CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Teeth of the Same Wolf
SERAPHINE
Temporary truces are fragile things.
Ours lasted six hours.
Elias wanted to move his rebels into the capital before Malrec’s clergy could arrest known sympathizers.
Lucian refused to begin street fighting without proof.
Darius suggested controlled sabotage of temple supply routes.
Nyra wanted to seize the council chamber through a servant tunnel she had apparently known about since childhood.
I wanted everyone to stop shouting.
“Enough.”
Four men and one princess turned toward me.
We had moved from the tannery to an abandoned riverside warehouse. Rain drummed on the roof, turning old snow into black slush outside.
“Malrec benefits every time we split into factions,” I said. “Royal. Rebel. Moonmarked. Clergy. That is how he has survived this long.”
Elias folded his arms. “And your solution is what? Hold hands?”
“Tempting. I would enjoy watching you and Lucian suffer.”
Darius made a thoughtful noise.
I pointed at the map. “We leave for Selene before dusk. Nyra stays with Darius and coordinates loyal guards. Elias gets his people out of the temple districts without attacking anyone unless they’re attacked first.”
Elias’s expression darkened. “You don’t command me.”
“No. I’m your little sister. Worse.”
Nyra laughed.
Lucian leaned against the table, silent.
I looked at him. “Say something royal.”
“You seem to have it handled.”
I hated how much I liked that answer.
Elias did not.
“You trust her to decide strategy?”
Lucian’s face went cool. “More than I trust you.”
“And there it is.”
“Elias,” I warned.
He turned on Lucian. “You think one journal erases twelve years? You wore the crest. You inherited the throne. You benefited from every grave Aldric filled.”
Lucian pushed away from the table.
“I know.”
The quiet answer took force out of the room.
Elias looked almost disappointed.
Lucian continued, “What do you want me to say? That I was innocent because I was nineteen? I wasn’t. That I could have stopped my father? I tried too little and too late. That becoming king corrected the damage? It didn’t.”
He stepped closer.
“But if your revenge requires me to become Aldric so you can justify becoming Rorik, I won’t help you.”
Elias punched him.
Lucian could have dodged.
He did not.
His head snapped sideways.
I swore.
Darius reached for Elias. I blocked him.
Lucian slowly turned back.
Blood marked his lip.
“Feel better?” he asked.
“No.”
“Good.”
Elias swung again.
This time Lucian caught his wrist.
They stared at each other, wolves pressing close beneath human skin.
“You don’t get to lecture me about grief,” Elias said.
“No,” Lucian replied. “But I know what it looks like when grief starts choosing your enemies for you.”
Elias jerked free.
For one second, I thought he would shift.
Instead he walked away.
I followed him onto the loading dock.
Rain blew under the roof.
He stood with both hands braced on the railing.
“You love him,” he said.
The word felt too large and too accurate.
“I’m not discussing that with you.”
“You do.”
I looked at the river.
“I hated him for twelve years.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“No.”
Elias laughed bitterly. “I spent half my life trying to get back to you. Then I find you at his side.”
“That doesn’t erase us.”
“It changes us.”
“Yes.”
He looked at me then.
There was the boy I remembered under all the scars.
“I’m tired, Sparrow.”
My anger broke.
I hugged him.
For a moment he resisted.
Then his arms came around me.
“I’m tired too,” I whispered.
A crossbow snapped.
Elias shoved me down.
The bolt struck him high in the shoulder.
“Elias!”
Figures rose from the roofs across the river.
Temple archers.
The warehouse windows shattered.
Lucian dragged me behind a crate as glass sprayed the floor.
Darius shouted orders.
Nyra overturned the map table for cover.
Elias ripped the bolt from his shoulder.
The tip was black.
“Poison,” I said.
His pupils widened.
“No,” he growled.
His fingers lengthened into claws.
White crept into his eyes.
Moonrot.
“Hold him!” I shouted.
He struck the nearest rebel hard enough to throw him across the room.
Lucian moved toward him.
“Don’t hurt him!”
“I know.”
Elias shifted violently, bones breaking into wolf shape too fast. The result was wrong—larger than his natural form, ribs visible under blackened skin.
He lunged at Lucian.
Lucian caught him around the neck and drove him to the floor.
Elias snapped inches from his face.
“Seraphine!”
I grabbed the emergency pouch from my belt.
Charcoal. Duskroot. Not enough.
The bond solution Mira had used on Lucian required a mate.
Elias had none.
I thought of blood.
Family.
Moonmarked blood.
“Hold him.”
I cut my palm and pressed it to Elias’s mouth.
Lucian stared. “Sera—”
“Trust me.”
Elias bit down on instinct.
Pain ripped through my hand.
The crescent mark beneath my collarbone ignited.
Silver light ran through my blood and into him.
Elias convulsed.
For one terrible second, nothing changed.
Then the white drained from his eyes.
He collapsed.
Lucian caught his weight.
Outside, the archers retreated as Darius’s guards reached the opposite roof.
I knelt beside my brother, dizzy from blood loss.
Lucian wrapped my palm with his handkerchief.
“You’re shaking.”
“I’m fine.”
“You are a terrible liar.”
