26
The entire court gathers in the throne room, and I’m suddenly transported to months ago. Only, this time, no one notices me. No one seems to care that I’m here. Even Evie has moved to join her court without once glancing back.
Shifted werewolves growl and snarl from the edge of the dais, their human counterparts huddled in circles around the marbled room. Tapestries have been shredded, the rugs drenched with wine from fallen goblets. A Beta swipes a claw at a glass chessboard, and the pieces shatter against the wall.
“What’s going on?” I whisper, glancing to Sin.
He’s no longer beside me, however.
Stalking up the aisle, he weaves through the crowd of werewolves toward his mother.
Queen Sybil sits atop her throne, her black eyes narrowed and her fist clenched around a silver dagger with a gilded hilt.
Lord Allard leans down to speak to her in a hushed voice, his expression dark.
Evie is already there, at the bottom of the steps, her hair tucked behind her ears.
She tugs a silk robe tighter around her waist. In fact—I look around, heart climbing up my throat—all the werewolves who’ve yet to shift are wearing some version of nightclothes.
No one expected to be here , I realize suddenly. Whatever this is… it isn’t good.
Unsure what else to do, I start forward slowly, hoping to catch the end of the queen’s whispers. Instead, I hear bits and pieces from about twelve different conversations.
“… unprecedented kill…”
“… never would have happened with Cora…”
“… signing our death certificates in her own blood…”
A shifted werewolf snaps their head toward me when I pass, and their eyes flash a deeper, darker brown.
They lunge as though to bite me, but I stumble away—right into Portia.
She catches me with gentle hands, but the commotion of the crowd knocks me forward.
Right into Calix’s hard back. He spins around, snagging my upper arm before I can trip over my feet, and heaves me into place beside him, near the front of the dais.
“Hart,” he mutters, his grip dropping from my skin the second I find my footing.
“C-Calix. What is all this?”
“We aren’t sure yet.” He stands stiff, his muscles coiled and ready for a brawl.
The energy of the room lifts the hair at my neck.
It feels… volatile, somehow, as if we stand at the precipice of something—death, probably, if the shining eyes and flashing teeth around us are any indication.
I scoot closer to Calix instinctively. He too tracks the overzealous werewolves with his gaze, watching and waiting.
For what, I don’t know.
“There hasn’t been a murder inside this court in over a decade!” someone cries out, while others roar in agreement. It’s deafening, so loud my eardrums might actually rupture. Or perhaps the roof will crack instead, or the walls. The entire throne room quakes with their outrage.
Murder? I cast a furtive glance at Calix, who gives away nothing. His jaw hard. His eyes harder. But who and where and how?
A few feet in front of me, at Evie’s side, Sin demands the same answers.
“Tell us,” he says, and he looks somehow sharper than before—unfamiliar, his entire body radiating a sudden and lethal focus.
Gone is the languid boy from my bedroom, and gooseflesh creeps down my arms at this rare glimpse of Prince Sinclair Severi.
“Tell us what’s going on, Mother. We deserve to know. ”
A shot of heat burns through me. The flare of a lie.
But—that can’t be right. I glance at Sin, confused by his wording, but he shakes his head as if it doesn’t matter.
And it doesn’t. If someone has been murdered inside the castle, we do deserve to know.
I don’t care if that’s not how things are done here, if secrecy is meant to be some kind of tradition. Some kind of power. We need to know.
Surprisingly, Evie agrees. “I think it is necessary for the well-being and safety of this court—”
“ Quiet ,” Queen Sybil snaps at her, passing the dagger to her left hand and leaning forward.
Lord Allard grips the hilt of his own sword with five claws far sharper than that of his own weapon’s blade.
“It is my court, and I will decide how to proceed. All of you,” she shouts now, her voice deep and melodic, “ enough! ”
Pink humiliation stings Evie’s cheeks, but she doesn’t speak again. None of us do. Our lips snap shut, one by one by one, sewn with the enchantments of the queen’s compulsion. The discordant chaos dies in a sudden hush.
“I have ordered you from your beds for a reason. A treacherous crime has indeed occurred tonight, but we needed time to uncover what details we could.” Queen Sybil stands from the throne and tosses her dagger on the ground.
Confidence eases her shoulders and lifts her chin.
