Selene lay awake in the dark.

  The inn’s walls creaked faintly with the breath of Ashara’s night, but she couldn’t sleep. Not here. Not surrounded by the stink of incense and dust and the unnatural quiet of a city ruled by the dead.

  Her hand turned slowly in the air above her, fingers opening and closing. A faint shimmer of frost clung to her skin, tracing white lines over her knuckles. It never spread far—just enough to glint like ice catching moonlight.

  Adonis had called it a gift. She knew better. It was a reminder.

  The frost wasn’t hers. It had never been hers. She hadn’t earned it. She hadn’t wanted it. And yet it clung to her, as if even the desert itself wanted her bound to someone else’s path.

  Her grey eyes narrowed.

  Not mine… but not theirs, either.

  She let the frost fade and closed her eyes, though sleep didn’t come. Memories pressed in, heavy as sandstorms. She’d pushed them down for years, kept them buried so Kalen wouldn’t see the cracks. But here, in the heart of the Black Meridian, with vampires whispering in shadowed halls and liches walking openly in the streets, she couldn’t hold them back anymore.

  The scent of smoke. The gleam of crimson banners. The weight of her mother’s hand, dragging her forward.

  Selene drew in a slow breath.

  And the past came flooding back.

  ***

  The banquet hall smelled of iron no matter how many braziers of incense the servants lit. Selene sat at her father’s knee, the marble floor cold through her silks, while laughter rolled like thunder above her.

  Lord Varik Duskbane raised his goblet. “Observe,” he said, and the guests turned as one. His smile flashed white against skin pale as polished bone. “Even wolves can learn to bow.”

  Selene’s father, Daelen, didn’t flinch. His hands were knotted around the arms of his chair, tendons straining as if they meant to snap. His beard, streaked with early silver, lifted slightly when he inhaled through his nose—long, steady, deliberate. His jaw worked, but he said nothing.

  “Stand the pups,” Varik commanded.

  Two servants in crimson sashes hauled Selene and her brother up by their elbows. Kalen jerked free of one man’s grip, shoulders square, chin raised like a cub daring the storm. Selene copied him, though her pulse drummed hard enough she thought it would split her ribs.

  The hall chuckled. A vampire noble leaned forward from her couch, jewels catching firelight. “Stubborn stock, Lord Varik. They’ll break their teeth before their backs.”

  “Then they will learn,” Varik replied smoothly. He gestured, and the servants pressed the twins down onto their knees again, harder this time.

  Daelen surged half out of his seat. For a moment Selene thought he’d strike, but her mother’s hand caught his wrist under the table, her knuckles white. Liora’s voice was soft, too soft for anyone but her husband to hear. “Not here. Not yet.”

  Selene’s throat burned. Every instinct screamed to claw, to bite, to be more than this. But no circle had awakened in her or Kalen yet. They had no teeth but their pride.

  Kalen’s whisper cut against her ear, sharp as broken glass. “One day, Selene. Not forever.”

  Varik’s smile widened, oblivious. “See? Even young wolves can kneel. Mine is a generous hand.” He drained his goblet, blood-dark wine staining his lips, and the laughter rose again.

  ***

  Later, in their chambers, Daelen’s pacing shook the candelabras. His voice was hoarse. “He weakens. Varik loses favor. When he falls, we fall with him.”

  Selene pressed into her mother’s side, small enough still to curl against Liora’s shawl. “But why us?” she whispered. “Why not just him?”

  Liora stroked her daughter’s hair, the motion trembling. “Because wolves do not survive without their pack. And he has chained us as part of his.”

  A knock came at the shuttered window. When Daelen opened it, a man in desert furs slipped inside, the smell of dust and camel-sweat clinging to him. An Ashfang nomad.

  “They will ride with us,” Daelen told him. His voice cracked, though he stood tall. “Two cubs, brother and sister. You’ll take them when you leave at dawn.”

  The nomad studied the twins, his expression unreadable in the dim light. Then he nodded once. “The desert makes no promises. But it leaves no leashes.”

  Selene didn’t understand fully then. She only understood the way her mother pulled her close that night, whispering the same phrase over and over: “Play the game until you can win. Play it until you can win.”

  ***

  The caravan left in silence at dawn. Selene remembered Kalen’s hand clamped around hers, both of them muffled in cloaks far too large. Their father stood in the courtyard, fists at his side, eyes locked on hers. He didn’t wave. He didn’t smile.

  They never saw him or their mother again. By nightfall, the Ashfang had told them of the executions. Wolves who lost favor were always put down.

  Kalen didn’t cry that night. He stared into the fire until his eyes burned red. Selene did cry, but only once, only then. When her tears dried, she pressed her forehead to his shoulder and whispered the vow that has never left her.

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  “One day, we’ll bury Varik Duskbane.”

