Chapter 4

When I opened my eyes again, everything around me was pale and dim. Whitewashed walls, a low stone ceiling, the sharp smell of crushed herbs and healing salves hanging thick in the air. My head throbbed, and my stomach felt as though it had been carved open from the inside.

Beside the pallet, Lucien sat in silence.

The moment he noticed I had woken, whatever concern had touched his face vanished at once.

"You truly went all out tonight," he said coldly. "If you didn't wish to eat the crab, you could simply have said so."

I stared at him.

Lucien crossed his arms and let out a bitter laugh. "But coughing up blood? That's a new trick. I hadn't realized you'd grown this desperate for attention."

My heart sank. "You think I feigned it?"

My own voice sounded rough, broken, almost unfamiliar even to myself. For some reason the question made him frown, his gaze lingering on me. Because this was not the Selene he remembered.

The old Selene had smiled. The old Selene had spoken softly. The old Selene had looked at him as though he had hung the moon itself in the sky.

That wolf no longer existed.

His eyes drifted slowly downward. The healer's shift hung loose across my frame. My wrists looked frighteningly thin, my cheeks hollowed out. The shadow cells had taken nearly everything from me.

I watched understanding settle slowly over his face. Earlier, when he had carried me from the hall, he must have felt it too. I was too light. As though barely anything remained of me at all.

He sighed and sat back down beside the pallet, his large hand reaching for mine, his palm warm against my ice-cold skin as he covered the back of my hand, as though trying to coax some warmth back into it.

"Selene, I know you're angry," he said softly. "But I've already fulfilled three of the six vows I swore to Marga. Only three remain, and once they're done, all of this will finally be behind us."

I stared at the ceiling and said nothing.

For the first time all evening, there was real anticipation in his voice. "I'll finally be free of the past," he went on. "Then it will be only us. No more complications, no more old debts, no one standing between us any longer."

His expression softened as he leaned closer. "You always wished to leave this territory, remember? You used to tell me you wanted a quiet den somewhere far off, surrounded by wildflowers. I'll claim an estate beyond the northern border, a vast one, and fill every corner of it with flowers if that's what you still want. You'll never have to trouble yourself with anything again, because I mean to spend the rest of my life making this right."

The future he described sounded beautiful. Peaceful. Like something out of an old fireside tale.

The trouble was that I no longer cared. The wolf who would once have wept with joy to hear such promises had died within me eight years ago.

After a long silence, I finally asked, "Where is Grandfather?"

Lucien went still. The warmth vanished from his face, and for one brief moment he looked genuinely caught off guard.

Before he could answer, the chamber door burst open.

"Lucien, Marga has fallen ill again," one of his enforcers said, breathless. "She's taken suddenly unwell and keeps calling for you through the link."

Everything about him changed at once. The concern in his eyes, the tension gathering in his shoulders, the urgency sharpening his voice.

"What's happened to her?" he demanded.

"We aren't certain yet. She says she feels faint, and her stomach pains her."

Before the enforcer had even finished speaking, Lucien was already on his feet. The hand covering mine vanished, and with it, whatever warmth it had lent me.

"I'll go to her," he said. That was all.

No answer to my question. No word of comfort. Not even a backward glance. He simply walked from the chamber, and the door fell shut behind him.

I stared at the empty doorway and let out a cold laugh. Of course. What exactly had I expected?

A few moments later, the door opened again. This time it was a healer's apprentice, a young woman who glanced nervously about before hurrying to my side.

"My lady, have you offended someone with great power?" she asked quietly. "Your wounds were grave, yet someone ordered us to hand your mate a false account of your condition."

My fingers tightened around the woolen blanket. "A false account?"

She nodded and pressed a folded parchment into my hands. "What was shown to your mate spoke only of a minor reaction to shellfish. This is your true diagnosis."

I lowered my eyes to the page. At first the words blurred together, and then, slowly, they sharpened into meaning.

Grave injury to the stomach. Foreign matter lodged within. Surgery required at once.

My hand trembled.

"There are several foreign objects within you," the apprentice explained gently. "Small stones, fragments of iron, and signs of damage long unhealed. They must be drawn out without delay."

The chamber fell silent.

After a while I asked, "How badly is my throat harmed?"

Her expression darkened. "The old wounds never mended properly," she admitted. "Whoever did this to you left lasting damage."

I closed my eyes, and at once the memories came flooding back.

My first month in the shadow cells. Several prisoners cornering me in the feeding hall. Forcing my jaw open while they laughed. Pressing food mixed with grit and metal shavings down my throat. I remembered choking, retching blood, begging them to stop while no one came and no one helped. That day, I had truly believed I would die down there in the dark.

The apprentice left soon after, leaving me alone with the parchment.

As I stared blankly at the page, another memory rose unbidden. Years ago, before everything had unraveled, a thief had torn my satchel from my shoulder in the lower village, and in the struggle a blade had opened a shallow cut along my leg. The wound had been nothing, and yet when Lucien saw it, he had looked as though his entire world had crumbled.

"I should have guarded you better," he'd said, carrying me home in his arms. "Tell me where it hurts, Selene. I'll summon every healer in the territory if I must."

After that, he had come to walk me home from the village himself each evening, even when it carried him far out of his way. Through storm and deep winter alike, he never once complained.

Back then, I had truly believed he loved me.

Now, looking at the parchment in my hands, I could only laugh bitterly at myself. I had been a fool. The greatest fool alive, to believe any wolf who swore to love me forever.

The surgery had to be performed at once, but I had no means to pay for it. Every coin I had earned before the shadow cells still sat locked away under Lucien's authority.

So I reached for him through the mind-link.

The moment he answered, I came straight to the point. I need surgery. The healers found stones and iron lodged in my stomach. It must be done immediately.

Lucien's voice came back edged with a laugh. Selene, are you truly still at this? I have enough troubles weighing on me tonight. Can you not spare me trouble for one single evening?

My hand tightened around nothing, gripping at air.

I am not lying, Lucien. The healer said there are stones and metal inside me.

Enough, he snapped through the bond. The account already sits before me. A reaction to shellfish, nothing more. And now you tell me you suddenly require surgery? What next, will you tell me you're dying as well?

My chest tightened painfully.

Then another voice drifted faintly through the link behind his.

Evelyn. Lucien, my stomach aches.

Everything about him shifted at once.