Chapter 3

Lyra POV

They hadn’t moved.

"Open the box," Alpha Silas commanded.

His voice was laced with the Alpha’s Compulsion. An unseen pressure bore down upon my shoulders, but the poison in my veins had already deadened my nerves. A high, thin ringing began deep in my ears, drowning the command. I felt a curious numbness in my limbs; only the splinters from the coffin’s rough edge, digging into my fingertips, assured me that I was still anchored to this world.

I clung to the coffin and remained standing.

"She is dead," I spat. "Your true daughter is dead."

Luna Elara sighed—a theatrical sound of exasperation—and adjusted the dark lace at her throat. "Desist with this melodrama, Rogue. Snow has always been an exhibitionist."

My hands trembled with a rage that was cold and sharp. I remembered a winter’s night when Snow had ventured deep into the forest, her fingers raw from the frost, to gather rare herbs for a poultice. It was for Silas’s migraines, for the cold-poison that afflicted Elara.

Vanya had stolen the basket and presented it as her own work. When Snow had tried to speak the truth, Silas had struck her across the face, calling her a jealous liar. The light had gone out of Snow’s eyes that day.

"I am taking her home," I said. "To the forest."

Silas let out a low growl but turned his back. "Let the guards retrieve her. We are leaving."

They retreated to their carriage without a backward glance at the coffin.

Later that night, a storm broke. Thunder rattled the old stones of the estate, and the rain came down in solid, blinding sheets.

The fractured axle of the cart screamed in protest against the mire. With every heave, the sucking mud fought the wheels, as if the land itself meant to keep its dead. My lungs were on fire. A spasm wracked my chest, and a fine spray of dark crimson mist settled on the pale pine lid.

"We are going home, Snow," I whispered to the box. "I promise."

I labored with the cart through the night, the dark sentinels of the forest watching my passage in silence. By dawn, the rain had ceased, though the sky remained a uniform, leaden gray. I was near the edge of the Pack lands.

Suddenly, the drumming of hooves shattered the morning’s quiet. A party of Pack Warriors emerged from the trees, a carriage following in their wake.

Vanya stepped out. She was dressed in a gown of brilliant crimson—the color of freshly spilled blood. Silas and Elara followed.

"There!" Vanya pointed, her face contorted in a triumphant sneer. "The creature is making off with Pack property!"

Elara approached the cart, her expression one of utter revulsion for the cheap wood. "Snow! Emerge from that thing at once and offer an apology to your sister. You have a marriage to Alpha Jaxon to prepare for."

I planted myself before the cart. "Leave her be!"

Elara gestured to the Warriors. "Put this Omega’s face in the dirt."

Two hulking men seized my arms. They threw me down. A slurry of horse dung and decaying earth flooded my nostrils, choking off the air, its coarse grit scraping the skin from my cheekbones. I choked and thrashed, but their grip was iron.

"Tip it over," Vanya commanded.

The Warriors seized the cart and heaved. The pine coffin slid from the platform and struck the earth with a dull crack. The lid splintered and fell away.

Snow’s body rolled out into the mud.

She wore a simple white burial shift. Her skin had taken on a gray, waxy pallor. Her eyes were closed, her lips the color of a bruise. One of the Warriors, taking a clumsy step back, kicked her arm. It made a dense, solid sound, like a log being struck.

A profound silence fell over the clearing.

The Warriors were frozen. Elara’s breath hitched in her throat. Even Silas recoiled. The stench of true death—thick and cloying—was undeniable.

A scream tore itself from my throat, a feral, broken sound. I threw off the men with a final, desperate surge of strength and crawled to Snow, wiping the filth from her still face with my trembling hands.

"She is feigning!" Vanya shrieked, her voice unnaturally high. "It is a Death-Sleep Potion! I have heard Rogues procure such things on the black market to evade their duties!"

Silas seized upon the lie. He had to. For Snow to be dead was to admit his own monstrosity.

"Burn her," he ordered, his voice shaking. "The fire will negate the potion’s artifice."

A traveling merchant, who had halted his wagon on the road, cried out, "Alpha! The Lycan Tribunal forbids the burning of a body without a Healer’s inquest!"

"I am the law here!" Silas roared, and his Warriors drew their blades, chasing the man away.

They seized Snow’s body and lashed it to a roadside marker post. They piled the damp kindling from a nearby woodpile about her feet, dousing it with oil from a carriage lantern.

"Stop!" I cried, dragging myself toward them.

Vanya smirked and unhooked the long leather whip from her belt, offering it to a guard. It glittered faintly with embedded silver dust. "Remind this Rogue of her station," she commanded.

The whip whistled through the air before it struck my back. The silver seared through my tunic, its bite a line of liquid fire. I screamed and collapsed into the mud. Vanya’s laughter rang out as the guard struck me again.

Silas tossed a torch onto the pyre. The oil caught with a hungry whoosh.

The flames began to lick at the hem of Snow’s white shift. The fabric blackened and curled, the heat beginning to consume the cloth.