CHAPTER SEVEN
Wolfsbane
SERAPHINE
Lucian nearly died because a knife meant for me found him first.
I resented him for it.
It was easier than admitting how afraid I was.
“Move,” I snapped as guards crowded the king’s chamber.
No one moved.
Darius bared his teeth. “Everyone out except Mira and the royal physician.”
That worked.
Lucian lay on the bed, skin too pale against the black sheets. The stab wound itself was narrow. The poison was the problem.
Black lines spread from his side toward his chest.
Wolfsbane and moonrot.
The combination suppressed healing while provoking the wolf. A cruel mixture. His body kept trying to shift and repair itself, only for the poison to stop both processes halfway.
His muscles locked.
His fingers became claws, then human again.
The royal physician stared at the veins. “I’ve never seen this.”
“I have,” Mira said.
Everyone looked at her.
She glanced at me.
“Blackwater,” I said.
The same corruption.
Not identical, but close.
Mira began grinding charcoal and duskroot. “We can draw out part of the poison. The rest has to be burned through.”
Darius frowned. “With what?”
“His wolf.”
“The poison is suppressing it.”
“Then something has to call it forward.”
Mira’s gaze moved to me.
I understood.
“No.”
Darius understood too. “Mate bond.”
“No.”
Mira lowered her voice. “Sera.”
“I said no.”
The bond had become a furnace beneath my ribs. Lucian’s pain came through in flashes sharp enough to bend me double if I stopped concentrating.
Mira stepped close. “I’m not asking you to accept him. I’m asking you to keep him alive.”
I looked at the man on the bed.
My enemy.
My mate.
The prince who had stood over my father’s blood.
The king who had sent food to Blackwater without demanding thanks.
The man who had stepped in front of a poisoned knife.
I hated confusion almost as much as I hated him.
“What do I do?”
Mira exhaled. “Touch him. Let your wolf reach for his.”
“Very scientific.”
“It’s older than science.”
I sat on the edge of the bed.
Lucian’s skin burned beneath my palm.
The bond opened.
Pain slammed into me.
I gasped.
Images flashed—not thoughts exactly, but impressions. Snow. Blood. A throne room. A boy kneeling before a man with silver eyes. A blade cutting over his heart.
Then darkness.
His wolf was somewhere inside it.
I closed my eyes.
Come on, I thought, not knowing whether he could hear me. You arrogant bastard. Fight.
Nothing.
I pressed my hand over the ritual scar on his chest.
The crescent beneath my collarbone ignited.
Lucian jerked.
His eyes opened, silver flooded almost completely black at the edges.
“Sera?”
“Don’t get sentimental.”
His mouth moved faintly. “You’re terrible at bedside comfort.”
Relief hit me so hard I nearly laughed.
Instead I snarled, “Shift.”
His brow tightened.
“Your wolf,” I said. “Call him.”
“Poison.”
“I know.”
His hand closed around my wrist.
Even weak, the contact sent heat up my arm.
“Let go,” I whispered.
Not to his hand.
To the control he had wrapped around himself.
For a second, he only stared at me.
Then the room filled with a growl.
His body arched.
Bones cracked.
The royal physician backed away.
Darius stepped forward, but Mira stopped him.
Lucian’s claws tore through the sheets. Fur darkened his forearms. His eyes became wolf-bright.
The poison lines stopped spreading.
“Again,” Mira said.
I leaned closer.
My forehead touched Lucian’s.
The bond burst open.
His wolf found mine.
The sensation was not possession. It was recognition.
Two wild things meeting at the edge of a forest and choosing, for one breath, not to fight.
Lucian shifted.
Not fully. Enough.
Heat rolled off him.
The black veins began retreating.
Mira pushed the charcoal mixture between his teeth. He swallowed on instinct.
Minutes passed.
Then the tension in his body eased.
His claws shortened.
His breathing steadied.
I tried to pull away.
His hand remained around my wrist.
“Stay,” he murmured.
The word was so quiet I might have pretended not to hear it.
I did not leave.
Hours later, Lucian slept.
Darius stood at the window, staring down at the palace courtyard.
“Who knew he would cross that gallery?” I asked.
“The entire ballroom.”
“Who knew the servant?”
“He joined palace staff three months ago. References from a moon monastery.”
Of course.
Mira had gone to examine the servant’s body.
The royal physician was in the next room.
Darius turned toward me. “You saved him.”
“He saved me first.”
“Lucian doesn’t do things by accident.”
I looked at the sleeping king.
“Neither do I.”
Darius was quiet for a moment.
“You asked before why he remembered the Blackwater dead.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“You wondered.”
I said nothing.
“He keeps a ledger,” Darius said. “Every civilian death tied to a royal order since he took the crown. Name, family, village. He reads it at the end of every month.”
“Why?”
“Because his father never learned any of their names.”
The old hatred inside me shifted, looking for familiar ground.
It found less than before.
Lucian stirred.
His eyes opened slowly.
They found me at once.
“You stayed,” he said.
I stood too quickly. “Don’t make it meaningful.”
A weak smile touched his mouth.
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
I should have left.
Instead I looked down at the scar over his heart and remembered the fragment of vision the bond had shown me: a sixteen-year-old prince kneeling while someone cut him open for a crown he had not yet chosen.
For the first time, I wondered whether Lucian Veyr had ever been free either.