The cave was nothing more than a scar in the cliff face, a black mouth half-hidden behind frost-laden pine branches that scraped my cheeks raw as I dragged Ryan inside. His blood left a dark trail across the snow, steaming faintly in the moonlight, and every drop felt like a piece of my own heart torn out. He had stopped growling hours ago; now there was only the wet rasp of his breathing and the occasional shudder that ran through his ruined shoulders.
I hauled him past the narrow entrance until the passage widened into a dry chamber. The air smelled of old earth and animal musk, but it was still, blessedly still. I eased him down against the smoothest stretch of wall I could find, cradling his head so it wouldn't crack against stone. His skin was furnace-hot one second and ice-cold the next; silver veins crawled beneath the surface like living ink, spreading from the gashes the ward had carved. The poison was winning.
I tore my jacket off first, then the thin thermal shirt beneath. My fingers shook as I ripped the fabric into long strips. Ryan's eyes fluttered, gold dulled to tarnished bronze.
"Aria," he rasped, voice shredded, "leave me. Get to the river. Find Kael."
"Shut up," I said gently, and pressed the first wad of cloth hard against the deepest wound across his collarbone. Blood welled instantly, soaking through in seconds, but I kept pressure steady, counting his heartbeats against my palm. One. Two. Three. Still there.
I worked the way my mother had taught me when I was nine and hiding in the healer's wing with broken ribs from training too hard. Slow circles, deep pressure, breathe with him. Draw the silver out the way you draw poison from a snakebite—steady, relentless, refusing to let the body forget it was born to heal. My fingertips found the old rhythms. I whispered the healing cadence under my breath, the one that had lulled Leo to sleep when nightmares came, the one I hadn't used since the night Ryan rejected me and I thought my world had ended.
His breath hitched when I poured the last of our purified water over the worst gashes to flush the metal fragments. I used my teeth to tear open the emergency med kit, smeared antibiotic ointment thick as butter, packed the wounds with gauze that turned crimson the instant it touched flesh. Then I layered every spare piece of clothing we had over him—my jacket, his torn shirt, the emergency blanket that crinkled like foil. I curled around his upper body, legs tangled with his, chest to his back, and shared every degree of warmth I possessed.
Time lost meaning. The moon crawled across the slice of sky visible through the entrance. Snow hissed against stone. Ryan drifted in and out of delirium, muttering fragments—my name, Leo's, sometimes Damon's. Each time he surfaced I pressed my lips to his temple and promised him tomorrow.
When the poison finally stopped spreading and his breathing evened into something resembling sleep, I let myself cry. Silent, shoulder-shaking sobs that soaked into his hair. I cried for the boy he had been, for the mate I had lost and found again, for the father Leo needed, for the king bleeding out in my arms while our son was carried away into the dark by strangers. I cried until there was nothing left but the cold certainty that walking out of these mountains on foot would kill him long before Valen ever got the chance.
We needed wings. Or something close.
I eased Ryan's head onto the folded jacket and crawled to the pack on numb legs. The satellite phone was cracked down the middle, screen spider-webbed, but when I pressed the power button it lit with a sickly green glow. One bar of signal. A miracle or a curse; I no longer cared which.
Ryan stirred at the electronic chime. His hand clamped around my wrist hard enough to bruise. "Don't," he croaked. "Silas will flay you alive for the Tear and laugh doing it."
"I'm not giving him the Tear," I said, voice raw. "I'm giving him something he wants more."
His eyes widened, fever-bright. "Aria, no—"
I leaned down and kissed him quiet. It tasted of blood and terror and love too big for words. When I pulled back his grip had loosened, fingers trembling against my skin.
"Trust me," I whispered.
I dialed before I could second-guess myself.
The line clicked open on the second ring.
"Well," Silas purred, voice smooth as spilled oil and twice as toxic, "the queen herself. Rumors said you danced through Valen's ward and stole his prize right out of his teeth. Impressive. Also terminally stupid. To what do I owe the pleasure?"
I kept my voice flat, cold, royal. "I need extraction. Fast. Untraceable. Out of the Ironfangs before dawn tomorrow. Something that flies."
Silence stretched, thick with amusement and calculation. I could almost hear him smiling.
"And what, pray tell, does Her Majesty offer in exchange for services that would make most smugglers disappear into shallow graves? I already own the Calder wolf's soul on layaway, remember? Interest is compounding nicely."
Ryan made a broken sound and tried to sit up. I pressed him back with one hand splayed over his heart and never took my eyes from the phone.
"You want something that actually matters," I said. "One favor. No questions asked. No limits. When you call, I come. My blood, my Voice, my crown—whatever you need, whenever you need it, wherever you need it. One life debt, paid in full, no refusal."
Ryan lunged for the phone again. This time I caught his wrist and pinned it to the stone floor, leaning my weight on it until he stilled. His eyes were wild, pleading, terrified—not for himself, but for me.
Silas laughed softly, delighted. "Oh, little queen. You have no idea what you just offered."
"I know exactly what I offered," I said. "Name the place."
Another silence, longer this time, heavy with the kind of satisfaction that made my skin crawl. Then coordinates, clipped and precise.
"Old logging airstrip at the foot of Widow's Peak. Mile marker seventeen on the abandoned fire road. Midnight tomorrow. Look for a black twin-engine Beechcraft, no markings, tail number filed off. Pilot answers to Raven. Tell him the queen owes Silas a life debt in royal blood. He'll know what it means."
"Done," I said.
"One more thing, sweetheart." His voice dropped to a lover's whisper. "When I call that debt in, it will be when it hurts the most. When you have everything to lose. I want to watch you choose between your pretty crown and whatever's left of your soul. I can't wait."
The line went dead.
I powered the phone off with fingers that wouldn't stop shaking and set it carefully aside. Ryan was staring at me like I'd just carved my own heart out and handed it over on a silver platter.
"You just sold yourself," he whispered, voice cracking on every word.
"I bought us tomorrow," I said fiercely. "I bought Leo a father. I bought Elias a daughter who will live long enough to put him back on the throne. I bought every wolf who ever believed in me a future where they don't have to kneel to a usurper."
He closed his eyes, pain and pride and grief warring across his beautiful, broken face. A tear slipped from the corner of one eye and cut a clean track through the blood and grime.
"He'll ask for something impossible," he said.
"Then I'll do the impossible."
I crawled back to him, slid my arms beneath his shoulders, and pulled him against my chest. He was shaking—fever, exhaustion, rage, maybe all three. I buried my face in his hair and breathed him in: blood, pine, smoke, mate.
"Listen to me," I said against the shell of his ear. "I spent eighteen years being afraid of the price. Afraid of rejection. Afraid of losing you. Afraid of failing Leo. Afraid I wasn't enough. I am done being afraid."
I pulled back far enough to cup his face in both hands. His stubble rasped against my palms.
"I am the price now," I said. "And I am more than enough."
The cave was silent except for the soft drip of melting ice somewhere deeper in the dark and the steady, stubborn beat of his heart beneath my palm. Outside, the moon hung full and cold, watching everything.
Midnight tomorrow.
One black plane.
One debt written in royal blood that would one day come due.
I held Ryan close and felt the future settle on my shoulders like a cloak forged of iron, starlight, and unbreakable will.
Let Silas come when he was ready.
Let the world come.
I would be waiting, and I would be ready to pay whatever it demanded.
For my son. For my mate. For my crown.
For all of it.