolves, and not one of them could stop the shift, nor fight the effects of silver and wolfsbane. I have wondered why I’ve found myself in Night’s prison and what it is he wants from me. I cast my thoughts back to the family tree I found in Blake’s bedchambers, and who the two scrubbed names at the top may belong to. Lochlan thought my mother brought the Heart of the Moon to the Northlands. Blake and Callum thought Sebastian had it.

I have thought of my mother, of the reason she might have withheld the truth from me. She loved me more than anything. I was her heart, she told me, her love.

When the fever hurtles through my body, I don’t fight it. I don’t suppress it.

I close my eyes.

I release a breath.

For once, I let go.





Chapter Sixty





I’m falling, hurtling, crashing through darkness.

It rises to meet me.

I jolt into my body. My skin is stone. The taste of crypts and mildew is thick on my tongue. I cannot move. I cannot breathe. I’m a statue in the palace gardens and moss coats my skin like wet velvet. A scream builds in my chest, but my mouth is sealed shut.

The moon hides behind the clouds, and candles light the way through the hedge maze. Courtiers wander, long silk skirts trailing over the cobblestones. Some pause.

“Perfect stonework,” says one.

“She almost looks alive,” says another.

And I have had enough. I’m not a statue—with no thoughts, no feelings, no desires of my own. I’m not made of stone. I don’t exist as decoration, for people to look upon, comment upon, as if I cannot hear them.

My smile crumbles. The ground quakes. The stone that encases me cracks and I shed it. It turns to dust, coating my naked skin, as I stand on a podium. I raise my chin, and a glimmer of moonlight touches my face. The courtiers around me start to scream.

Enough.

Then I’m falling once more.

My feet slam onto cold checkered tiles, and they crack beneath my feet. I’m in the Church of Light and Sun, only the wilderness has taken it. The stone altar ahead is coated with lichen, and a crescent moon shines through the domed roof. It’s pale light puddles on the mosaic of the sun.

Vines burst though the ground and curl around my ankles. They snap from the walls and hold my arms outstretched. More of them snap down on my back, and I’m jolted forward. I bite down my scream and taste the copper tang of blood in my mouth.

But I didn’t sin. A version of my voice whispers through the foliage, stirring the leaves.

Your mother was a sinner. The High Priest’s voice echoes around the church. And you are a sinner too. Do you want the Sun Goddess to be angered?

What of my anger?

For so many years, I had thought I deserved it. I thought I was a sinner. I thought it was my fault that I was beaten. It was not my fault. Men wielded their power over me because it made them feel big, when I was so small. That was their choice, not mine.

The whip cracks down, and dark laughter fills the air.

I raise my chin, defiant.

I yank my arms toward me, and the vines fall to my feet. They uncurl from my ankles, and wither and decay until they’re pools of thick darkness. I clench my fist, and sap runs between my fingers. The tiles crack and crumble around me. I raise my head to the glass dome.

Enough.

I’m falling once more.

I land. My skin pulls taut on my arms, and there are hundreds of hooks piercing me and holding me upright. I try to scream, but my mouth is sewn shut. I’ve been here before, in the palace’s throne room. Once again, I’m a marionette, controlled by a hand I can’t see. My father’s golden throne looms over me on the dais ahead.

The invisible puppeteer is using the control handle as usual, and I begin to spin.

But I’m not a puppet. I’m not a pawn in the games of kings. I’m not someone to be controlled by others, to marry cruel lords for my father’s gain. I can pull strings, too. I see them now, threads of power that glow like moonlight. They reach outward from my chest.

I pull my arms free, and the hooks tear through my skin and turn my white dress crimson. I pull the strings from my legs and my feet. The music grinds to a halt. Blood drips down my body. When it hits the floor, the puddle grows and creeps through the room.