Lyra POV
His anger was a distant thing, of no consequence. I was dying.
For three years, I had labored in the silver mines for a handful of copper coins. Silver is a poison to our kind—a slow acid that burns the skin and putrefies the organs from within. The dust had settled deep in my lungs. My life was measured in days.
I had done it only to afford a Healer’s Potion for Snow.
I remembered the day they came for her. Three years ago. The Pack guards had stormed our hovel in the muddy outskirts of the village. A Beta, a man built like a bull, had kicked me, and I had felt my ribs give way with the sound of snapping tinder.
They forced the severing of our Mind-Link. The connection did not fade; it was severed. It was a clean, brutal amputation of the mind, leaving behind a silence that was not empty, but a ringing void.
Snow had thrown herself before me as the guard raised a silver-bladed dirk to pierce my heart.
"No!" she had screamed, dropping to her knees, her forehead pressed to the dirt before them. "I will go. I will go to the castle. Only let my sister live."
She left me her cache of copper coins, trading her freedom for my life.
Snow was a White Wolf. It was a bloodline of ancient, almost forgotten power, but the old prophecies were whispered in fearful tones—that a White Wolf born beyond the Pack’s sanction would herald the ruin of the reigning Alpha.
Silas and Elara, terrified, had concealed her existence, passing off Vanya—a foundling they had mistakenly raised—as their true and potent heir to preserve their political alliances.
When our kind turns eighteen, the first Shift is an unavoidable, violent transformation. To perpetuate their lie and safeguard Vanya’s standing, they forced a draught of suppressants down Snow’s throat with every full moon.
Only her White Wolf blood, burning brighter than the poison they fed her, kept her alive through those years of monthly doses. The very heritage they sought to crush was the only thing that preserved her long enough to suffer.
I remembered finding her in this very cellar seven days past. A sound like a broken bellows sawed from her throat, and the fluid that escaped her lips was thick with the stench of rust and decay, clinging to her chin. Suppressing the Shift had shredded her lungs. When the sickness took her, the guards had simply thrown her into the castle’s freezing moat.
She died in my arms, shivering, her last words a plea for the adoptive parents we had buried in the forest.
I had spent every coin from the mines on clean linen and holy water. I washed her body. When I removed the rags she wore, I saw the marks. Long, keloid scars marred the pale skin of her back.
An old servant, her voice a fearful whisper, had told me the truth. Luna Elara had gifted Vanya a leather whip, its tails studded with silver dust. Vanya had used it on Snow in her fits of pique. Silver prevents a wolf’s flesh from mending. The scars were indelible.
And Silas and Elara had known. Through the Mind-Link, they had been privy to every lash, every cry of pain, and had merely pronounced that the girl must learn obedience.
"Lyra," Elara’s sharp voice dragged me from the memory. "Cease this mummery. If you do not produce Snow at once, I will have you banished. You will die alone in the wastelands."
She believed Snow was hiding. A fit of pique.
I remembered another night, three years ago—the very night they first came for her. I had tried to smuggle Snow out through the castle’s drainage culvert. A guard had found us, the edge of his silver sword cold against the nape of my neck.
Snow had smashed her own head against the rough-hewn stone of the tunnel wall, blood matting her hair, and begged him to let me go. She had surrendered her last hope of freedom to spare my life.
I rose slowly to my feet, my joints protesting with a series of dry clicks. The silver in my blood made my limbs feel as though they were cast in lead. I laid a hand on the pine coffin.
"She is not hiding," I said, my voice dropping to a raw whisper. "She is waiting. For the Moon Goddess to sit in judgment of you."
Silas’s eyes flickered—just for an instant—to the coffin. Something cold and calculating passed across his face.
“We shall see,” he said quietly.
He turned his back on the coffin, but as he walked toward the carriage, he paused. Without looking at me, he spoke to the guard at his side.
“Bring oil. And torches.”
The guard nodded and disappeared into the rain.
Dawn was four hours away.
I looked at my hands—blue-veined, trembling, already half-dead. Then I looked at the pine coffin.
I had until sunrise to get Snow out of this place.
