ELIAS'S POV
Sleep was a battlefield I was losing, and the guest chambers of the Silver Citadel were opulent, draped in heavy furs and scented with the same oppressive pine that permeated the rest of the fortress, but to me, it felt like a cage. I tossed against the silk sheets, the fine fabric feeling like sandpaper against my skin. Every time I closed my eyes, the darkness behind my lids wasn't empty. It was filled with the ghost of a scent that was impossible, that treasonous sweetness that had shattered my world in the sparring ring.
Pomegranates and ozone.
The memory of it hit me again, a physical jolt that made my heart hammer against my ribs. My wolf wasn't sleeping; it was pacing the perimeter of my consciousness, its claws digging into the floorboards of my mind. It was a restless, whining thing, its ears pinned back and its nose twitching. It didn't want the comfort of the bed. It didn't want the safety of the Thorne legacy.
It wanted to hunt. But for the first time in my twenty-three years, it wasn't hunting to kill. It was hunting to find.
"Dammit," I hissed into the silence of the room, throwing the furs aside. The air in the chamber was stagnant, thick with the smell of my own sweat and the lingering incense of the Citadel. I couldn't stay here. If I stayed in this bed for one more minute, I would claw the stones out of the wall just to breathe.
I dressed in dark leather breeches, a thin tunic, and boots that made no sound against the masonry. Sliding out of the guest wing was easy. The guards in the Citadel were trained to look for external threats, the monsters of the Wild-Zones, the rebel cells of the south, but they never expected a high-born lord of the Thorne family to be prowling the corridors like a thief. I moved through the side exits; my senses heightened to a jagged edge. I could hear the rhythmic breathing of the sleeping guards, the distant drip of water in the lower levels, and the low, constant hum of the Citadel's silver-core wards.
The moment I stepped out into the night air, the cold hit me like a splash of glacial water. The fractured sun offered no warmth, even in its day cycle, but at night, the temperature plummeted, turning the world into a landscape of frost and obsidian.
Iran and pushed my body hard, my boots thudding against the frozen earth as I cleared the main courtyard and headed for the wooded slopes that hugged the Citadel's eastern flank. I needed the burn in my lungs to drown out the noise in my head. I needed the cold to numb the heat that Malakor Vane had ignited in my blood.
Faster, my wolf urged.
I vaulted over a fallen pine, my muscles coiling and releasing with a primal fluidness. The wind whipped past my ears, carrying the scent of snow and ancient stone, but it wasn't enough. No matter how far I ran, the pomegranate was still there, tucked into the folds of my memory. It was a sensory poison, a honeyed toxin that had seeped into my marrow.
How could he be a hybrid? The Vanes were the architects of the Purity Laws. They were the ones who had signed the execution warrants for every tainted child for the last five centuries, and yet the Crown Prince, the man my father expected me to rival and eventually surpass, was a living, breathing contradiction.
He was more than a wolf, and the scent of a succubus was stronger than I wanted to accept. The thought of the succubus trait made my stomach flip. That was the part that was currently hacking my instincts. Wolves and vampires were rivals of the flesh, but succubi were predators of the soul. They fed on the very thing that made us human, our desires, our fears, our vulnerabilities. Was that what I was feeling? Was I just another victim of his glamour?
I skidded to a halt at the edge of a jagged ridge. Below me, the Royal Wing of the palace jutted out over the cliffside like the prow of a ghost ship. The stone was whiter here, polished to a mirror sheen that caught the faint, silvery glow of the fractured sun's shards.
I shouldn't be here, as these were the private quarters of the royal family. If I were caught, not even my father's name could save me from a charge of espionage.
But my feet were already moving.
I descended the ridge with the silent grace of a predator, staying within the deep shadows cast by the buttresses. I moved closer until I could see the high, arched windows of the prince's chambers. They were dark, save for the faint, flickering amber of a dying hearth somewhere deep inside. I pressed my back against a cold stone pillar, my breath hitching in my chest. I was twenty feet below his balcony. I could smell the royal masking wash from here that sharp, biting pine, but beneath it, faint and teasing, was the ozone.
He was awake. I knew it and could sense the frequency of his soul, vibrating with the same restless energy that had driven me from my bed. He was behind that stone, behind that glass, fighting the same demons I was.
I paced the length of the shadow, three steps forward, three steps back. I was a sentinel of my own obsession. My wolf was whining now, a low, pathetic sound in the back of my throat. It wanted me to climb. It wanted me to shatter the glass and demand the truth. It wanted to see the violet in his eyes again, the colour of the abyss.
"What are you doing, Elias?" I whispered to the dark.
I remembered the way he had smirked at the feast. That arrogant, beautiful mask. He had looked at me as if I were a bug under a microscope, even as I was the one holding the scalpel to his secrets. He had lied to the King's face without a tremor in his voice. He was a master of the lie, a prince of the masquerade.
And yet, I remembered his shaking fingers and the fact that he was terrified. Beneath the smirk and the white tunic, Malakor Vane was a man standing on a trapdoor, waiting for the world to pull the lever and I was the only person in Athelgard who knew where the lever was hidden but as I looked up at the darkened balcony, the thought of Malakor being dragged to the Solstice Gate, of his wings being clipped and his throat being opened by a silver blade, made a cold, hollow ache open up in my chest.
I didn't want him dead and the realization hit me with the force of a physical blow. I, Elias Thorne, the Iron Wolf, the future of the Hunter's Creed, wanted to protect a monster. I paced faster, my heart a frantic drum. The Succubus side of him had already won; it had woven its silken threads around my heart and pulled, and I had come running like a dog.
I stopped suddenly, my senses spiking, and a shadow moved on the balcony above. I froze, pulling myself deeper into the darkness of the pillar. My heart stopped, and my breath hitched.
A figure stepped out into the biting cold. He wasn't wearing his royal tunic; instead donned a thin, silk robe that fluttered in the wind. His hair was a mess, falling over his eyes, and even from this distance, I could see the paleness of his skin. He looked fragile, like a man who was falling apart.
Malakor gripped the stone railing, his knuckles white. He looked out over the Wild-Zones, toward the jagged horizon where the shadows were deepest
He tilted his head back, closing his eyes. The wind caught his scent and carried it directly to me. For a moment, the masking wash was gone, and the scent that pulled me to me rose. It washed over me like a wave, drowning my logic, drowning my fear. I closed my eyes, inhaling him, letting the scent fill my lungs until I felt lightheaded.
Mine, the wolf growled.
Malakor suddenly stiffened, and his eyes snapped open, and he looked down, straight toward the shadow where I was hiding. For a heartbeat, the world stopped.
And yet Malakor didn't call out or summon the guards. He stayed there for a long minute, his amber eyes searching the darkness, and then, slowly, he turned and walked back into his chambers, closing the heavy glass doors behind him. I stayed in the shadow for a long time after he was gone, my legs shaking and my head spinning. I had come out here to find peace, but all I had found was the end of the world as I knew it.
I turned and began the long trek back to my guest quarters, the cold wind biting at my face. The hunger in my marrow had found its target, and I knew, with a terrifying certainty, that I would never sleep soundly again until I had followed that scent to its source.
The hunt was no longer about the crown and I was going to find out if it was a gift or a death sentence.