There are monsters in the dark.
I sat in my chambers, a glass of whiskey in hand and another untouched across from me. The hearth had dwindled to embers, flames licking the stones in exhausted tongues, throwing long, uncertain shadows that pooled like memories I refused to name. Vayne paced under my skin, an animal always on the edge of the hunt, restless, tasting the air like a beast waiting for some faint signal to strike.
The royal secret guard should have reported back by now. They were trained to move like ghosts: to slip through night and leaf without a sound, to return by dawn no matter what they had seen. I had sent them to the Silverback Forest two nights ago, toward the place where my wolf had pricked his ears first, where he had growled at something that did not belong in the bone-deep order of things. The scouts carried more than orders; they held the map to what little advantage we still owned.
