Chapter Forty-One
Reign
By the gods, I hated camping. I wouldn’t consider myself a typical pampered royal, by any means, but this… this I absolutely despised.
I shifted against the damp cave wall, my leathers stiff with dried blood and Wolvryn fur. Ruhl lay sprawled beside me, one arm slung over his face, snoring just loud enough to make me consider shoving the moss beneath my palm into his mouth.
“Are you actually asleep,” I muttered, “or just trying to piss me off?”
Ruhl’s hand slid down, one dark eye cracking open. “Both.”
I huffed a laugh despite myself. My shadows curled lazily around my fingers, restless but quiet. “Well, congratulations. Mission accomplished.”
“You’re just bitter because I got the better spot.” He stretched, joints cracking, then winced as the wound in his side pulled. A fresh gash cut across his ribs from yesterday’s encounter with the blood-thirsty beasts, but he’d refused to let me help him. Stubborn bastard.
“There’s no better spot,” I grumbled, flicking a small stone at him. “It’s a cave.”
“A dry cave.” His smirk widened, teeth flashing in the low light. “At least, until you started crying in the middle of the night about missing your dear cuoré.”
“Funny.” I adjusted the knife hidden in my boot. Aelia had insisted I could never have too many weapons. “Maybe next time I’ll let the Wolvryn rip you apart and save me the headache.”
Ruhl’s grin faded a notch, but his eyes softened. “You didn’t last night.”
“I didn’t have much choice. You’re the future king after all.” I rubbed my jaw, eyes narrowing at the mouth of the cave where mist still clung to the rocks. The Wolvryn howls had echoed all night. Closer, then farther, then close again. It was like they were toying with us.
“You’re not still brooding about my lack of interest in ruling, are you?” he asked.
“I’m always brooding, it’s what I do,” I muttered. “You know me.”
His chuckle warmed the cold morning air. “True.”
We sat in silence for a beat, the kind of silence that used to gnaw at me.
But now, it was different. Less heavy. Something had changed between my brother and me.
For a moment, when I found him in bed with Liora, I thought he’d returned to his old ways, but his selflessness regarding Aelia and this mission proved otherwise.
“We need to move soon,” I grumbled, my broodiness out in full force as I pulled out the map. The glowing glyphs shifted as I traced my finger along the folds. “The Lupherium is still half a day north.”
Ruhl shifted beside me, his own shadows curling lazily around his ankles. “We’ll never make it if they keep tracking us.”
“Then we shadowtravel.”
He snorted. “Through unfamiliar terrain? Are you trying to get us spliced through a rock wall?”
“You scared?” I shot him a look. Though, he wasn’t entirely wrong. Shadowtraveling without knowing the land was dangerous business.
“No,” he snapped, then grimaced. “Okay, maybe a little.”
“You never could shadowtravel properly,” I teased, the old memory tugging a rare smile from me. “Remember the first time you tried when you visited me at Arcanum? You ended up in the girls’ bathhouse.”
His ears went crimson. “That was on purpose.”
I rolled my eyes. “Sure, it was.”
But his grin faded, seriousness slipping in. “I’m not like you, Reign. I’m not blessed by Zaroth with two gifts. My nox isn’t strong enough for this.”
“Yes, it is,” I growled. “You just don’t trust yourself.”
“I trust you,” he shot back. “That’s why I didn’t argue when you said you’d come.”
My throat tightened, but I ignored it. “Good. Then shut up and let me focus.”
I angled the map, orienting the glyphs with the ridges ahead. The Lupherium’s coordinates shimmered faintly beneath my palm, and I locked onto the sensation like a predator scenting prey.
“We don’t have a choice, Ruhl. If we run, they’ll chase us. If we fight, they’ll send more. If we call the dragons, we’ll have every Wolvryn in Lunaris on our tails.”
His jaw flexed. “So, what, we leap into shadows and hope for the best?”
“That’s the plan.”
“Wonderful,” he muttered. “Typical move when it comes to your cuoré. All guts, no sanity. The unmated version of yourself would be horrified.”
I almost laughed before a low growl rumbled from beyond the cave entrance. Then another, swiftly dampening the moment. Shadows slithered across the floor, claws tapping stone.
Damn it. It was too late. They were here.
I surged to my feet, grabbing Ruhl’s arm. “Hold on.”
“Wait—”
“Now.”
The Wolvryn charged, snarls and teeth flashing through the mist, claws scraping the rock.
One leapt for me, a blur of fur and fangs, but I didn’t flinch.
I seized Ruhl, fingers tight around his forearm before shadows exploded from my back in a storm of cold wind and pure nox.
The cave split. And darkness swallowed us whole.
