(Maria POV)
The gates of the Hollow Stone opened with a scream.
Not of metal or magic, but memory.
Maria stood at the entrance of the Council’s inner sanctum, where the walls bled history and the very air carried judgment. Thirteen thrones encircled the stone dais—some empty, some occupied by beings older than blood, older than names.
They looked at her as if she were prey.
She stepped forward anyway.
Joseph and Luca flanked her, cloaked in black, their wolves barely contained beneath their skin. Behind them, two emissaries from the Forsaken Clans—Rellan of the Nightfangs, and the Ashborn matriarch known only as Veyra.
Her new alliance. Her gamble.
The room was bitterly cold.
“You come uninvited,” one of the Elders rasped, a woman draped in silver webs. “You bring the Forsaken int
