Aurelia’s POV
Aurelia had known darkness before Black Hollow.
She remembered the quiet darkness beneath winter soil, where roots slept until spring, and the deep blue darkness of the mountain caves where Vale wolves once brought their young to hear the old songs. Those places had held life within them. Even silence had possessed warmth.
The darkness Seleneia had placed around her was different.
It had no scent, no wind and no shape. Aurelia had remained there for nine years with only brief impressions of Zinnia reaching her through the seal: hunger twisting through an empty stomach, iron closing around thin wrists, blood drying beneath torn fingernails. She had fought every time Zinnia cried out, but the prison around the wolf had been made from moonlight and divine command. Teeth coul