Elias coughed.
His eyes opened.
“Did I bite you?”
“Yes.”
He winced. “Sorry.”
“Try not to make it a habit.”
His gaze moved to Lucian, who was still supporting his shoulders.
“You could’ve killed me.”
“Yes.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.”
Elias seemed offended by the complication.
I understood.
Forgiveness would not come from one rescue.
Neither would trust.
But old hatred had lost another easy answer.
Sometimes that was how peace began—not with agreement, but with the failure of certainty.
* * *
Elias woke furious that he was alive.
“I could have handled it,” he said.
Mira tightened the bandage around his shoulder until he swore.
“You tried to bite the king.”
“He was available.”
Lucian, standing in the doorway, said, “I have heard worse explanations.”
Elias glared.
The warehouse attack left three rebels injured and one dead. Temple archers escaped before Darius could capture them. The bolt that struck Elias had contained a concentrated moonrot mixture designed to trigger frenzy within seconds.
Malrec had not wanted him dead.
He had wanted him monstrous.
That mattered.
Later, after everyone else slept, Elias found me on the warehouse stairs.
His arm was in a sling.
“You should be lying down.”
“You sound like Mira.”
“Fear her more.”
“I do.”
He sat beside me.
For a while, we listened to rain.
“I killed a man in the labor camp,” he said.
The confession arrived without warning.
I turned toward him.
“He was a prisoner?”
“A guard.”
I waited.
“First year. I was nineteen. He used to beat people during count because it made the others stand straighter.” Elias stared at his good hand. “One night he took a boy behind the tool shed. I followed.”
My stomach tightened.
“I hit him with a shovel. Once should have been enough.”
“How many times?”
“I don’t know.”
His voice was empty.
“The boy lived. The guard didn’t.”
I touched his knee.
“That does not make you a monster.”
“No.” He looked at me. “But listen to the rest.”
I did.
“When I escaped, I decided every guard was the same. Every royal uniform. Every clerk who stamped a transport order. I burned a convoy outside East Quarry. I thought it carried weapons.”
His jaw tightened.
“It carried prison records and six junior clerks.”
My breath caught.
“Did they die?”
“Four.”
Elias’s eyes glistened.
“I called it war. Then I learned one clerk was seventeen.”
I had no easy answer.
He laughed bitterly. “This is the part where you tell me grief made me reckless.”
“No.”
“Lucian would.”
“He might.”
“What do you say?”
I looked at the rain.
“You did something terrible.”
He flinched.
I continued. “And you know it was terrible. That matters, but it does not undo it.”
“So what am I supposed to do with that?”
“Decide what you do next.”
He was quiet.
“Lucian told me something similar,” he said.
“That is unfortunate.”
“Very.”
I smiled faintly.
Elias’s expression became serious.
“I hate him less than I planned.”
“Do not tell him. His ego is already unmanageable.”
“I still think kings are a bad idea.”
“Reasonable.”
“And I don’t trust the crown.”
“Neither does he, increasingly.”
“That worries me more.”
I laughed.
Then Elias pulled a small brass token from his pocket.
A labor camp identification disk.
Number 418.
“I kept it so I wouldn’t turn survival into a heroic story,” he said. “There was nothing heroic about most of it. We were hungry. Frightened. Mean when we had to be.”
He placed the disk in my hand.
“Rorik visited the camp once.”
My humor disappeared.
“What?”
“Two years after the purge. He inspected a shipment of Moonmarked prisoners. I hid behind the ore bins and heard him arguing with a temple priest.”
“About what?”
“Rorik wanted more money. Said ‘Ardyn paid for the Vale job, not a lifetime of silence.’”
My pulse jumped.
“You heard the name?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”
“I did not know if it meant Malrec or his father. Ardyn has been in the clergy for generations. But the priest answered, ‘The High Seer does not renegotiate.’ Malrec held that title then.”
I closed my fingers around the token.
Proof from memory would not win a tribunal.
But it connected Malrec directly to our father’s death.
Elias leaned back against the wall.
“I built the Raven because I thought the crown killed our family.”
“It did. Aldric’s order enabled it.”
“Yes. But Malrec aimed the weapon.”
We sat with that distinction.
Not absolution.
Truth.
After a while Elias said, “If this ends, what do you want?”
“A house.”
He looked surprised.
“A house?”
“In Ashen Vale. Near the old orchard.”
“You hate domestic work.”
“I hate dusting. Houses contain other activities.”
His eyes narrowed. “With him?”
“Possibly.”
He groaned.
“What about you?” I asked.
Elias looked toward the sleeping rebels.
“I don’t know.”
“Good.”
He frowned.
“You have spent twelve years knowing exactly what you are fighting against. Maybe not knowing what comes after is the first honest thing.”
He considered that.
Then he smiled.
“Pear trees,” he said.
“What?”
“If we rebuild. Pear trees.”
“Father’s orchard was terrible.”
“He planted them too close together.”
“And never pruned them.”
“They still tasted good.”
I leaned against my brother’s shoulder carefully.
For one quiet hour, before kings were deposed and prophecies demanded blood, we planned an orchard neither of us knew whether we would live to see.