Chapter 119
Lila
Snow clung to the edge of my breath.
The world around me was hushed, buried beneath a blanket of white that glittered under the sharp light of stars. Each flake was perfect. Every tree was bare and watching.
And I stood barefoot at the edge of a forest I didn’t recognize, the snow cold against my soles–but not painful. Not biting. It was like the cold welcomed me home.
Above, the night sky was vast and impossibly clear. Constellations I didn’t know by name burned in quiet reverence, casting a soft, silvery glow across the snow–covered ground.
The moon—full and impossibly bright–hung low, like it was watching too.
I didn’t know how I got here. But I wasn’t afraid.
The trees ahead of me stood like sentinels, dark and skeletal, their limbs draped with frost. I could hear the faint creak of branches, the whisper of something moving beneath the snow.
And then–footsteps. Not behind me, but beside.
I turned slowly.
The large white wolf stood at the tree line. And I instantly knew it was my Ruby.
Not fully a wolf, not fully human. Her shape shimmered at the edges–tall, lupine, and utterly still. Fur shimmered and caught the moonlight. Her eyes— silver, luminous–were locked on mine.
I didn’t breathe. I couldn’t speak.
I tried. My lips parted, my chest ached with the need to say something, anything, but no sound
came.
No
Wat words. No breath.
Just the silent beat of my heart and the knowledge that she was real, More real than anything I’d felt from ho
since before I could remember.
She tilted her head, studying me like I was a creature under glass. She knew me, but we were strangers all the same.
I wanted to fall to my knees. To beg her to stay. To tell me what was wrong with us–why I couldn’t heal like oth
should be.
Why the distance between us had stretched for so long.
But she didn’t speak. She didn’t move toward me. She turned.
or why my body was weaker than it
The snow made no sounds, didn’t crunch beneath her paws—if she even had paws. Her body moved like mist and the snow itself, slipping between the trees like she belonged there more than I belonged in myself.
“Wait-”
The word never made it out. I tried to chase her, one foot sinking into the snow–but the second step never came.
I woke with a gasp.
My sheets were twisted around me, damp with sweat. The room was cold. I should’ve been freezing, but my skin was hot, tingling like I’d been burned from the inside out.
Chapter 119
My chest rose and fell in short, shallow bursts, and the scent of frost still clung to my senses like the dream hadn’t ended,
I sat up slowly.
The moonlight from the window painted the room in the same pale hue as the dream. My limbs ached. My jaw ached. I touched the side of my face and
winced.
My hearing felt… wrong. I could hear the low crackle of the fireplace two rooms away. Someone’s soft footsteps on the far side of the hall.
I pressed a hand to my chest. Ruby was still quiet, but present. She wasn’t curled in the corner of my mind anymore. She was pacing.
Watching. Waiting.
And the strangest part of all was the ache beneath my skin–like my bones were too tight, my muscles too full, like I was being asked to hold something wasn’t strong enough to contain.
I didn’t call for Emma. Or Damon. I didn’t call for anyone.
I just sat in the moonlight, breath fogging faintly in the chilly air, and whispered to the empty room, “Come back?
Hours later morning bloomed like a bruise.
Not a blow, but a slow increase of pressure behind my eyes and down my spine. The sun warming the room did nothing for the cold ache in my joints, and even the softest sounds–Emma’s gentle voice in the next room, the rustle of linens–made my ears flinch.
I rose from bed slowly, careful not to move too fast. My skin felt too tight, like my body was trying to expand beneath it.
Every joint protested as I stretched, the movement not painful, but wrong. Off. Like something inside me was shifting without permission.
The dream still clung to me. Snow and stars. White fur and silence.
Ruby hadn’t spoken since I woke but I could feel her now. Not like before–quiet, curled in a corner of my mind–but present. Pacing. Restless. Her energy pressed up against mine like a heartbeat under skin.
Emma knocked gently on the outer door. “Breakfast?”
I cleared my throat. “In a minute.”
I dressed slowly, the fabric of my tunic suddenly coarse against hypersensitive skin. My teeth ached. My jaw clicked. I avoided the mirror.
When I stepped into the main chamber, Emma was already pouring tea. She looked up, eyes scanning me the way she always did when she suspected I was hiding something.
“You look pale.”
“I didn’t sleep well.”
We sat by the window while the palace grounds came to life outside–guards changing shifts, servants bustling with silver trays, the winter gardens dusted in frost. I tried to eat, I managed a few bites. The bread tasted like ash.
My hearing was too sharp. A tray dropped somewhere down the hall and I flinched. A dog barked in the courtyard, and I winced like the sound hit bone.
Emma frowned. “Do you want me to call the healer?”
“No.” Too fast. I softened it. “It’s nothing.”
She didn’t believe me. But she nodded anyway.
By midmorning, I’d given up on reading. The words refused to stay still. I walked the garden paths until my legs ached and the cold stopped biting.
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Chapter 119
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I could feel Ruby moving, circling, like a storm gathering just beyond the horizon of my skin. I tried meditation. Breathwork. The calming techniques my mother taught me. Nothing helped.
By early afternoon, I found myself back at the infirmary.
It was quiet, the hall dim and smelling of herbs and dried flowers. The healer looked up as I entered and smiled gently, brushing her hands on her apron.
“I thought you might come back.”
Isat on the edge of the examination table, palms resting on my thighs to steady the tremble I refused to name.
“I had a dream last night,” I said. “It felt… more than real.”
She tilted her head. “Of your wolf?”
I nodded slowly. “But something’s… wrong. My skin, my senses. Everything feels louder. Sharper. My body feels-“I hesitated, searching. “Stretched. Like I’m caught between two skins.”
The healer stepped closer, her presence calm but alert. Her hands were warm as she checked my pulse, my temperature, then pressed lightly at my temples. When she finished, her brow furrowed.
“There’s interference,” she murmured. “Your wolf is trying to surface, but something’s pulling her back. Holding her down.”
“Why?” I asked, my voice tight. “What’s doing that?”
She didn’t answer right away. “Magic can silence a wolf, if it’s strong enough. So can poison. You may be caught in both.”
I looked away. My stomach twisted–not with fear, but with the growing awareness of pressure inside me. Like I was unraveling in two directions at onc
She added, softer now, “Your body’s fighting on two fronts. The wolf wants out. But something in you is being forced to stay still.”
I swallowed. “So what happens if they keep pulling?”
Her eyes met mine, steady and unblinking. “Something will break.”
She had no more to offer. No cures. No certainty.
That night, I sat by my window again, watching the sky shift from rose to violet to grey. The stars seemed like they came out one by one.
Just once, I whispered “Where are you?”
The only reply was Ruby’s soft whine.
