The Sacred Wolf Statue Had Not Moved in 1000 Years — It Turned to Face Her When She Walked Through

Chapter 6

The night before the coronation passed in a blur of unfamiliar things.

A seamstress with hands as fast as birds’ wings measured Mira in her chambers while three maids held swatches of silk the color of moonlight. The protocol master — a thin, precise man with a nervous tic — walked her through bows and curtsies and the correct way to address a duke. The king’s advisers arrived with papers and questions and the careful, measuring looks of men who were trying to decide if she was a threat or a joke.

Mira held her head up and answered every question with the same steady voice, and inside she was a storm of terror.

She had been a ghost for five years. Now every eye in the citadel was sliding toward her, weighing her, and the weight of it made her want to crawl back into the walls.

Only the pendant kept her calm — the small silver wolf at her throat, worn smooth by years of her mother’s fingers before her death. It had always been warm when she was afraid. She had never understood why.

Isolde did not come to the chambers, but her presence filled them like smoke. The gown that arrived for the ceremony had been cut in the wrong measurements, slashed at the shoulder, delivered by a maid who would not meet Mira’s eyes. A “misunderstanding,” the seamstress insisted, pale-faced, while Mira stood in her shift and said nothing.

Mira said nothing about the gown. She said nothing about the cold looks in the corridors, the servants who fell silent when she passed, the way her food began to taste faintly of something she could not name.

She had learned long ago that no one would protect her. She had learned to protect herself in silence.

The king came to see her once, that evening, standing in the doorway of her chambers like a man approaching a wounded animal.

“The protocol master says you learn quickly,” he said. It was not quite a compliment. It was an assessment.

“I’ve had practice pretending to be things I’m not,” Mira said.

His jaw tightened. For a moment he looked like he wanted to say something else. Then he nodded, once, and left, and the distance between them ached like a bruise.

The night before the ceremony, a tray of wine was delivered to Mira’s chambers.

It was a gesture of welcome, the serving girl said. A gift from the noble houses, to honor the king’s chosen Luna.

Mira thanked her. The girl left. And Mira lifted the goblet to her lips — then stopped.

The scent was wrong. Faintly, beneath the sweetness of the wine, something green and sharp and bitter. Nightshade. She had grown up in the kitchens of a border garrison; she knew the smell of poison the way other women knew the smell of roses.

She carried the goblet to the window and poured it into the dark earth of the potted plant there. Then she wiped the glass clean, set it on the tray, and went to bed.

She did not report it. She never reported things. In her experience, reporting only made the target larger.

An hour later, her door slammed open.

Caelen stood in the doorway with fury burning in his silver eyes, two guards behind him dragging a sobbing servant who had confessed — between fits of weeping — to being paid by a lady in silver silk. The lady who owned the east wing. The lady who had expected a crown.

Caelen’s gaze swept the room, found the goblet, found the wine still dark and un-drunk in the glass. His jaw worked.

“You knew,” he said.

Mira stood in her nightgown, her hair loose, her face very still.

“Knew what, your Majesty?”

“Someone tried to kill you.” His voice was raw. “And you did not report it.”

“I handled it.” She kept her voice level, the way she had kept it level through five years of grief and hunger and being invisible. “I have been handling attempts to hurt me my entire life. This one was just more direct than usual.”

Something in his expression cracked. Just barely — a hairline fracture in the cold stone of his face.

“You’re not invisible anymore,” he said.

The guards dragged the sobbing servant away. The door closed. And Caelen stood there, looking at Mira like she was a puzzle he could not solve, a door he could not open, a wound he did not know how to treat.

“The coronation is in two hours,” he said quietly. “After that, you’ll be Luna. Every eye in the kingdom will be on you.” He stopped. His jaw worked. “And I won’t be able to protect you if you keep hiding threats.”

“Why do you care?”

The question escaped before she could stop it.

“You said we were just performing duty. You wanted distance. I am giving you exactly what you asked for.”

“I didn’t say I could maintain it.”

His voice was raw now, stripped of its coldness, and the sound of it made Mira’s heart stutter in her chest.

“The bond won’t let me not care. I feel it when you’re frightened. When you’re hurt. When someone threatens you — ” He took a breath that seemed to cost him everything. “And it makes me want to tear them apart with my bare hands. Which is exactly the weakness I was trying to avoid.”

They stared at each other across the small room, the bond humming between them like a living thing.

“I’m sorry,” Mira said quietly. “I didn’t ask for this either. But I’m not going to become someone who runs to you with every problem. I’ve survived on my own for five years. I can keep surviving.”

“You’re not on your own anymore.”

He crossed to her in three strides, and before she could process it, his hands framed her face.