Sadie

I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Each of his belabored breaths made me flinch as if it were my lungs being shredded. I squirmed on the plush velvet chair, raking my nails across the armrest with one hand and tossing my knife around with the other. Navin’s limp body was sprawled across the chaise longue beside my chair, the two of us tucked into the corner while my friends conferred around the grand council table.

A horde of healers had worked on him and left . . . that had been three hours ago. Three hours he’d been unconscious, not a single groan or snore. I kept my eyes pinned to the rise and fall of his rib cage. I despised him, hated him even, but he couldn’t die. I wouldn’t let him.

Across from us, Calla, Hector, Grae, and Maez all stared down at maps scattered across the table, plotting ways to infiltrate Highwick and the dungeons below.

“We don’t even know if Ora was taken by Nero or just some rogue Silver Wolves,”

Briar called from where she sat at a table next to Mina, who was anxiously rapping her fingers along her leg in a steady percussive rhythm. The table was laden with bowls of food and cups of tea that rattled at each drum of Mina’s fingers.

Briar stood and offered a bowl of candied almonds out to her twin, prompting them to eat.

“The Silver Wolves do nothing without Nero’s command,”

Hector countered. He slid a golden paperweight carved like a howling wolf across the largest map, moving it from the peninsula of Olmdere, across the snowy mountains of Taigos, and settling it atop the rolling pine forests of Damrienn.

“All he said was Wolves,”

I added, turning my gaze back on Navin. “He didn’t say which pack. It could’ve been a scuffle at the Valtan border for all we know.”

Briar’s hand landed on Calla’s shoulder. “Right. So let the poor chap wake before you go declaring war on an entire kingdom.”

“That kingdom has already declared war on us,”

Calla reminded, grumpily snatching the bowl from their twin. As Calla tossed a handful of almonds in their mouth, Briar pressed her lips together to hide her grin. Briar knew how to twist a person’s arm just as well as her sibling knew how to wield a sword. “We are just waiting for Nero to launch his first attack. This might have been it.”

“But, again, we don’t know that. So let’s focus on rescuing your friend first,”

Maez said, poring over the war maps again. She slid the golden wolf paperweight back up to the autumnal forests of Olmdere.

It was only then I remembered that Maez had barely met Ora. The leader of Galen den’ Mora had become like family to us on our travels with them, but Maez had been locked in this very castle the entire time.

“We could dress like humans, go in through the servants’ passage,”

Hector offered.

“I could set the southern hall on fire, and we could go in while everyone was evacuating,”

Maez added. “We could dress as laundresses. No one would look at us twi—”

“No,”

Grae interrupted, shaking his head. “My—Nero will have guards checking everyone coming in and out now. A random fire would only make him more suspicious. He’d probably rather let half the castle burn than let anyone in now.”

I flicked my knife back and forth faster, needing to do something with my hands. It felt strange to hear Grae call his father by his name. Not “my father,”

or “pack leader,” or “king,” just Nero. I wondered if it still hurt him every time he spoke of his father—now his enemy. I’m sure it did. It hurt me to think of, too. Grae wasn’t the only one who lost his pack. Hector, Maez, and I had to leave our whole families behind, and this was yet another painful reminder.

“We need more people,”

Maez said, tapping the snow-white tundra on the map.

“What do you have in mind?”

Calla asked.

“We need to call upon your new friend Queen Ingrid. Maybe she’d be willing to send some Ice Wolves along with us or even garner an invite from Nero, and we could hide amongst her retinue. Either way, we’re going to need Taigos on our side if it really comes to war, so we might as well start that conversation now.”

“We’ll need more than just Taigos,”

Hector said, smoothing his palm over the sand-covered kingdom of Lower Valta and down to the floating mountains that the Onyx Wolves called home. “We’ll need everyone. Valta, too. No one can match the Silver Wolf army alone.”

It hurt to hear my brother say it—something that used to fill us both with such pride. We were once part of that unstoppable army. Now, we were trying to figure out how to defeat them.

Navin twitched beside me, and I bolted up from my slouched position, leaning my forearms on my knees as I watched his eyelids flicker open. I was about to tell everyone that he was waking, but held it in. For some strange, selfish reason, I wanted him to see me first.

Sure enough, his eyes opened and flickered straight to me as if he knew I would be sat right there. His lips curved up in a soft smile for a split second that made whatever mended parts of me shatter all over again. Then, as if remembering what had transpired between us, his expression guttered and his face morphed into cold and serious once more.

“He’s up,”

I called to the group, hating the feeling that coursed through me. What had I wanted him to do? There was no answer. Nothing he could’ve done would’ve made me ache any less. Too many feelings knotted together to pick them apart.

The group rushed over as Navin sat up with a groan and dropped his head into his hands. The healers had discerned that he’d sustained no life-threatening injuries—a few nicks and bruises, maybe a couple broken ribs, but the exhaustion and dehydration were probably what had caused him to pass out. It looked to me like he’d been kicked while he was down, judging by the purpling bruises down his spine and torso. A dark little part of me was satisfied with that. Good. Let him feel exactly as I did.

Calla perched on the lounge next to him and rubbed a hand down his back, asking, “What happened? Who took Ora?”

“Esh,”

Navin cursed as he let out a shuddering breath. “Wolf soldiers.”

The whole room paused, waiting for him to say which kingdom.

“Soldiers from where?”

Calla asked slowly, clarifying, and I too wondered if Navin perhaps had suffered one too many kicks to the head. “Damrienn?”

“Yes,”

he panted, each breath making him wince. He waved a finger in a semicircle across his chest, making the shape of the crescent moon that the Silver Wolves wore on their chest plates. “There were three of them. Wearing King Nero’s royal sigil. One was missing an eye.”

