GOLD & AZURE

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 15: ASHES AND DAWN

PART I: THE FLIGHT OF THE PROMISE

The sun was setting over the Citadel of Dawn, casting long golden shadows across the dark wooden scaffolding that still clung to the gilded marble towers. Thirteen years after the m******e that had nearly wiped their lineage from the face of the earth, the Royal Pack of the Sun-Bearers was ascending once more. It was a slow pace, sometimes hesitant, but sustained by the steady rhythm of hammers and the scraping of trowels. The humid air carried the scent of freshly cut stone, the resinous fragrance of cedar wood, and, above all, the tenacious hope of survivors determined to rebuild their dignity.

Ian, the crown prince, stood on one of the citadel’s half-restored balconies, where new stone met rock still charred by the flames of the past. His eyes, a deep gold inherited from his mother, Queen Ella, scanned the horizon with a vigilance that never left him. The weight of the crown, though invisible, seemed to bow his shoulders slightly. Beside him, Silas, the old general, remained motionless. His silver hair, once a sun-bright blond, bore witness to decades of battles and vigils. Since the assassination of King Rowan, Silas had been more than just the commander of the armies; he had been Ian and Kian’s anchor, the father figure who had pulled them from the rubble, the voice of reason when all was ruins, blood, and cries of despair.

— “The people are beginning to forget the smell of ash, Ian,” Silas whispered, his gravelly voice softened by a hint of emotion. “That is your greatest victory.”

Ian did not answer immediately. He distractedly stroked the cold balustrade.

— “We can never forget, Silas. Not as long as a piece of our home is missing.”

At the feet of the two men, a lighter scene played out, like a vestige of the carefree life of old. Balthazar, Ian’s massive canine companion, a mass of muscle and tawny fur capable of taking down an enemy in a single bound, sat solemnly like a statue. However, his dignity was being put to the test by Cinder, an ebony-black cat with emerald-green eyes. She rubbed her back against the dog’s massive paws, purring with muffled insolence. Cinder followed Balthazar like a mischievous shadow, a little midnight demon always waiting for the right moment to steal a scrap of leather or provoke a mishap that would make Silas growl.

Suddenly, Balthazar pricked up his ears, a low growl vibrating in his chest. The eastern sky lit up with an unusual glow. A small point of golden light, cutting through the air with supernatural speed, dove toward the balcony like a shooting star in broad daylight.

— “A message from Elara,” Ian murmured, his hand instinctively reaching out, palm open to the sky.

The bird of light, an ethereal construct of pure scout magic, landed in his hand before dissolving into a swirl of gold dust. The dust did not blow away; it seeped under Ian’s skin, migrating toward his mind. Images flooded in a violent torrent: the frozen North, the smell of ozone before a storm, a pearlescent button glittering in the mud... and above all, a face. Elowen. Alive. Her features had matured, but the royal spark in her gaze was undeniable. She had been found, but the message also carried a shadow: the North was burning, and she was at the center of the blaze.

Ian’s face hardened, his features freezing like marble. Without wasting a second, he closed his eyes, plunging into the depths of the unique bond that united him with his twin.

“Kian! The signal has arrived. Elara found her. Our sister is alive. But the North is burning and time is running out. Come to the Palace, now!”

In the village below the ramparts, where commoner life bustled in the heat of the forges, Kian was supervising the delivery of new blades. The forge air was stifling, heavy with the smell of red-hot iron and coal. Receiving his brother’s mental impulse, Kian abruptly dropped the dagger he was examining. The steel hit the floor with a clear ring that made the new blacksmith jump. The urgency in Ian’s voice was an electric shock that made the prince’s blood boil.

Under the astonished eyes of the artisans and villagers, Kian did not seek to explain himself. His gaze had already clouded with an animal glow. With a familiar crack of bone, a sound as sharp as snapping wood, he lunged forward. His clothes were swept away by the sudden emergence of thick, dark fur. A massive wolf, with bulging muscles and burning golden eyes, emerged from the dust. He did not linger. With a prodigious leap, he cleared the anvil and the forge door, racing up the path toward the heights of the citadel, his paws clawing the ground with devastating power, kicking up clouds of earth.

Caleb, his right-hand man, a fearless young warrior whose parents had fallen on the same day as the royal couple, saw the dark whirlwind pass. Caleb knew Kian better than anyone; he knew only a seismic event could drive the prince to such a public transformation. Without a word, he excused himself with a brief gesture to the stunned blacksmith, shifted himself, and took off after his lord. He ran at breakneck speed, taking the stone steps four at a time, realizing that the fate of the Royal Pack had just shifted.

Arriving in the council chamber, where maps of the ancient territories were spread out, Kian regained his human form in a fluid movement, his skin still steaming from the effort, his breath short. A servant covered his nakedness with a large royal blue velvet cloak. Silas and Ian were waiting for him by the large oak table.

— “Is she alive?” Kian asked, his voice hoarse, still steeped in the growl of the wolf.

— “She is at the Quartz Palace of the Snow Leopard Royal Clan,” Ian replied, pointing to a specific spot on the map, far to the north. “But the situation is catastrophic. Our sister is the King’s destined mate, and two princesses of the Barsky clan, Alpha Thalys’s sisters, have been kidnapped by the Skinners and the Dark Moon Pack. Elara had to form a makeshift alliance with Thalys to track the kidnappers. The war we fled is coming back for us, brother. And this time, we cannot settle for just rebuilding walls.”

