Chapter 11 Esmerelda
ESMERELDA
The council members drag us through the portal, and the world snaps into a chamber that feels like a tomb.
Cold coils around me, carrying the metallic scent of rot and decay beneath the center of the damp stone.
The walls rise high, carved from black rock and etched with markings from a time so ancient it feels wrong to even look at them.
The symbols pulse faintly, as if they’re alive, shifting in the corner of my vision, reshaping themselves when I’m not looking.
My wolf bristles beneath my skin, her claws scraping at me in warning.
The carvings emanate a sound too deep for human ears, vibrating in my bones with the weight of judgement.
Ancient. Stone. This is a place where the stone remembers every error. A place that knows your name before you say it. A place that never forgets.
The fire crackles in the hearth, but it doesn’t warm me.
If anything, the heat makes the chill in my blood more pronounced.
Fear coils tighter around my ribs with every breath I drag in, like a living being wrapping around me.
Tightening. Squeezing. Daring me to exhale so it can constrict more, forcing my breaths to become shallower with each inhale.
I can’t stop shaking. My wolf paces frantically beneath my skin. She hates this space. Hates the judgment saturating the air. The stone walls. The weight of eyes on us. She wants out. She wants to run. She wants blood.
My hands tremble under the blanket Min shoved at me before they dragged us in here. The wool is soft, familiar. It smells like lemon and rosewater—so achingly like her that I hold on tighter, hoping the scent alone will tether me to something solid. Something that isn’t this nightmare.
But nothing feels solid.
The silence in the room is excruciating.
It stretches and stretches, so loud in its absence of sound that it becomes a scream all on its own.
I want to shout at them to stop wasting time.
To do something. To catch whoever did this.
Someone stole nearly everything I cared about in a single breath, and all I’ve gotten are questions that slice like knives.
Every word tossed our way cuts deeper than the last.
I still can’t believe this is real.
My mind spins, looking for an exit, any way out of this horror. I whisper the words silently over and over like a prayer: Wake up. Wake up.
But the shaking won’t stop. I’m not dreaming. My wolf is coiled tight, teeth bared, her fury vibrating in my chest like the beat of a drum.
“Let’s go over this again,” Eryndor, the Elven leader says, voice cold and steady as he paces in front of us like a wolf circling its prey.
His golden eyes lock on Marcus. His symmetrical features, high cheekbones and long, ink-black hair should render him beautiful, but the sneer on his face cuts all that away.
His black tunic fits like a second skin, sharp silver cuffs catching the light and gleaming like blades.
A silent threat. “When did you first notice Mr. Lovell was petrifying?”
I glance at Marcus.
He looks wrong. His normally smooth composure is fractured.
Pale skin beneath his rich undertones. Eyes wide—too wide.
Hands still, but clenched too tightly against the arms of the chair.
His jaw works, grinding against itself. His hair is a mess from where he’s run his fingers through it again and again, and his tie is loosened. That alone makes my stomach twist.
Marcus never looks undone. Never.
He even wakes up perfect.
So what is this? An act? A well-timed breakdown? Or is this what real shock looks like on him?
I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.
Except that everyone else in that room was petrified.
Everyone except him.
And it was his idea to hold the dinner at the house. His insistence. He poured the wine.
He wanted that night to happen.
“And you, Esmerelda?” That from Thaloran, the tall, antlered figure clad in armor crafted from wood and vines.
The stag guardian gives off an air of strength and protection, but I know he is the one they call when brutal punishments are issued.
“You entered the room after your father had already begun to petrify. Is that correct?”
I nod, the lump in my throat the size of a boulder. “That’s correct,” I manage to say, but it comes out brittle and sharp between my chattering teeth.
“And what did you do then?”
“And why were you away in the first place?” Eryndor cuts in, his voice clipped and precise.
I turn toward him, blood flashing hot under my skin. “We’ve been over this,” I snap. “I was running late.”
The words have barely left my mouth before Marcus turns toward me with that same infuriating calm.
“Why exactly were you late?” he asks, voice like silk over ice. “Ah, that’s right. You were playing with the dogs right before one of the most important dinners of our lives. Convenient, isn’t it? Were you late because you knew what was going to happen?”
I blink at him in astonishment. “Excuse me?”
Eryndor and Thaloran stand in eerie synchronicity and step out of the room. No words. Just a heavy lock clunking into place behind them. Privacy, but not really. It’s staged. We’re still being watched. Still under scrutiny. Just another layer to this game.
I don’t have time to dwell on it.
I stand and cross to the fire, its glow painting my shaking hands in flickering gold. “Did I hear you correctly? Did you really just accuse me of wiping out my own family?”