Instantly, Hector and I locked gazes. Our uncle—Aubron—it had to be. I only had one guess who the other two Silver Wolves were. My father and his two brothers were littermates and always together. The fact that Nero sent three of his oldest friends to kidnap Ora did not bode well for any of us. Usually lower-ranked henchmen were tasked with “human troubles”

as he liked to put it, which meant either Nero knew that Ora was special to us, or my father and uncles had fallen far out of the King’s good graces.

Navin’s grunt of pain snapped my attention back to him. Curse the fickle moon, I felt that pain as if it were my own body broken beneath my father’s boots. There would be no shifting for Navin, though, no magical healing that our change brought on. He’d have to heal at the snail’s pace of humans. I did not envy him that.

Maez’s lip curled as she surveyed Navin. “So this is Nero’s plan? Goad Calla into crossing into Damrienn by kidnapping Ora?”

“Why else would Nero take Ora, if not to provoke Calla?”

Grae snapped, pacing back and forth down the table’s length. “That’s what he does. He pushes you into making rash decisions. He uses one person to torture another.”

I ground my teeth at that, remembering the ways Nero used Grae’s mother to keep Grae in line. He did that with many of my own family, too. There was one thing Nero was a master at and that was manipulating his pack through fear—a fear that at one point in my life felt a lot like loyalty.

“I don’t know what they’d want with Ora.”

Navin looked pointedly at the floor and merely shrugged his shoulders. It was a strangely cagey action coming from someone as earnest as him. Maez and I exchanged glances. She clearly thought he was lying, too.

“What do you know that you aren’t telling us?”

I pushed, making those bronze eyes lift to meet mine. I hated the way that eye contact made my whole body buzz, as if he could see right to the very core of me.

“I don’t know what the Silver Wolves want with Ora,”

he repeated a little more firmly. That only made me warier. Besides Maez, the rest of the room seemed to believe him, but I knew Navin was holding something back. Still, I tucked my desire to interrogate him aside for later.

“So what’s our plan?”

Maez asked after staring hard at Navin for a few more seconds. “Whatever his reason for taking Ora, Nero is making moves.”

“Now,”

Calla said, looking around the room. “Whatever we’re doing, we need to do it now. Starting with calling in every ally and favor we have.” She looked at Grae. “We should go to Taigos. Convince Ingrid to help us with the rescue mission and secure her support for whatever Nero has planned next.”

Grae nodded in agreement.

“We need a representative of our court to go to Valta, too,”

Calla said. “Secure King Luo’s allegiance if this all escalates.”

“I can take whoever wants to go,”

Navin murmured. “I was planning on taking Galen den’ Mora to Rikesh next for the wine festival.”

“The wagon? The oxen?”

Calla asked. “Are they okay?”

“Fine.”

Navin slid his gaze to Mina and said, “I could use a few more musicians on my travels, though.”

Mina’s brows lifted, a silent conversation seeming to pass between the two of them. Whatever was going on with Navin’s evasiveness, Mina seemed to know, too.

“I think I’d rather stay close to my Queen,”

Mina signed, making Navin’s frown deepen.

“Navin, you can’t go as my ambassador without any backup,”

Calla insisted. “I don’t want to make Galen den’ Mora a target.”

“Let me go,”

he pushed. “Galen den’ Mora will be far less suspicious than Wolves traveling on their own, and safer, especially now,” he added pointedly. “No one can breech the steps of Galen den’ Mora without one of us welcoming them in. It is stormproof, fireproof. We could ride through a battlefield and be safe in there.”

Maez let out a low whistle. “That’s a pretty strong dying wish.”

She rubbed her chin and stared back at the map of Aotreas. “At least one person with fighting skills should go with you.”

“And Luo will be more likely to listen to Wolves rather than humans,”

Mina signed, giving Navin a knowing look.

Calla nodded. “ will go with you.”

“What?”

My eyes bugged as I whirled. “You can’t be serious. Why don’t you send Maez? Then she can communicate any news from her travels with Briar?”

Maez let out a soft growl at the suggestion she be split up from her mate. But my logic was sound. Mates could communicate in Wolf form, even from hundreds of miles apart. Yet Calla was already shaking their head and I looked at them in disbelief. They just looked back, and it was clear they were being stubborn to punish me.

I almost said as much before Calla pinned me with a look. “Can I speak with you in the hall?”

My shoulders bunched around my ears, my knife tight in my grip as I stood. Maez patted me on the shoulder and I snapped in the air between us, threatening to bite her mocking hand. I knew Calla would admonish me for abandoning my duties, but this, this was beyond cruel.

“Thank you, Your Majesty,”

Navin said to Calla. “I promise I can help fix this.”

I didn’t know if he meant the relationship with Valta or our relationship, but it made me fume. Maybe he truly was kicked too many times in the head if he thought me traveling with him was a good idea. I had no interest in his apologies or amends, but I did have quite a few ideas of what I could do with the weapons under my now-bloodied tunic. If Navin wasn’t on the brink of death, he’d have the good sense to be afraid.

I stormed through the doorway, pushing past Calla and muttering, “I can’t believe he’s thanking you, oh gracious one.”

Calla didn’t follow straightaway. Instead, they paused behind me and turned back to Navin.

“I may look like a benevolent queen right now, Navin,”

Calla said, giving him one last piercing look. I leaned back in through the doorway to see his good eye widen at the menace in Calla’s voice and my lips curved.

“But I was first and foremost trained as a warrior. If you hurt any of my court again, I will gut you myself.” Calla then marched through the door, leaving him speechless.