The heavy oak door of the war room didn't just close; it buckled against the stone frame, snuffed a nearby wall torch, and left the scent of charred wick hanging in the sudden gloom.
Kael was usually the anchor — the one man at Ironveil who moved as if the world weren't ending. Seeing him like this, chest heaving, palms slammed flat against the map-strewn table, made the air in the room feel thin.
"Zoran has the border," Kael rasped. "Halvenmere. He moved forty wolves in under the cover of the shift change. No declaration. No warning. The headman is already in a Greyveil cell."
The silence that followed was a physical weight. Then Caius surged upward, his chair skittering back and clattering against the masonry. "How?"
"He played the diplomat," Kael said, the words bitter. "He kept us busy with letters while he repositioned. He knew exactly when our eastern scouts rotated out."
"He knew because of Vex," I said. My voice sounded strange to my own ears — sharper, colder.
Both men turned to me.
"The enchanted parchment. Vex wasn't just documenting me during those two weeks. He was mapping us. Every patrol, every gap, every habit. He saw it all." I added.
Caius's fist hit the table with a dull, bone-deep thud. Maps slid; a water carafe tipped, shattering on the floor in a spray of glass and silver. No one blinked.
"Halvenmere has four hundred souls," Caius said, his voice dropping into that gutteral register that usually preceded blood. "Families. Children."
"He hasn't touched them. Not yet." Kael's jaw was tight enough to crack. "It's a demonstration. A ransom note written in lives."
"And the price?"
"You, Sera. He wants you delivered to Greyveil, or Halvenmere burns."
The room went still — the kind of stillness that happens right before a storm breaks.
I waited for the fear to come, but it didn't. Instead, I felt that thing inside me stir. It was a hard, condensed knot of every slight I'd ever endured — the carriage, the servant duties, the invisible years, the blood on Pip's arm. It all fused into a single, jagged point of resolve. Four hundred strangers were now tethered to my heartbeat.
"How long does he give us?" I asked.
"Three days," Kael said.
Caius turned his back to us, leaning his weight against the cold stone wall. I watched the back of his neck. The black veins of the curse weren't static anymore; they were crawling, ink-dark lines pulsing in time with his heartbeat, fueled by the sheer pressure of his fury.
"Caius," I said. He didn't move. "Caius. Look at me."
When he finally turned, the mask was gone. This wasn't the Alpha of Ironveil; it was a man coming apart at the seams. Three years of holding a crumbling territory together had finally fractured, revealing a raw landscape of grief and helpless rage.
"I won't send you to him," he said, the words jagged. "I'll level every forest between here and the border before I let him touch you."
"I know," I said softly.
"Four hundred people— "
"I know. Stop. Listen." I stepped into his space, forcing him to focus. "Get Aldric. Now. Because if there is any chance — any shadow of a hope that I can bridge the gap to that curse before the clock runs out, Zoran's leverage vanishes. A cured Alpha isn't a target. A dead curse isn't a weapon."
Kael was already at the door, his boots echoing down the hall before I'd even finished the sentence.
Caius searched my face, his eyes dark and desperate. "Aldric said six weeks, Sera. At your best."
"Then we find a new 'best,'" I told him. "We don't have six weeks. We have seventy-two hours."
He leaned in, his voice a ghost of a whisper. "If the connection snaps... if something goes wrong in that circle..."
"Then it goes wrong," I said, my voice steady. "But those four hundred people don't have a choice, Caius. I do."
He didn't answer. He didn't have to. The air between us tasted like ozone and old hunger, and for the first time, the monster under his skin felt less like a threat and more like an invitation...