IOWYN
I watched frost patterns spread across the packhouse windows, delicate fractal geometries that betrayed my emotional state more clearly than any expression could. Seven thousand years of court training had taught me to keep my face a perfect mask, but my magic had always been less disciplined.
Luna lay on a bed in the pack's healing chambers, her massive white form eerily still save for the shallow rise and fall of her chest. Black ichor stained her fur in patches where the ghouls had touched her, and beneath that, dark veins of poison still threaded through her flesh despite Lysander's intervention.
Intervention. The word tasted like bitter iron on my tongue. I had seen how his hands lingered on her chest, how his golden magic flowed into her like liquid sunlight. Necessary, yes.
