Chapter 2 The Girl Who Wouldn't Burn

Cassian's POV

She was holding the bolt with her bare hand.

That was the first thing I understood, and by then it was already too late.

"Luna, drop it."

She didn't hear me. She was staring at the number carved into the shaft, her face drained of color, her lips parted around a name she couldn't say. Silver-tipped bolts don't just kill wolves. Even a touch can poison them, and she had pulled that thing out of the wood with her fingers wrapped around the metal.

A thin curl of smoke rose from her palm.

"Luna."

Her eyes lifted to mine. They were gold now, her wolf pushing through, wild and glassy with shock.

"Seventeen," she whispered. "That was his..."

Her knees buckled.

I caught her before she hit the ground.

She weighed almost nothing, which was absurd for someone who had just matched me stride for stride around a full lap. Her head fell against my shoulder, her braid coming loose over my arm, and her breath against my throat came shallow and fast.

Silver sickness. Another minute, maybe two, and her heart would start to fail.

I tore the bolt out of her hand and flung it into the grass. Her palm was blistered raw, the skin blackened where the metal had touched. I pressed my thumb against her wrist, searching for her pulse, and felt it stutter beneath my fingers like a bird trapped in a closed fist.

"Stay with me," I said. It sounded like an order. It was closer to a plea.

I did not stop to think about how strange that was.

I had spent twenty-four years being the one who didn't panic. I had stood before the Council, before my father, before an arena full of screaming fans, and never once raised my voice. Yet here I was, on my knees in wet grass, shaking because a wolf I had known for ten minutes had gone limp in my arms.

I lifted her and ran.

My private wing sat at the far edge of the vampire delegation's compound, away from the guards and away from the Council's eyes. I kicked open the door, crossed the sitting room in three strides, and laid her on the bed.

Her skin was burning hot. Silver does that to wolves. It strips the healing from them first, and then it starts on everything else.

I should send for a healer.

And have the delegation find an unconscious Silvermoon wolf in the crown prince's bed.

The Council would call it an incident. My father, the King, would call it a betrayal.

I turned to the cabinet beside the window and grabbed what I needed. Clean cloth. Water. The vial of antidote I kept in my coat for training accidents, which had never once been used on a wolf.

Please work.

I unwrapped her ruined hand and tipped the vial over the burn.

It hissed.

I held her wrist steady and watched, braced for the worst.

The blackened skin didn't spread.

It shrank.

I stared. The burn was closing from the edges inward, pink flesh rising beneath the char, the blisters flattening as if the silver had never touched her at all. It would have taken a werewolf days to heal that. A full-blooded vampire, hours.

It took Luna less than five minutes.

I sat back slowly, a cold feeling spreading through my chest.

Wolves didn't heal like that.

I lifted her hand and breathed in, just once. Pine. Frost. The warm wildness underneath, which I already knew.

And beneath that, faint, almost buried, something older. A scent that belonged to no wolf alive. A scent I had only ever smelled on the oldest vampire bloodlines.

I jerked away from the bed as though I'd been burned myself.

No. It's impossible. It's the mate bond playing tricks on my senses.

But I knew what I had smelled.

"Cass."

I whirled.

Darius stood in the doorway, one hand braced against the frame, his gray eyes sweeping the room. They went to the bed. To the girl on it. To the antidote vial in my hand.

He didn't look surprised. That was the part I would remember later.

"You moved fast," he said.

"She was poisoned."

"By who?"

"Silver bolts. Someone fired at us on the training field."

"At you?"

"At her."

He let out a long breath, his shoulders easing. I clocked it before I even realized I was watching.

"Three bolts?" he asked.

I went very still.

"I didn't say how many."

"The guards said..." He stopped, then shrugged, easy as breathing. "Someone on the field must have mentioned it. Three, wasn't it? That's what I heard."

"The guards didn't see it. They were chasing her through the woods."

"Then I guessed." His smile was crooked and familiar, the same smile that had gotten us both out of trouble since we were children. "Come on, Cass. Don't look at me like that. I'm your oldest friend. I came running the second I heard something was wrong."

I had known Darius Crowe for eighteen years. He had stood beside me when my father locked me in the training halls. He had stolen wine from the cellar with me at fifteen. If anyone alive had earned my trust, it was him.

And still, I shifted my body just slightly, so that I stood between him and the bed.

"What do you want, Darius?"

"The Council has been summoned. Your father arrived an hour ago." His gaze drifted back to Luna. "He wants you in the throne hall. And he wants to know why one of our guards is dead."

My stomach dropped.

"Which guard?"

"Marcus. The one you told to stop chasing the wolf." Darius tilted his head. "Someone cut his throat in the trees. Whoever did it left a Silvermoon pendant beside the body."

The room went silent.

"She was with me," I said. "The entire time."

"I know. But the Council doesn't." He met my eyes. "Cass, if they find her in your quarters, with a dead vampire guard and her scent all over the training grounds..."

"They'll call it a murder."

"They'll call it a war."

Behind me, the bed creaked.

I turned.

Luna's eyes were open. Golden, clear, and fixed on Darius with a stillness so sharp it made my skin prickle. She hadn't moved. She hadn't blinked.

"Silvermoon wolves don't leave their pendants behind," she said hoarsely. "We bury them with our dead. Someone planted it."

"Excuse me?" Darius said.

"Whoever left it wanted you to blame a wolf." Her gaze slid to me, and my heart did something painful. "Somebody wants this war to start tonight."

"Luna," I said carefully. "Lie still. You were..."

"I'm fine." She pushed herself up on her elbows and looked at her healed hand. For a long moment, she said nothing.

Then she raised her eyes to mine, and I saw the exact second the same question hit her that had hit me.

What are you?

Darius shifted in the doorway. "Cass. We need to go."

"Give me a minute."

"We don't have a minute."

A knock came at the outer door. Three slow, heavy beats, the kind that don't ask permission.

I knew that knock.

Every muscle in my body went rigid.

"Cassian." My father's voice carried through the wood, low and perfectly calm. "Open the door."

Luna's gaze flew to mine. I saw the question in her eyes, and I had no answer.

Before I could move, the door swung open. Two Council guards stepped aside, and King Adrian Veyre walked into my quarters, ancient and immaculate, with four more guards in black armor behind him. He did not look at me. He did not look at Darius.

He looked at Luna, and for the first time in my life, I watched my father's composure crack.

"So it's true," he whispered.

His eyes had gone red.

"You have your mother's face."