e stood behind the Regent's line, and for one terrible second I thought the worst thing left to lose me tonig

il

e every warrior near her take an involuntary step back, the air around her gone thin and c

ave brought them

ed into something more careful, h

ntly nobody else thought to wonder how a Council that's been hunting the Moo

. "You knew someon

t had never belonged to the girl who'd braided my hair before every full moon, who'd fallen asleep on my shoulder during a hundred

now crouched low against the stone, three faint black stars marked across her shoulder - the same shape, the same we

had been knocked out of her. "That b

ent six years pretending to be an ordinary girl so the people hunting *your* bloodline wouldn't notice mine standing th

irst time since he'd walked in wearing a

moke, buying exactly the handful of seconds we needed. "Go," she snarled, human voice bleeding through the wolf's thro

reathing shallow enough to frighten me more than the battle around us, and I hauled him upright with stren

leave her

er voice firm despite the tears sta

cry, and the sound of it followed us the whole way down into the dark, echoing

-

g thick along the walls where no light had reached in years, and it was there, with Adrian's blood soaking th

ched f

to hold up. The silver light didn't burst out of me this time. It moved slow, deliberate, sinking into his skin like something that had been w

issed and thinned, curling awa

doing?" he ask

and that was the only thing that mattered in that corridor. When the light finally faded, the wound had closed to a

t like he didn't recogniz

quietly. "I think I've known that since the ceremony.

d that te

, I've also ended up lying to. And you're th

t his, both of us too tired to pretend the night hadn't taken something out of each of us

ill pool of silver water at its center, the surface undisturbed enough to look almost solid. "This

mine in the water - dark hair, silver eyes, a face I had never seen and somehow

hat?" I w

r voice broke on the word in a way ei

st all at once, a grief and a joy tangled so tightly together I couldn't separate them. *If you are seeing this, then the crown has aw

armies standing behind them like allies instead of enemies, banners I didn't recognize han

I knelt there afterward with my hands still shaking against the stone, b

as a