princess

ame before I o

e mark truly awakened,

twenty

His Ma

Princess. Who were

ever woken in. Every muscle in me went tight before my mind caught up

hed slowly, hands open, empty

lows before she'd finished t

n's healers always had, murmuring it's for your own good while they

ked at that, quiet and sud

le, six-pointed stars set into every doorway, a maid bowing to a guard just for holding a door. In Blackthor

re a

le. "The Kingdom

I've never h

ding linens by the window ... quick, worried ... and the

stle itself. He studied my face first. Then my collarbone, where the mark had gone quie

ar stillness of a man watching a

the royal

looking at

bling slightly in his grip

t open before

he whole room dropped to its knees

h caught audibly, his hand rising halfway to his chest

moving over my face like he was checking i

instead, bringing himself level with me, something careful and warm in the way he held hims

now us," he

oul

moments later every bell in the castle tore into the sky at once, ringing

permission asked with silence instead of words. Books lined the walls floor to ceiling. An old his

eft me in o

ng not to cry. The historian touched the painted collarbone, and beneath a few careful brushstrokes o

for the

and some old animal instinct didn't want to let it out of my grip. But I held it out anyway, b

eld a page close to the fire. Ink bloomed out

ever find y

the same sh

he Silv

r this, years before I ever stood in that hall and watched my whole life e

clear. She looked at me the way the others hadn't ... not with grief, but w

e you ever wondered why y

y, lying awake waiting for a shift that nev

. "Because you were never mea

ld its brea

asleep," she said. "w

t had actually happe

the royal line had died in a single night. Maps redrawn. Books burned. Children raised without ever he

Oracle said, was very likely

without translation ... the look of men who

n us. A ceremonial bowl. A small handful of moonst

," she said. "The Blood Moon Ceremony. If t

felt in

oesn't,

rous." The youngest argued they should wait, gather more proo

onger ha

my hands. The hilt was co

warm from the fire. At three men who already believed, in their bones, that I belon

th," I said, and my voice didn't shake nearly as

he blade in

op of blood

flame at once, and the floor trembled beneat

nother kind of ceremony, Alpha Lucien Blackthorn clutc

o source, no enemy, nothing to fight but the imp

s al