Chapter 19 Solomon
— · —
Solomon
Percival wasn’t supposed to get worse.
I stood in the doorway of his room and watched his chest rise and fall. Counting the seconds between each breath. Noted the sweat beading along his hairline and the way his fingers twitched against the blanket in his sleep, chasing pain even unconscious.
This was my fault.
I’d been blinded. I was careless and made a mistake I usually wouldn’t have.
Hudson’s hands on Mira’s throat had turned my vision red, flooded my blood with a rage so absolute that everything else disappeared. My body had moved before my mind caught up, launching at Hudson. And in that blind, furious second, I hadn’t sensed the shooter in the trees.
Percival had.
Percival, who was two hundred years old.
Young by any lycan measure, and our responsibility in every way that mattered.
Mine, specifically. I was the enforcer. The protector.
Born to it, built for it, given a body that towered over most specifically so I could stand between danger and the people I loved.
I grit my teeth. I’d failed him the same way I’d almost failed Lucian before.
The wound had closed before I left to dispose of Hudson’s body. I’d checked. Confirmed the tissue was knitting, the bleeding had stopped, his vitals were steady.
But it was another mistake from me.
When I returned, I was still drowning in guilt so I checked again and that’s when my world tilted.
The wound reopened. The sealed edges had split apart as if pulled by invisible fingers, raw and wet, and dark lines I’d never seen in centuries of battlefield medicine were spreading from the puncture site, tracing his veins outward in a web that made my hands go still.
I’d gone to find Lucian and Mira immediately. Found them in his office in a state I didn’t have time to process because Percival was deteriorating.
Mira sat on the floor beside his bed now. Still in the blue dress. Her hair fell around her face in tangled waves, and every time she looked up at me, her eyes were raw from crying. She hadn’t slept or eaten. Hadn’t moved from that spot since she came back to watch him.
I stood in the doorway, arms crossed. Cataloguing, monitoring. Doing the only thing I knew how to do when the people I wanted to protect were hurting and I couldn’t stop it.
Lucian appeared carrying two leather pouches sealed with the Valdris crest a minute later. The smell hit me before he entered the room. Dried herbs, Veyndral-grown remedies that didn’t exist in the human world.
He’d sent for them through the portal. Probably from the messenger raven he loves picking fights with.
“How is he?” Lucian set the pouches on the nightstand.
“Stable. Not improving.” My eyes moved to the pouches. Recognition loosened the tension in my jaw by a fraction. “Is that the right herb?”
“Yes. It just arrived.”
Lucian opened the first pouch. The bloodmoss was still fresh. He crushed a handful between his palms and held the compress against Percy’s wound while I prepared the ashwort tincture. My hands moved through the steps with the muscle memory.
Percy hissed at the contact. His eyes cracked open, hazel streaked with gold, and he managed a crooked grin.
“Is that the good stuff?”
“Veyndral-grade. Try not to drool,” Lucian said.
“Sure, no problem.” He winced as the ashwort burned against the reopened tissue.
Even now. With what appeared to be a targeted compound eating through his regeneration, Percival plays it off.
The herbs took effect within the hour. The dark lines retreated, fading from his veins in slow pulses. The wound’s edges stopped unraveling and began to close again. Slower than normal lycan healing. But steady. Moving in the right direction.
I pulled Lucian into the kitchen while Mira changed Percy’s bandages.
“The Veyndral herbs are working where his natural regeneration failed.” I kept my voice low. Arms crossed, posture rigid. “Which means whatever was on that dart was specifically designed to counteract lycan healing.”
“Silver compound?”
“Partially. The dart tip had silver residue, but silver alone would have burned, not suppressed regeneration. There’s a secondary agent I can’t identify.” I paused. Let the next words carry their full weight. “This isn’t human chemistry, Lucian.”
The revelation settled between us.
“The scent trail being wiped,” I continued. “Weapons designed for our biology.” I met his eyes. “Hudson was a human stalker. He shouldn’t have had access to any of this.”
“You think whoever was helping him provided information about our real identity?”
“I think whoever was helping him has been studying us. And I think Hudson dying was convenient for them. Dead men don’t answer questions.”
The implication was clear to both of us. Hudson had been a tool. Used and discarded. And the hand wielding him was still out there, still watching, carrying weapons designed to harm and potentially kill lycans.
“The body?” Lucian asked.
“I disposed of it properly.” The memory surfaced and rage rose in my chest. “He died too quickly. A mercy he didn’t deserve.”
