Chapter 30
The smoke from the first campfires hadn’t faded when the wild answered Elira’s call.
They didn’t come with banners.
They went in silence.
Feet bare. Eyes sharp. Magic humming through bone instead of blood.
The feral packs arrived first lean and low to the ground, their movements too fast to track, their language half-growl, half-breath.
Kael stood watch from the northern gate as they approached.
“They don’t bow,” Cyra murmured beside him.
“Good,” Elira said, stepping forward. “Neither do we.”
The Ones Without Names
The leader of the ferals was a woman with ash-colored skin and hair braided with riverstone.
She didn’t offer her name.
Names, she said, were leashes.
“You’re the one who broke the Hollow Queen,” she said, circling Elira.
Elira didn’t flinch. “I broke m