“There’s nothing wrong with your hearing,” Marcus replies, slowly and deliberately. “It’s just curious that you weren’t there when everyone else was turned to stone.”
Pain splits through my chest like a hot blade. “Fuck you, Marcus.”
He raises an eyebrow, casual as ever. “Charming deflection.”
“I’m not deflecting a damn thing. How dare you accuse me of this? You, of all people? Once a murderer, always a murderer, right?”
He rises fast, chair legs scraping harshly against stone. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
I whirl to face him, blanket falling to the floor in a heap. “Don’t play dumb. You killed those men in the warehouse explosion.”
His jaw goes rigid. “You’ve got some nerve accusing me of that.”
“If the shoe fits.”
He takes a step toward me. Then another. “Esmerelda, I’m warning you. Don’t push me.”
“Why not? What are you going to do, Marcus? Lose your temper and kill me too?”
He doesn’t stop. Keeps coming until we’re standing toe-to-toe, breathing the same charged air. His presence hits like a storm front. My heart slams against my ribs, but I don’t move.
My wolf is coiled and ready, ears flat, tail stiff, eyes locked on his.
“I had no part in that,” Marcus growls, voice dark with fury. “And I had nothing to do with what happened to our families. But you?” His eyes burn into mine. “You were responsible for the assassination of two of my most experienced guides. You want to talk blame? Fine. Let’s talk blame.”
My hands curl into fists. Nails bite into my palms. We’re breathing fire and accusation into each other’s faces, both of us refusing to flinch.
The room is too quiet for what’s happening between us.
Then the doors swing open.
The council members return. “It has been confirmed. The wine was poisoned.”
A breath explodes out of me.
My wolf goes rigid.
Marcus flinches. Just slightly.
“The poison was activated by a single sip,” Thaloran continues. “We believe a spell was layered over it. Something fast-acting and old. Very old.”
“No,” Marcus whispers. “That can’t be. I drank the wine.”
Thaloran fixes his gaze on Marcus. “You what?”
“I drank the wine,” he repeats, louder this time. “I drank it.”
My voice cuts through the tension, quiet and sharp. “Convenient.”
Marcus paces, dragging a hand through his hair again. Another show. Another carefully acted scene.
He’s performing, and I hate that part of me—some dark, curious part—still watches him, trying to unravel the truth from the performance. That part is my wolf, too. Calculating. Sniffing for lies.
“Do you know if there was wolfsbane in the wine?” Marcus asks Eryndor.
“We’re still running tests to determine what was in the poison,” he replies. “We’ll return with results shortly.”
They leave, but I’m aware they know everything taking place in this room. I don’t care.
The moment the door shuts, I round on Marcus.
“Wolfsbane?” I demand. “If there was wolfsbane in the wine, you’d be on the floor, screaming. Don’t pretend you wouldn’t be affected.”
He shrugs. But his expression falters. A flicker. A flicker is all I need.
My wolf growls again. She knows that smell. That twitch. That’s the scent of a lie.
The pieces crash through my mind, tumbling over one another.
He poured the wine. He was alone with it.
That cry for help when I arrived was too loud, too desperate.
And the herbs he insisted on using afterward?
What if they weren’t to heal? What if they amplified the damage?
Or masked the symptoms? Or something worse?
But then why help the investigation? Why stay here?
My wolf paces, confused. Torn between fury and something dangerously close to doubt. Or hope.
The fire hisses behind me. I collapse into the chair near it, curling into myself. The shadows dance across the floor, and my wolf watches them like they might give us the answers we’re too afraid to speak aloud.
Eventually, only Eryndor returns.
Marcus rises immediately. “When can we go back to our rooms?”
“Soon,” he replies. “The apothecary confirmed there was wolfsbane in the wine. How did you know?”
Marcus doesn’t look at me. “I’m immune to wolfsbane. I’m only half-shifter. I’m half-farfadet. My farfadet blood protects me from both wolfsbane and short-term silver exposure.”
The world tilts.
My breath stutters. My wolf freezes. Everything stops.
Not because he’s half-farfadet. But because he never told me.
He never trusted me with the truth.
Farfadets are earth-fae. Old, rare, and always a little wild.
They come from the soil and stone, tricksters by nature but powerful in their own quiet way.
Half of him belongs to that world. My wolf’s growl rises, not out of rage this time, but something rawer.
Sadder. We should have known. Should have sensed it in his magic. But we didn’t.
I clutch the blanket tighter around myself. It smells like home, so I twist the edge between my fingers.
It’s not just what he hid.
It’s that I still want to understand him.
And that realization? That’s what hurts the most.
My throat aches. My chest feels hollow. Grief crashes through me in cold, brutal waves.
I thought I’d already lost everything tonight.
Turns out, I still had more to lose.