The Frostfang Ranges did not welcome visitors.
For three days the storm had hunted us—a living beast of white fangs and howling wind that tore at our coats and tried to bury us alive. The truck had died on the second night, its engine frozen solid. Since then we had traveled on foot, Ryan breaking trail, Damon carrying Leo on his shoulders when my son's legs gave out. Ice crusted our eyelashes. Breath froze in our scarves. Every step was a war against the mountain.
On the fourth dawn, if dawn could be called the weak gray smear behind the clouds, we found the mouth of the cave.
It yawned high in a cliff face, half-hidden by curtains of icicles thick as a man's thigh. Wolf skulls, raven skulls, and something much larger with tusks hung from sinew cords and clattered in the wind like wind chimes made of death. The entrance reeked of old blood and pine resin.
Ryan went first, shoulders squared, hand on the silver knife at his belt. Damon followed, Leo clinging to his neck beneath the hood of his parka. I brought up the rear, the cold no longer touching me the way it once had. Something inside my chest burned steady and hot now, like a coal that refused to die.
Inside, the cave swallowed all sound. Blue-white ice coated the walls, reflecting the weak light of Ryan's torch into a thousand fractured ghosts. Bones lay everywhere—piled in alcoves, woven into grotesque arches, ground into pale dust under our boots. Some were wolf. Some were human. Many were neither.
At the very heart of the cavern, fire should not have existed, yet a small flame danced in a circle of black stones. Above it hung a cauldron that bubbled though nothing fed the flames.
The Oracle crouched on the far side, spine curved like a question mark.
She was ancient beyond counting. Skin like dried parchment stretched over sharp bones. Her hair, once perhaps black, now hung in greasy white ropes down to the floor. Empty sockets stared where eyes should have been, milky and weeping frozen tears. Rags of raven feathers and wolf tails clothed her. When she moved, finger bones clicked like castanets at her wrists.
Ryan stopped ten feet away and bowed his head in the old way. "Oracle of the Frostfang. Ryan Black, Alpha of Crimson Hollow, comes to repay the blood debt you are owed."
The crone did not acknowledge him. She tilted her head as though listening to music only she could hear. Then she began to crawl.
Not walk. Crawl. On hands and knees, joints cracking, dragging her withered body across the bone-dust floor straight toward me.
Ryan stepped forward, growling low. Damon's hand went to his gun.
The Oracle ignored them both. She stopped inches from my boots and lifted her ruined face. Nostrils flared, drinking in the air.
"The lost blood returns," she rasped, voice like frost splitting stone. "Moon-born. Star-cursed. The daughter of eclipse and silver fire."
I knelt so we were eye to empty eye. The cold no longer touched my knees. "I need to know if my father lives."
The Oracle laughed, a wet, coughing bark that showed black stumps of teeth. "Alive? Oh yes. Heart still beats. Lungs still pull air. But living?" She spat into the fire. The flames hissed green. "No living thing endures the Silver Prison. Only the king who was betrayed."
"Where is it?" I demanded.
"Deep. Beneath the royal city. Carved from the bones of the moon herself. No door. No window. Only one key." The blind sockets fixed on my face though they could not see. "You want the map, moon-daughter?"
"Yes."
"Then pay."
The crone's claw shot out with unnatural speed and pointed at Leo. My son had slid down from Damon's arms and now stood half-hidden behind Ryan's leg, eyes wide.
"A single drop," the Oracle crooned. "One crimson bead from the veins of the twice-born prince. That is the price."
Ryan's growl shook dust from the ceiling. "Touch my son and you die, witch."
Damon's pistol cleared leather. "Name another price."
The Oracle smiled, terrible and tender. "There is no other. The Silver Prison was forged to open only for the blood of the true line. The boy carries it pure. One drop on the map and the path will burn itself into my mind. Refuse, and wander these mountains until the snow takes you. The Usurper's hunters are already riding north. You have days, not weeks."
Silence fell, heavier than the ice above our heads.
Leo looked up at me. "Mama?"
I felt the world narrow to the space between my heart and his tiny finger.
Ryan's hand settled on my shoulder, trembling with rage and fear. "Aria, no. We'll find another way."
"There is no other way," the Oracle sang, rocking. "The moon demands balance. A drop for a kingdom. Will you pay, daughter of kings?"
My hand moved before my mind caught up. I drew the small silver dagger from my boot, the same one that had ended Scarlett, and took Leo's hand in mine.
"Sweetheart," I whispered, voice steady even as tears froze on my lashes, "Mama needs you to be brave for two seconds. Can you do that?"
Leo swallowed hard and nodded.
I pressed the very tip of the blade to his index finger. Ryan made a broken sound behind me. Damon turned his face away.
One quick prick.
A single bead welled, bright as a ruby against his pale skin.
The Oracle's tongue, long, black, and forked like a serpent's, darted out and caught the drop before it could fall. She shuddered, spine arching impossibly as the blood touched her tongue.
Her ruined eyes rolled white.
The scream that tore from her throat was not human.
It echoed off the ice, off the bones, off the very bones of the mountain itself. The fire exploded upward in a pillar of silver flame. Shadows danced like living things across the cavern walls.
"Beware!" the Oracle shrieked, clawing at her own face. "Beware the shadow that walks beside you! The wolf who smiles while sharpening the knife! Betrayal wears a trusted face! When the eclipse comes, the blade will rise from within!"
She collapsed, gasping, drooling crimson that steamed on the frozen floor.
Leo whimpered and buried his face in my neck. I held him tight, dagger still in my blood-slick hand, and stared at Ryan and Damon.
The prophecy hung in the air like poisoned smoke.
Ryan's gaze flicked to Damon, his oldest friend, his Beta, the man who had carried Leo through blizzards, then away, jaw clenched so hard I heard the crack of bone.
Damon's knuckles were white on his pistol grip. His eyes met mine for a single heartbeat, unreadable.
The Oracle laughed again, softer now, almost tender. From beneath her rags she drew a roll of ancient leather. With Leo's blood still staining her lips, she pressed the map into my free hand.
"The path is yours, moon-daughter," she croaked. "But hurry. The shadow already knows where you are."
Outside, the storm howled louder, as though the mountain itself wanted us gone.
I rose, cradling Leo close, the map burning cold against my palm.
I did not look at Ryan or Damon as we left the bone cave and stepped back into the screaming white dark.
But for the first time since we had fled the Pack House, I felt the weight of eyes on my back that had nothing to do with the wind.