Cleo's thumb pressed against the broken wax seal, the dark crimson shard still clinging to the edge of the parchment. The crackle of the unfolding note had been loud enough to fill the corridor, but the silence that followed pressed harder against her ears, heavy as stone. She read the words once, then again, the ink seeming to shift each time she traced it—*Come alone. The wolves have named a price.*
Her breath caught somewhere between her ribs. The parchment trembled in her fingers, and she realized her hand was shaking, though she couldn't remember it starting. The damp chill of the corridor seeped through her robes, and she felt dust and burnt candle wax settle on her skin like a second layer of cold.
"What does it say?" Nico's voice came low and measured, but she felt the tension coiled beneath it. His hand was still on his blade, knuckles white against the leather-wrapped hilt, the grip creaking faintly as he shifted his weight. His amber eyes flicked from the note to her face, reading her tells the way he always did—the set of her jaw, the way her throat moved when she swallowed.
Cleo opened her mouth, but the words wouldn't come. The oath in her chest pulsed—a heartbeat that wasn't hers, spiking and settling, spiking again. She pressed her palm flat against her sternum without thinking, as if she could steady it with pressure.
"Cleo." His voice was sharper now, cutting through the fog. "What does it say?"
She forced the words out, watching them land like stones in still water. "He wants me to come alone. He says the wolves have named a price."
The torchlight guttered low, shadows jumping across the worn wood of Vane's office door. For a moment, Nico went completely still—the predator's stillness before the strike. She felt the spike through the oath, hot and sharp, and couldn't tell if it was fear or fury. Maybe both.
"A price," he repeated, the word coming out like a curse. "What price?"
"He didn't say." Cleo's eyes traced the letters again, looking for something she'd missed, some hidden meaning between the strokes. The handwriting was precise, controlled—Vane's careful script, each letter deliberately placed. But there was something about the way the ink pressed into the parchment, darker at the edges, that suggested the hand that wrote it had not been entirely steady.
Nico took a step toward her, and she felt his heat before she saw him move—a wall of warmth against the corridor's chill. His hand left his blade, reaching for the note, then stopped just short of touching it. His fingers hovered in the air between them, callused and scarred, and she watched them curl into a fist and fall back to his side.
"He's trying to separate us," Nico said, his voice flat. "Get you alone, away from me."
"Or he's trying to protect me from what's coming." She said it before she could think, and watched his jaw tighten.
"From me?" The question came out quiet, almost careful, but there was an edge beneath it. She felt the oath flicker—hurt, quick and raw, before he smothered it.
"From all of it, Nico." Cleo's voice softened despite herself. "From the wolves, from my father, from—" She gestured vaguely at the space between them, at the invisible thread that bound her heartbeat to his. "From this."
He was silent for a long moment, his amber eyes fixed on hers. The single sconce on the wall cast his face half in shadow, carving the scarred line of his brow into something almost ancient. She watched him fight something behind his eyes, some war whose shape she couldn't see.
"I'm not letting him take you alone." The words came out final, a stone wall built in the space between two heartbeats.
"It's a summons, not an invitation. I have to—"
"You don't *have* to do anything." He stepped closer, close enough that she could see the faint glimmer of his eyes in the low light, close enough that she could feel the warmth radiating off him. "You're not his soldier. You're not his anything. You made a choice, Cleo. You chose—"
He stopped, the words catching in his throat. The oath pulsed between them, and she felt the weight of the unfinished sentence pressing against her chest.
"I chose you," she said quietly. The words hung in the air between them, fragile and enormous. "I meant it."
Something shifted in his face—a crack in the armor, there and gone. His hand moved, almost involuntarily, toward her face, and she felt the air change around them, charged and thick.
Then a footstep scuffed against stone, and the spell broke.
Sera stepped closer, her green eyes fixed on the note in Cleo's hand. The torchlight caught her silver nose ring, making it glint once, and her wild red curls seemed to crackle with the tension in the air. She'd been so quiet that Cleo had almost forgotten she was there—a shadow at the edge of the light, watching.
"He's not the only one who—" Sera began, her voice dropping, her weight shifting forward, lips parted around the next word—
The sound of a quill scratching against parchment came from inside Vane's office, faint but unmistakable. All three of them froze, the noise cutting through the silence like a blade through silk. The scratching continued, unhurried and deliberate—someone writing carefully, the strokes of a hand that knew exactly what it was saying.
Nico's blade had half-left its sheath before he seemed to realize it, his amber eyes fixed on the office door. The torchlight flickered, shadows dancing across the worn wood, and Cleo felt the oath in her chest spike again—fear this time, unmistakably, or the echo of his.
"He's in there," Nico breathed, the words barely audible. "He's been in there the whole time."
Cleo's thumb pressed harder against the broken wax seal, the edge of the parchment cutting into her palm. She didn't remember the seal breaking—didn't remember the moment her fingers had found the edge and pressed—but the sharp sting grounded her, pulling her back from the edge of something she couldn't name.
"He knows we're here," she said, and the words came out steadier than she felt. "He knows what I've read."
The scratching stopped.
The silence that followed was worse than the sound had been—a living thing pressing against the stone walls, filling every space between them. Cleo stared at the office door, at the worn wood smoothed by countless knuckles, and felt the weight of everything unsaid pressing down on her shoulders.
Sera's hand found her arm, her fingers wrapping around Cleo's wrist with surprising strength. The touch was grounding, solid, pulling her back from the spiral of her own thoughts. Cleo turned to look at her—at the green eyes that had lost all their mischief, at the face that had dropped its mask of playful indifference.
