Selene’s POV
The wind changed before the fortress did.
A thin, sharp current slipping through the stone like a blade.
Not loud, not violent — just enough to tighten the breath in my lungs and drag the hairs along my arms upright.
Something had shifted.
Something large.
Something inevitable.
I tasted it in the air the way wolves tasted coming storms — metallic, cold, threaded with danger.
This wasn’t the Moon’s whisper.
No…
this was human.
Calculated.
Political.
And somehow worse.
I stood alone in the Northern gallery, staring out through the frost-clouded glass at the courtyard below.
Soldiers drilled sluggishly.
Servants hurried along the walls with hunched shoulders.
Even the ravens on the battlements kept restless shuffling their wings.
It was as if the entire fortress