“Instructor Alvarez was caught unawares during his late run on the beach. He was gutted.” She speaks the words bluntly, without empathy, and she does not flinch as she continues, “Lord Allard found Bruno with his organs strung around his neck. Suffocated by his small intestine. His left hand was missing its fingers—clearly sawed off with silver. Though he hadn’t yet shifted, the attacker knew he was a werewolf.
They murdered him without remorse. Bruno Alvarez is dead, and the killer remains at large. ”
My world spins on its axis, and I stumble a step, seizing Calix’s elbow for balance. Unable to process the words but hearing them echo in my skull like reverberations of distant thunder.
Suffocated. Gutted.
Murdered without remorse.
Oh god, no. Not again. The image of the crime blurs the reality of the throne room, morphing the surrounding bodies into blood and bone. Not again.
I look to my initially suspected killer, but Evie appears as horrified as I feel.
Her red eyes widen, and she leans against Sin as though she can’t remain standing without his support.
And Sin—Sin isn’t doing much better. His expression shudders, and he glances down.
Tears burn in his eyes. One drips onto the tiled floor.
And my heart aches for him—for everyone.
His organs strung around his neck.
I hardly knew Instructor Alvarez, and I want to vomit. No one could ever deserve such a horrific end.
When the queen snaps her fingers and says, “ You may resume speaking ,” the throne room descends into wailing grief. Shifted werewolves howl, their heads thrown back to the sky, while the others cry wild anguish.
“Who?” Calix asks over the noise.
The queen does not look at him. It almost seems as if she won’t answer him at all, until Portia echoes the question. “Who, Your Majesty?” she whispers.
“We do not know.” Queen Sybil regards her court coolly.
“There was no evidence of human interference. Whoever committed this crime was a werewolf—no one else would’ve been able to enter our territory, and no one else would’ve been able to overpower Bruno.
” She takes a step down the dais, her gaze flicking over us—the young werewolves.
“There is a traitor in our midst, whether of my own court… or another.”
The howls morph into snarls of aggression while the shifted wolves claw at the ground.
“If that traitor is here now, I ask you to reveal yourself .” A compulsion.
No one moves. No one.
Lord Allard curses. The queen steps down into the aisle, and the masses part, immediately lowering into bows around her.
As quickly as it came, their rebellion has ceased; perhaps because she turns, halfway out of the throne room, and says in a soft, deadly voice, “I will have the murderer’s head.
Under no circumstance will anyone get away with killing an innocent wolf. ”
As if accepting a call to action, the room explodes with noise in response.
Someone smashes a table into smithereens, while two more hurl glass pawns through the windows.
The howls and snarls from a moment ago return tenfold.
Louder, this time. Wilder. I’ve never seen anything like it—violent, impassioned displays of uncontrolled fury as the Wolf Queen disappears.
“Werewolves grieve loudly,” Portia whispers at my side before picking up a goblet and heaving it at the wall. Evie finds Nettie. They hug each other. Eric shifts into a werewolf and howls until his lungs give out.
Amidst them—amidst his pack and his future—Sin is just…
numb. He wipes at his eyes and sinks to the step.
And in this moment, he looks so—so heartbreakingly friendless that I can’t stand it.
Calix grabs my wrist, sensing my move before I make it, but I shake him off and push toward the lonely prince.
Moments ago, we were kissing. His hands were all over me. I can’t watch him hurt like this now and not respond; I can’t do nothing while he so obviously needs someone. I drop onto the step beside him. He glances at me, his eyes limned with pain. “Instructor Alvarez… He… he’s gone .”
“I know,” I say softly. “I’m so sorry.”
He grabs me and pulls me into a sudden hug.
One hand in my hair and the other on my back.
He holds me firmly to him, burying his head in the crevice of my neck.
His lips ghost over my skin as he whispers my name.
This is different than earlier. Almost more intimate, as if I hold his very heart in my hands.
I don’t know what to say. What to do. My grief can’t match his in this moment, can’t match the rest of my classmates’ or the entirety of court. I haven’t known Instructor Alvarez as long. To me, he was a consistent presence. A firm teacher. To them, he was family.
He was family, and they lost him.
I hug Sin, trying to hold the broken pieces of him together. Celeste’s death crushed me. There aren’t words for it. There’s no way to fix it. But I can sit here with him. I can stay.
“I’m sorry,” I echo. “I’m so sorry.”
Only then do I realize the noise has quieted—not fully, but enough that I hear my own voice. It’s too loud. And Sin and I… we’re…