Chapter 2

Alaya POV:

Breonna took the vial with shaking hands, her knuckles pale.

"The black market? My Lady, the rogues there will slit my throat for a pair of boots."

"They will not," I said, gripping her frail shoulder until she looked into my eyes. "Tell the broker it is a live Corpse-Gorge parasite harvested fresh from the Western Wastes. Trade it for Bone-Cleansing Root and Silverleaf herb. And a twist of Heart-Igniting Seed in black paper. Pay him with these."

I pressed three dull silver coins into her palm. The last remnants of my mother's dowry, hidden under a rotting floorboard for ten years.

"And one more errand," I said, before she could rise. "Behind the tannery there is an ice-house. The cutters keep frozen roots packed in straw. Buy me one blue root — frost-heart if they have it; if they laugh at you, buy whatever root is blue and frozen and ugly."

Then I put a scrap of parchment into her other hand. It was my own cramped transcription, made from memory in the dark, of a page I had not seen since I was a child.

"Soak this in the lake trough until the ink bleeds, then freeze it in the snow. When you bring it back, it must look older than you are."

Breonna stared at me, her breath misting.

She pressed the vial against her ribs, nodded hard, and dropped to her hands and knees to slip through the loose stone slab near the corner floor.

Once the stone scraped back into place, I knelt by my cot and pressed my palm flat against the empty hollow beneath the floorboards. Ten years of my mother's dowry had bought me one night's worth of weapons. There was nothing left under there now but splinters and cold.

The Bradfords had spent ten years calling me a waste. Not one of them ever asked what the waste was hiding.

The White Wolf blood never died out in me; it only went to sleep. The kind of blood this pack sees once in a thousand years, buried under a body they had already thrown away.

And it was awake now.

My channels were not dead.

They were choked with years of low-grade poisons fed to me under Dian's supervision.

An hour later, the floor slab shifted.

Breonna crawled back into the cell, panting heavily, her skirt soaked in frozen slush.

She set three rough brown paper packets on the splintered table, a twist of black paper, and a blue root wrapped in frozen straw.

"I got them, my lady. The trader... he was astonished. He gave double the portion and asked who bred the brood. The root cost me the last of the coins, and the ice-house man laughed at me the whole time."

"You told him nothing," I said, already tearing open the coarse paper.

"Not a word."

"Keep watch by the door. Listen for the guards' boots."

Breonna retreated to the threshold, pressing her ear to the timber.

I dumped the crushed Bone-Cleansing Root and dried Silverleaf into the crude ceramic bowl.

I lifted my thumb to my teeth and bit down hard until the copper taste of my blood filled my mouth.

I squeezed four drops into the herbs.

The ancestral white wolf bloodline within me, though dormant, possessed enough latent purity to ignite the dormant properties of the plants.

The crushed leaves hissed, melting into a thick, pitch-black liquid that smelled like scorched pitch and bitter gall.

I brought the bowl to my lips and drank it in three heavy swallows.

The moment the sludge hit my stomach, a sensation like molten lead exploded behind my ribs.

My knees gave out, slamming hard into the flagstones.

I clamped my jaws together to stop the scream tearing up my throat.

My fingernails scraped against the stone, snapping two nails down to the quick as blood welled beneath the beds.

The agony tore through my muscles, snapping and realigning the blocked channels like shattered bones being forced back into their sockets.

Black sweat poured from my pores, soaking my coarse tunic until it clung to my shivering frame.

My vision swam with red spots, but I forced my eyes to stay open, staring at the scarred stones beneath my face.

My mother was wasting away in the Ironfang fortress because of Dian's lies.

I could not die in the dirt.

Slowly, the tearing heat receded, replaced by an electric surge of cold, pure air rushing into my lungs.

I pushed myself up, breathing in deep, steady rhythms.

Deep inside my core, a dormant presence shifted — a silent, massive white wolf lifting its head from slumber.

A sharp cough sounded outside the door.

Breonna was giving the signal.

I scooped a handful of soot from the cold hearth, smeared it across my cheeks and forehead, and wrapped the oversized prison tunic tightly around my body before dropping back onto the cot.

Torchlight flickered through the door grate.

A guard banged his spear butt against the iron banding.

"Keep it down in there, wolfless trash!"

I stayed silent.

The footsteps faded into the distance.

For four more nights I drank the brew, and by day I crammed my cheeks with stale bread and shuffled in slow circles whenever Dian's spies peered through the grate—a starving, half-witted beast, exactly as advertised.

On the fifth morning I woke before the light, and the air tasted different.

I walked to the tarnished bronze mirror and wiped away the crust of dust with my damp sleeve.

The waxen, bloated face was gone.

The skin reflected in the dim candlelight was smooth as winter frost, the jawline razor-sharp, framing high cheekbones and striking, silver-flecked gray eyes.

Even clad in rags, the bone structure carried the unmistakable nobility of the true Lycan lineage.

Tonight was the grand celebration—the centenary feast for my grandmother, Dowager Cindi Bradford.

Music drifted from the great keep, carrying the scent of roasted venison across the courtyard.

The outer watch had thinned out to join the drinking in the lower hall.

I tied my silver hair into a tight knot and pushed open the loose iron bars of the outer window.