Lucian’s hands balled into fists. His jaw worked, and I watched the same anger build behind his eyes. Controlled fury of what he would have done differently if he had time.
I also have a lot of creative violent ideas.
“We had no choice. We didn’t expect the shooter,” he said.
“No. We didn’t.” My jaw tightened. “Which is exactly the problem.”
From upstairs, Mira’s voice drifted down through the ceiling. She was talking to Percival, fussing all over him. The sound of her worry carried through the floorboards, and my chest tightened at the tenderness in her tone.
We headed upstairs. Mira looked up from beside Percy’s bed where she’d tucked a fresh blanket around his shoulders. The guilt in her eyes was a wound of its own.
“I’m sorry,” she said. Her voice cracked on the second word. “You shouldn’t have been shot because of me...”
“Mira. We talked about this. It’s not your fault.” Lucian sighed. “It may not even be your enemy.”
She blinked. “What?”
“The shooter wasn’t aiming at you. The dart was designed for lycans.” He held her gaze. “It could have been meant for us.”
A necessary partial lie. I agreed with the decision even if I’d have delivered it differently. She was processing too much already and we were still in the dark about the truth.
“The point is,” Lucian said, “stop blaming yourself.”
Percy reached over and messed her hair playfully.
“What Lucy said.” Percy yawned. I noted Lucian’s jaw tighten at the nickname but he let it pass. Percival knew exactly how much leniency a dart wound bought him and was spending it generously.
“Also, I’m fine. Look.” He flexed his wounded shoulder only to wince right away. He covered it with a grin. “Barely hurts.”
“You’re a terrible liar.”
Mira’s mouth twitched. She sighed and tucked the blanket tighter around his chest, then turned back to look at us.
“Okay. Then... Can you tell me about Veyndral?”
A subject change. She was steering away from guilt with distraction.
“What do you want to know?” I asked.
“Everything.” She pulled her knees to her chest on the bed. “Start with why you left.”
Percy shifted to give her more room, pressing himself against the headrest so she could settle beside him. I moved to the chair by the window.
“Veyndral was founded over a thousand years ago,” Lucian began. “Our ancestors were hunted systematically. Entire packs slaughtered. Our people were captured and burned alive on pyres, displayed as warnings to anyone who refused to submit.”
Mira’s face went pale. “Burned alive?”
“It was called the Burning Years. It lasted decades. By the time it ended, our numbers had been reduced to a fraction. The survivors fled and built a kingdom.”
“Are those who hunted you still around? Is this their doing?”
“They were destroyed. At least, from what our history says,” I answered.
“So your kingdom is safe now?” Mira asked.
“Yes but our ancestors decided to isolate us. We chose independence eight hundred years ago. We’d learned that the only walls worth trusting were the ones we built ourselves.
” Lucian leaned back in his chair. “The other kingdoms in Lytopia formed an alliance. We declined. We maintain trade, but we’ve never joined. ”
“So what does it actually look like?” Mira asked. “Veyndral.”
Percy’s eyes lit up. “Picture this... Forests where the trees glow at night. The whole canopy pulses with bioluminescence. You walk through the Glowwood at midnight and it’s brighter than any city.”
“He’s exaggerating,” I said from the window. “It’s not brighter than a city.”
“It’s brighter than this town!”
“That’s not a high bar.”
Percy ignored me. “And the Obsidian Sea. Black water, completely still, reflects the aurora so perfectly you can’t tell where the sky ends and the ocean starts.”
“The water isn’t black,” I corrected. “It’s dark blue.”
“But it looks black.”
“Because you only visit at night.”
“Wait, hold on.” Mira sat up straighter, her hand tightening on Percy’s blanket. “Glowing forests? An actual aurora reflecting off a sea? You’re telling me this place exists and you left it to be firefighters in rural nowhere?”
“A beautiful cage is still a cage,” Lucian said. “Hundred years behind walls, no matter how stunning the view, changes a kingdom. Our people were safe but stagnant. The world moved forward and we watched from behind our borders.”
He paused. “I didn’t leave because Veyndral wasn’t enough. I left because I wanted it to become more. Also, I wanted to explore and take a breather away from the throne.”
Mira went quiet. The teasing edge softened, and she looked at Lucian with respect.
“That’s actually really noble,” she said. Then she caught herself and added, “Don’t let that go to your head though.”
“Too late.” Lucian smirked.
There was a shift between them. The bickering was the same, the push and pull. But the edges were different. Charged with an understanding that hadn’t been there before last night.