Balthazar let out a low whimper, sensing his masters’ agitation, while Cinder jumped with silent agility onto the map table. She walked disdainfully over the drawn borders, her green eyes fixed toward the North, as if she could already see the shadows gathering beyond the mountains of ice. The reconstruction of the Citadel of Dawn had just taken a backseat: the Sun-Bearers had to become warriors and leaders once more to unite the Packs against these troublemakers.

PART II: THE SHADOW ALLIANCES

Leagues away, the atmosphere was radically different. The Fortress of Whispers, Alpha Krane’s bastion, stood like a black wart on the side of a barren mountain. Here, the wind did not sing; it moaned through the cracks in the stone.

Alpha Malphas, leader of the Eastern Skinners, made a thunderous entrance into the courtyard. Behind his horse, dragged like cattle, the twins Mia and Bea walked with their heads high, despite the iron chains cutting into their wrists and surrounding their delicate necks. At eighteen, the Northern princesses possessed a beauty that should only have known silk fabrics, but they were now delivered to the lewd stares and coarse laughter of Malphas’s soldiers.

Every inappropriate gesture, every hand that brushed their hips under the pretext of moving them forward, drew a shiver of disgust from them. Mia grit her teeth so hard she feared they would break, while Bea stared at the ground, trying to wall her mind behind the ramparts of her royal lineage.

Malphas let his men enjoy the spectacle and climbed the steps leading to Krane’s office. The Alpha of the Dark Moon was waiting for him, a bottle of amber whiskey already open on his ebony desk.

— “A magnificent catch, Malphas,” Krane chuckled, pouring two generous glasses. “Thalys must be howling for blood in his glass palace.”

“He won’t be howling much longer,” Malphas grunted, draining his drink in one gulp. “But we have a problem. The Quartz Palace is a fortress in difficult, slippery terrain. If he manages to raise his clans, he will fall upon us with the fury of a blizzard. We cannot keep the twins here. Krane, we need a place where even a snow leopard wouldn’t think to look.”

Krane frowned, swirling his glass between his slender fingers.

— “I could send them to the Eastern mines...”

— “No,” Malphas interrupted. “Too much traffic and too close to my territory. I have a better idea. A secret ally who belongs to no pack or clan, but whom everyone fears.”

— “You mean the island of the Grey Sorcerer? Alberik?”

Malphas nodded.

— “His island is protected by mists that only his magic can dissipate. Wolves have no authority there, and snow leopards lose their scent. It is the ideal tomb for Thalys’s sisters.”

Krane let out a dark laugh.

— “The path is risky. To reach Alberik’s pier, you will have to cross the fringes of the Sun-Bearers’ territory. If those little princes wake up...”

— “They are too busy picking up their own ashes,” Malphas spat. “We will pass by night. In two days, the twins will be in the Sorcerer’s hands. And Thalys will have nothing left but his eyes to weep with, and he will have to hand over the Cursed One to us.”

PART III: THE SILVER DUNGEON

While the two monsters celebrated their betrayal, Mia and Bea were discovering hell.

The journey to the fortress had been an ordeal. Deprived of food and water, they had to endure the rancid smell of the Skinners and the biting cold of the journey, with no protection other than their torn silk clothes. Arriving in the depths of Krane’s citadel, they were thrown into a cramped dungeon.

The air was foul, heavy with a metallic smell and vermin that turned their stomachs: the bars were made of silver.

Contact with this metal was torture for their shape-shifter nature. It acted as a subtle poison, a magical barrier that locked away their inner animal. Mia felt her snow panther clawing desperately against the walls of her soul, but the silver’s magic was too strong. They could not transform to use the thickness of their fur against the damp cold of the cell.

There were no blankets, no straw, not even a way to satisfy their natural needs with dignity. Only bare stone and oppressive silence greeted them.

— “Mia... I’m cold,” Bea whispered, her voice no more than a breath.

Without a word, Mia sat against the wall furthest from the door. She pulled her sister against her. Just as they had when they were babies in the royal cradle, they huddled together, mingling their breath and body heat as if in the womb to comfort each other and fall peacefully asleep.

— “We’re going to get through this, Bea,” Mia said in a tone she meant to be firm. “We are Barskys. Dad and Mom died so that this name would survive. Thalys will come. He will burn everything to find us.”

Bea closed her eyes, feeling tears burn her eyelids. It was so hard not to be able to send a mental link. Since birth, they had lived in constant psychic conversation with their siblings. This silence imposed by silver was the cruelest of solitudes.

But in that darkness, a spark began to shine. It wasn’t magic, but something older: the power of a lineage that had never known submission. For the first time in their protected lives, the princesses had to draw on their own courage.

— “If they think they can break us with iron and silver, they are wrong,” Mia continued, her blue eyes shining with a new light in the shadows. “The North never forgets. And we, we are the North, and we are united.”

That night, in the depths of a Dark Moon dungeon, two young women ceased to be carefree children. The journey into the unknown was only beginning, but the Skinners had just made a fatal mistake: they had forgotten that even chained, a leopard remains a dangerous predator.

The stage was set. Alberik’s terrifying world awaited them, but they would walk toward it with the blood of kings flowing in their veins, ready to turn their hell into a blaze of vengeance.