Then there was only silence, and the feel of my brother’s arm clenched between my fingertips, grounding me. I guided my shadows, concentrating my scattered thoughts on the map.
It was like threading a needle blindfolded. Shadows rippled around me, the currents cold and unfamiliar. But I kept the glyphs in my mind, focused on the coordinates burned into my memory.
Ruhl gritted his teeth beside me, his arm locked in a steel grip. “Reign—”
“Quiet.”
We spun through the void, flashes of mist and mountain crags flickering past. For a heartbeat, I thought I’d missed it. That we’d end up dead or worse, half-phased into the cliff face. But then my boots slammed into solid ground, and the shadows peeled away.
I released Ruhl with a gasp, both of us stumbling to our knees.
We were alive.
“Fuck,” Ruhl panted, wide-eyed but grinning. “You did it.”
“Of course I did.” My chest heaved, sweat trickling down my back. “You think I’d let you die before you take that throne?”
“Didn’t think you cared that much,” he rasped.
I shot him a sidelong glance, shadows curling at my fingertips, but there was no bite to my voice. “Don’t make me regret it.”
We both laughed, breathless and shaken, but somehow still standing.
In the distance, the cliffs rose, sharp and gleaming.
The Crags of Moira. My smile grew wider as I caught sight of an ancient moonstone embedded into the white bark of a nearby tree.
It was carved into the form of an arrow, signaling toward the foreboding crags that marked the entrance to the Lupherium.
We’d made it.
By the time we finally reached the Lupherium, the last threads of night clung to the mist like reluctant shadows. Even after everything—two days without proper sleep, Wolvryn claws slicing too close to my ribs, and Ruhl’s incessant banter—I froze at the sight of the temple.
It wasn’t at all what I had expected.
The Lupherium wasn’t some crumbling ruin buried by time.
It was pristine. Untouched by war or decay.
Its pale towers spiraled into the sky, like moonbeams made solid, carved from shimmering stone that pulsed faintly with soft, silver light.
The architecture was unlike anything in Aetheria.
No sharp edges, no brutal fortifications, just flowing curves and arches that hummed beneath our feet.
It was as if the temple itself breathed with the tides.
At the heart of it all stood a massive circular dais, open to the sky. Moonlight poured through the clouds in cascading ribbons, illuminating a towering statue carved of iridescent stone.
Selraya. The Moon Goddess.
Her likeness loomed above us, arms outstretched.
Her eyes were closed in a perfectly serene expression, veiled hair cascading down her back in rippling streams of light.
A crown of crescent moons adorned her brow, and beneath her bare feet, a wolf lay curled in sleep, its silver pelt etched into the marble as if it were alive.
A soft glow emanated from her chest, where a gemstone heart pulsed in rhythm with the temple’s walls.
I swallowed hard, shadows curling tight around my spine as if they felt it too. This wasn’t just a monument. This was something sacred. Alive.
Ruhl let out a breath beside me, his shadows subdued for once. “Gods,” he whispered, voice reverent. “No wonder the Wolvryn are so damn protective.”
And for the first time, I thought I understood why.
Maybe the Wolvryn weren’t just cursed beasts but Selraya’s chosen.
Guardians of the moon’s balance. Perhaps, their transformations weren’t simply punishment, but also devotion, binding them to the goddess’s cycle.
Predators, yes, but protectors too. At least, they had been. Before the madness took them.
Clearing my throat, I reminded myself to focus on the reason we were here. “Come on.” I forced my feet to move and my eyes away from the embodiment of the goddess in stone, and scanned the glyphs carved into the ruins before us. “We didn’t come all this way to gawk.”
The Lupherium itself pulsed with quiet energy. Pale moonlight filtered through the opening above, painting the ruins in ghostly silver and blue as we passed silent corridor after silent corridor. I didn’t know how, but I could feel it in my bones. We were close.
“Not much farther,” Ruhl confirmed, glancing down at the map again. His voice echoed slightly in the eerie quiet. “There’s a chamber ahead. Marked with the symbol of the Moirai.”
We ducked through a low archway, our boots gliding over smooth tile. A glimmer of light caught my eye, tucked away in an alcove carved directly into the ancient rock wall. A mirror.
Its frame was forged from midnight silver, swirling like smoke held in stasis, and strange glyphs glimmered faintly along its surface. The glass itself shimmered, shifting like moonlight on still water.
“What in all the realms?” I breathed as we inched closer.
An inscription was inked along the wall. My finger traced the swirling writing, lifting the tiny hairs at my nape. The Mirror of Hidden Truths.
Ruhl’s brows shot up. “Have you ever heard of it?”