CHAPTER FOUR
Ash at Blackwater
LUCIAN
Blackwater smelled like burned timber long after the flames were gone.
We reached the village before dusk beneath a sky heavy with snow. I brought only Darius, six trusted guards, and Seraphine. No banners. No crown. We wore plain dark cloaks, though no disguise could hide what I was from wolves.
They knew me before I crossed the first ruined fence.
Conversation stopped.
A woman carrying a water pail froze in the road.
An old man lowered his head—not in respect, but so he would not have to look at me.
Seraphine watched all of it.
I did not defend myself.
A king did not get to demand innocence from people standing in the ashes of his seal.
The attack had taken eleven lives.
Two children.
One was six.
I had read every name before leaving the palace.
Seraphine led me toward the meeting house. Half the roof had collapsed. Someone had covered the gaps with canvas, but snow had begun collecting in the corners.
“Mira,” Seraphine called.
A dark-haired woman stepped through the doorway.
She saw me and reached for the knife at her belt.
Darius’s hand moved toward his sword.
“Don’t,” Seraphine told both of them.
The woman’s gaze cut to her. “You brought him here?”
“I brought the man who says he didn’t order this.”
“And you believe him?”
“No.”
I glanced at Seraphine.
She shrugged. “I’m working on it.”
Mira looked at me. “My brother died in that house.”
“I know.”
Her face changed slightly. “You know his name?”
“Torren Vale. Thirty-three. Carpenter. Married to Lysa. One daughter.”
The silence around us deepened.
I had learned long ago that remembering the dead was the smallest obligation of power.
It was also one my father never bothered to fulfill.
Mira’s hand fell away from her knife.
Not forgiveness.
Not even trust.
But something opened enough for us to enter.
Inside, Seraphine showed me the blackened eastern wall.
“There.”
At first I saw only soot.
Then I smelled it.
Blue myrrh.
Faint beneath smoke and wet wood.
Darius crouched near the wall. “Why burn temple resin here?”
“To hide something?” I asked.
Seraphine shook her head. “Myrrh doesn’t hide scent. It preserves it.”
She scraped a little ash into her palm.
“What?”
“It’s used in old binding rites. Healers mix it with blood to hold a spirit in place.”
Darius looked unimpressed. “Comforting.”
I examined the wall.
Thin grooves had been carved into the stone beneath the soot.
A circle.
Three claw marks.
A broken crescent.
“Malrec’s order?” Darius asked.
“No,” I said.
I had seen the symbol once before.
In a sealed report from the eastern prison, where three wolves had transformed into mindless beasts after exposure to something found in a moon shrine.
The incident had been buried.
By my father’s command.
Seraphine noticed my expression. “You know it.”
“Not enough.”
“Try again.”
I looked at her. “Later.”
Her eyes narrowed.
A scream split the village.
We ran.
A man staggered from behind a burned cottage. His body was halfway through a shift, but wrong. Bones punched beneath skin at crooked angles. Black veins crawled up his neck. His wolf eyes were milk-white.
Feral.
Another creature burst through the fence behind him.
Then a third.
“Get everyone inside!” I shouted.
The first feral launched itself at Seraphine.
I intercepted it.
We hit the frozen ground hard.
Its claws tore through my coat. I drove my forearm under its throat and felt bone cracking where no bone should have been.
It snapped for my face.
My wolf surged.
I shifted my right hand only—fingers lengthening into claws—and ripped across its chest.
The creature shrieked.
Seraphine buried a blade behind its ear.
It collapsed.
She crouched beside me. “You’re welcome.”
“I had it handled.”
“It was chewing your sleeve.”
“The sleeve was losing.”
A second feral crashed into Darius.
The third bounded toward a child frozen in the road.
Seraphine moved first.
She shifted as she ran.
Bones flowed beneath skin with the smooth violence of a practiced transformation. A large gray wolf burst from her clothes, silver tracing the fur along her shoulders like moonlight on water.
My wolf slammed against my control.
Mate.
The instinct was immediate and savage.
Protect.
Claim.
I despised the second word.
Seraphine hit the feral midair and drove it sideways. They rolled through the snow in a tangle of teeth and claws.
The feral was larger.
It pinned her.
I shifted fully.
The world sharpened.
I became black fur, muscle, teeth, and rage.
My Lycan form stood nearly a head taller than ordinary wolves. I crossed the distance in three strides and hit the feral hard enough to break it from her.
It turned on me.
I tore out its throat.
Blood steamed on the snow.
Silence followed.
Seraphine shifted back first, breathing hard. Mira threw a blanket around her shoulders.
I returned to human form behind a ruined wall while Darius, who had the decency not to comment, handed me spare clothes from a saddlebag.
When I came back, Seraphine was kneeling beside the first feral.
Her fingers touched the black veins at its throat.
“Blue myrrh,” she said.
I crouched opposite her.
She met my eyes.
“Someone didn’t just attack Blackwater,” she said. “They made these wolves.”
Behind us, the villagers stared at their king standing in their ruined street.
I looked at the dead feral and smelled temple incense beneath the blood.
The conspiracy had just become larger than treason.
And much older than either of us.