The ancestral dungeons were not built for life. They were carved into the belly of the mountain, a place where the air was thick with the scent of damp earth and the metallic tang of ancient blood. There was no light here except for the rhythmic, orange pulse of the torches in the hallway, and even that flickered with a sickly, dying energy.
The warriors tossed me onto the freezing stone floor of the lowest cell. I didn't have the strength to catch myself. My shoulder hit the rock with a dull thud, and I curled into a ball, my skin shivering against the grit.
The silver chains came next.
They didn't just lock them around my wrists and ankles. They draped the heavy, gleaming links over my body like a funeral shroud. The silver reacted to the Sun-Eater blood still humming in my veins, hissing as it made contact. It felt like a thousand tiny needles were stitching themselves into my pores. Every time I moved, the metal sang a high, discordant note that vibrated through my teeth.
"Don't bother screaming," one of the guards muttered, his face obscured by the shadows of his helm. "The stone down here is ten feet thick. Even the moon can't hear you."
The heavy iron door groaned shut, the bolt sliding home with a finality that felt like a coffin being nailed.
Silence rushed in. It was a heavy, suffocating weight.
I lay there for a long time, my cheek pressed against the cold rock. My collarbone was a ruin. The brand Vane had forced into me throbbed with a dark, rhythmic heat. I could feel the sigil...those two circling wolves, biting into my soul, trying to tell me that I belonged to the Black Ridge. It was a lie that my body was fighting with every agonizing heartbeat.
Underneath the pain, I felt a new sensation.
I reached out with my mind, past the silver, past the stone, and touched the roots of the mountain. Usually, the earth was a vibrant, humming thing, full of the transit of water and the slow, deep songs of the trees.
Now, it was cold.
The land was gasping. I was the Sun-Eater, the one who fed the soil with the excess power I drained from the wolves. By branding me, by chaining me in silver and suppressing my nature, Vane had severed the connection. I was the heart of the kingdom, and I was currently bleeding out on a dungeon floor.
A soft, scraping sound came from the corner of the cell.
I tensed, the silver chains clinking. My vision, still sharpened by the remnants of the shift, pierced the dark. A man sat in the shadows of the adjacent cell, separated by a row of thick, silver-plated bars. He was old, his beard a matted tangle of grey and dirt, his eyes milky with cataracts.
"The white wolf," the old man rasped. His voice sounded like dry leaves skittering over a grave. "I haven't heard a roar like that since the Great Famine."
I tried to speak, but my throat was a desert. "Who are you?"
"A ghost," he said, shifting his weight. The sound of his own chains followed him. "I was a scholar once. Before the Alphas decided that history was a threat to their pride. They call this the 'Glitch Ward' now. The place where the broken things go to die."
I managed to push myself up into a sitting position, the silver biting into my raw collarbone. "Vane... he marked me."
The old man let out a wet, rattling laugh. "He marked the sun. The fool. He thinks he's mastered a wolf, but he's just put a leash on a storm. Can you feel it, girl? The way the mountain is shrugging? The trees are already turning to ash."
"I can feel it," I whispered. "It's like I'm being torn in two."
"That's the bond," the scholar said, his voice turning serious. "The fated thread doesn't care about iron or silver. It wants its mate. But the brand is a poison. It's trying to turn your devotion into obedience. If you stay chained like this, you'll die, and you'll take every blade of grass in the Black Ridge with you."
I looked at the brand on my chest. The skin was blackened, the edges weeping. "He rejected me. He threw it away before it even began."
"Then you must finish it," the old man said. He crawled toward the bars, his blind eyes searching for me. "There is a way. An old way. The Forbidden Severance. It requires a heart of ice and a soul willing to walk in the dark. You must rip the thread out of your own chest and hand it back to him."
"And if I do?"
"You will be free," he whispered. "But the land will go dark. The wolves will lose their fire. You will be a Queen of nothing."
I closed my eyes, thinking of Vane. I thought of the way he looked at me with disgust while he held his mistress. I thought of the three years I spent scrubbing his floors while he mocked my silence.
He didn't want a mate. He wanted a slave.
The heat in my collarbone flared, a sharp reminder of the ownership he had claimed. My fingers curled into claws, scraping against the stone.
"Tell me how," I said.
The scholar leaned his head against the bars, his voice dropping to a low, rhythmic chant. "First, you must stop fighting the silver. Let it in. Let the poison find the bond. You cannot break what you cannot touch."
I took a breath, the air in the cell tasting of dust. I stopped pulling away from the chains. I let the silver sink into my skin, welcoming the searing cold.
The agony was absolute. It felt like my very cells were being frozen and shattered. But through the white-hot fog of pain, I saw it.
The golden thread.
It was still there, pulsing weakly between my ribs, reaching up through the ceiling toward the man who had branded me. It was blackened at the edges, charred by his rejection, but it was still tied to his heartbeat.
I reached out with my mind and gripped the gold.
Somewhere high above, in the palace of marble and ice, I heard a faint, distant shout. Vane felt it. He felt my hand on his soul.
I didn't pull. Not yet. I just held on, watching the gold turn to lead in the presence of the silver.
"I am not your weapon," I whispered to the dark.
The stone beneath me groaned in response. The first crack appeared in the dungeon wall, a jagged line that bled a thick, black sap. The Black Ridge was beginning to die.
And I was the one holding the knife.