Forty-eight hours was a long time for a dying pack to rot.
Inside the war room of Ironclad Citadel, the silence was heavy, broken only by the crackle of pine logs burning in the grand stone hearth. Maps of the continent were laid out across the central oak table, but no brass dividers moved today. The pieces were already set. The trap was sprung.
I stood by the high arched window, watching the sun dip below the jagged obsidian peaks of the Blackwood Realm. Snow swirled gently through the twilight air, dusting the parapets in a quiet shroud of white.
My left sleeve was pushed back, the Moon Queen mark pulsing with a steady, rhythmic golden light beneath my skin. It was warm—a continuous, comforting hum that mirrored the heavy, deliberate thud of Cassian’s heart somewhere in the lower cou