"Cleo." Sera's voice was barely a whisper, urgent and low. "My father heard the wolves talking. They're already asking questions."
The words landed like stones in still water, ripples spreading outward, touching everything. Cleo felt the oath pulse—Nico's heartbeat, fast and hard—and knew he'd heard it too.
"What kind of questions?" Nico's voice came from behind her, hard as iron.
Sera didn't look at him. Her eyes stayed fixed on Cleo, something desperate flickering in their depths. "The kind that have answers they won't like."
The torchlight guttered, shadows leaping across the corridor. Cleo felt the parchment still in her hand, the weight of Vane's words burning against her palm. *Come alone. The wolves have named a price.*
She looked at Sera, at the fear she was trying to hide behind her steady gaze. She looked at Nico, at the barely leashed violence coiled in his shoulders. And she looked at the office door, at the worn wood and the shadows moving behind it, and felt the walls of the castle closing in around her.
"What price?" she heard herself ask, the words coming from somewhere outside herself. "What do they want?"
Sera's grip on her wrist tightened. "They want to break the oath."
The words fell into the silence like a stone into deep water, sending ripples through everything Cleo had thought she understood. The oath in her chest flared, hot and sharp, and she felt Nico's heartbeat spike in answer—fear, or fury, or something caught between the two.
"They can't," Cleo said, but the words came out wrong, too quick, too desperate. "An oath like this—it can't be broken. It's blood-bound. It's—"
"It can be broken," Sera cut in, her voice flat. "Everything can be broken. You just have to know where to strike."
Nico moved before Cleo could respond, stepping past her, his hand going to the hilt of his blade. His amber eyes were fixed on the office door, his jaw tight, every line of his body coiled and ready.
"Then we strike first," he said, and the words were steel.
"Nico—" Cleo started.
"No." He turned to face her, and she saw something in his eyes she hadn't seen before—not the predator's hunger, not the warrior's fury, but something rawer, more desperate. "I'm not going to stand here and wait for them to come for you. I'm not going to let them—"
He stopped, the words catching in his throat. The torchlight flickered across his face, and Cleo saw the crack in his armor again—the loneliness beneath the bristling pride, the fear beneath the fury. The oath pulsed between them, and she felt the truth of it in her chest: he was terrified. Not of the wolves, not of the fight—of losing her.
"We need to think," Sera said, her voice cutting through the silence. "We need to plan. We can't just—"
"Plan?" Nico's laugh was bitter and sharp. "You think they're going to give us time to plan? They've already named a price. They're already asking questions. Every moment we stand here talking is a moment they're moving."
"And every moment you spend charging into a trap is a moment you're not thinking." Sera's voice was sharp, matching his edge. "You want to protect her? Then use your head, not your claws."
They stared at each other, the air between them crackling with tension. Cleo felt the oath in her chest—Nico's fury, hot and bright, warring with something softer, something he was trying to bury. She watched his jaw work, watched the muscles in his shoulders tense and release, watched him fight the instinct that told him to fight.
"Sera's right," Cleo said quietly, and both of them turned to look at her. "We can't rush into this. We don't even know what the price is yet. We don't know what Vane—"
She stopped, looking down at the note in her hand. The words seemed to burn against her palm, the broken wax seal leaving a faint red smear on her skin. *Come alone.*
"He wants me to come alone," she said again, the words heavier now. "He knows about the oath. He knows about the wolves. He knows—" She looked up at Nico, at the amber eyes watching her with that fierce, desperate attention. "He knows everything."
"Then why does he want you alone?" Nico's voice was rough. "If he knows everything, why separate us?"
Cleo opened her mouth to answer, but the words wouldn't come. The torchlight flickered, shadows leaping across the corridor, and she felt the weight of the question pressing down on her—the weight of all the questions she didn't have answers to.
Sera's hand was still on her wrist, warm and grounding. "Maybe he's trying to help," she said quietly. "Or maybe he's trying to control the narrative. Either way, we need to know what he's planning before we decide what to do."
Nico's jaw tightened, but he didn't argue. His hand fell from the hilt of his blade, and Cleo watched the tension in his shoulders ease, just slightly—not surrender, but a conscious choice to stand down. For her.
"Fine," he said, the word coming out through gritted teeth. "But I'm not staying here while you walk into that office alone."
"You won't be staying here," Cleo said. "You'll be close. Watching. Listening."
His eyes met hers, and something passed between them—a promise, unspoken, deeper than the oath that bound them. She felt it settle in her chest, warm and steady, a counterweight to the fear.
"If anything happens—" he started.
"Nothing will." She said it firmly, willing it to be true. "I'll be careful."
He held her gaze for a long moment, then nodded once, sharply. The oath pulsed between them, and she felt his heartbeat slow, matching hers, steadying them both.
Sera released her wrist, stepping back. Her green eyes were still serious, but there was something softer in them now—a glimmer of the friend Cleo knew beneath the mask. "I'll watch the corridor," she said. "Make sure no one interrupts."
Cleo nodded, then turned to face the office door. The worn wood seemed to loom before her, the shadows behind it shifting and dancing in the guttering torchlight. She could hear her own heartbeat in her ears, loud in the silence—and beneath it, the echo of Nico's, steady and strong.
She raised her hand to knock.
The sound of her knuckles against the wood was loud in the corridor, a summons answered by silence. She waited, breath held, the parchment still clutched in her other hand, the broken wax seal pressing against her palm like a brand.
The door opened.