She didn’t pull away. Didn’t recoil. Just studied him with those winter-sky eyes that saw too much.
“Are you warning me?”
“I’m preparing you.” He pressed his lips to her palm, a gesture that felt more like worship than he’d intended. “There’s a difference.”
The Lux Saberscame as the sun crested the eastern peaks.
Sylas watched from the doorway as Elsa was led away, her golden hair catching the light, her white ceremonial outfit marking her against the dark stone. She glanced back once—just once—and the look in her eyes landed in his chest like a psyblade.
Trust. After everything, she still looked at him with trust.
He didn’t deserve it. Might never deserve it. But he would kill to keep it.
The morning stretched long, each hour dragging against his skin like sandpaper. He met with Ryxin to review the hunt’s boundaries—the territory marked for the chase, the emergency protocols if anything went wrong, the Lux Knights positioned at intervals to ensure no challengers interfered. His brother’s concern was written in the stiff set of his shoulders, the way his cyan eyes kept flicking to Sylas’s face, as if checking for cracks.
“You’re sure about this.” Not a question.
“I’ve never been more certain of anything.”
Ryxin’s mouth twitched. “The court will expect brutality. A show of dominance. They’ll want to see you drag her back by the throat.”
Sylas felt his hackles rise. “The court can choke on their expectations. What happens between me and my mate is no one’s concern.”
“Spoken like a male already lost.” But Ryxin’s tone held no mockery. Only recognition. “Ari looked at me like that once. Before she understood what I was.”
“And now?”
“Now she looks at me like she knows exactly what I am.” His brother’s expression shifted into something almost soft. “And stays anyway.”
The words settled into Sylas’s bones. He thought of Elsa’s hands on his face this morning, her eyes clear and unflinching. She’d seen him kill. Seen him rage. Seen the worst of his nature laid bare and bleeding.
She stayed anyway.
Ryxin left him at the threshold of his chambers with a grip on his shoulder that said more than words could. Sylas watched his brother’s dark form disappear down the corridor, then turned back to the empty room.
The hours crawled.
He paced. Couldn’t help it—the restless energy demanded movement, demanded action, demanded something other than this interminable waiting. The bond thrummed with Elsa’s distant presence, her emotions muted but constant. Nervous anticipation. Determination. The faint echo of fear that she refused to let consume her.
He felt it all, and it only sharpened the need clawing at his insides.
Through the window, he watched the sun track its slow arc across the winter sky. Each degree it dropped toward the horizon tightened the tension coiling in his muscles. The Blood Moon wouldn’t rise until full dark, but he could already feel itspull—that ancient, primal call that turned kings into beasts and hunters into something worse.
His father had warned him about nights like these. In the lucid moments before the corruption claimed him completely, when he could still recognize his own son, he’d gripped Sylas’s arm with trembling claws and whispered words that haunted him still.
The Blood Moon shows you what you really are, boy. Not what you pretend to be. Not what the crown demands. What lives in your marrow when the control breaks.
Tonight, he would find out if that truth was worth fearing.
36
Elsa
The Lux Sabers arrived with a single knock.
Elsa had barely finished pulling on the fur covers when the door swung open and five armored females filled the threshold. Not the usual pair assigned to shadow her through the fortress—this was a full contingent, their ceremonial blades sheathed and gleaming at their hips, their postures rigid with something that didn’t quite match the coldness she’d come to expect from Yzefrxyl warriors.
Reverence. That was the word. These females carried themselves like priestesses approaching a shrine.