  And in the desert wind, she thought she heard her father’s voice: Play it until you can win.

  ***

  The desert didn’t care that they had been born in marble halls.

  By the third night, Selene’s lips had split from the wind. Sand scoured every seam in her borrowed cloak, rasping her skin raw. Her hands ached from clinging to the saddle straps of a camel that never slowed, its gait swaying like a ship in a storm. She had tried to cry into the cloth around her face once, but the tears turned to grit before they reached her chin.

  Kalen rode ahead, jaw locked, his cloak snapping like a banner behind him. He never looked back at her, not once, not even when her small body listed sideways from exhaustion and a nomad caught her before she fell. He was already changing.

  The Ashfang made no allowances for children. At dawn they rose; at dusk they walked. Meat was divided in strips thinner than her fingers. Water was rationed with a stone’s worth in the hand — sip, pass, sip, pass. One night, when Selene coughed too long, an old nomad pressed a skin into her palm, then snatched it back before she could drink more than a mouthful. “Live like the desert,” he told her. “Take only what you keep.”

  The lesson burned hotter than thirst.

  ***

  A month later, her knees were hard enough that kneeling in sand no longer stung. She could skin a hare with the bone knife they gave her, set traps with twine scavenged from their packs. Her body stayed small, but her hands grew sure.

  Kalen changed faster. He learned the bow like a second spine, snapping strings against his palm until the flesh tore, then binding it with cloth and drawing again. When one of the nomad boys mocked him for his pale eyes, Kalen fought until both of them bled. The boy’s father laughed and called it wolf pride.

  Selene remembered the moment clearest when she realized the desert was no less a leash than Varik’s chain — it only demanded differently.

  It was in the middle of a sandstorm. The caravan huddled under low tents, cloth whipping like angry wings. One of the camels panicked, snapping its tether and bolting into the storm. Selene’s instinct was to hide under her shawl. Kalen’s was to chase.

  She remembered the blur of him disappearing into the sand wall, the storm swallowing his cloak. Her throat cracked on his name, but the nomads held her down, pinning her with calloused hands. “If he is wolf, he returns,” they said. “If not, the desert keeps him.”

  Hours later, he staggered back, dragging the camel by its reins, his face streaked with grit and blood. He collapsed to his knees but grinned, teeth shining through the dirt.

  That night, the Ashfang feasted as if he had slain a lion. They called him Duskfang, a name the desert gave him, not the Court.

  Selene never forgot how he looked at her when they sat by the fire. His eyes were wild, feral, but his hand was steady as he offered her the first cut of meat. He didn’t say anything, but she understood: he would never be chained again.

  ***

  The months bled into years. The twins grew harder, sharper. Selene listened more than she spoke, learning the patterns of silence that survived in a tribe where words could cost food. Kalen grew quicker to strike, his anger a blade he never bothered to sheath.

  And every night, when the wind howled like wolves across the dunes, Selene whispered the vow she had made in the Court.

  One day, Varik Duskbane. One day, we’ll bury you.

  ***

  Years slipped by in the dunes. The Ashfang taught them how to live, but they were never family. Selene knew it the night their chieftain spat into the fire and told them, “The wolf blood is cursed. Sooner or later, you’ll bite us instead of our enemies.”

  Kalen snarled at the insult, but Selene only bowed her head. She had already seen the way the nomad children shied from their eyes, how the elders whispered that their strange hair and pale gaze brought misfortune. When the Ashfang moved on, they did not stop the twins from trailing behind—but they did not look back either.

  That was how they became wanderers.

  ***

  The desert stripped them again, this time without the thin shield of a tribe. Nights spent huddled beneath ragged cloth, bellies aching with hunger. Kalen hunted with bow and knife, and Selene learned to turn scraps of cactus pulp into drink. They grew lean, their movements sharpened to instinct.

  It was hunger that drove them to the village.

  She remembered the first sight of it: low huts half-sunk into the dunes, smoke curling from cookfires, the distant bleat of goats. For a moment, Selene had thought it a mirage, but the smell of flatbread on the wind was too real.

  Kalen wanted to take food and run. His hand tightened on the bow at his back as they crouched in the dunes, watching. Selene touched his wrist. “If we steal, we’ll be hunted. If we ask, we might be fed.”

  He didn’t like it, but he listened.

  ***

  That was when Barek found them.

  The scarred hunter had been standing guard at the well, spear resting against his shoulder. His eyes narrowed when he saw two gaunt figures stumble out of the dunes—children with silver-white locs matted with sand, their grey eyes too sharp for their years.

  “Nomad strays,” he muttered, but he didn’t lift his weapon. Not yet.

  Kalen bristled, stepping in front of Selene, wolf-quick even in his hunger. “We’re not strays.”

  Barek studied them for a long, tense moment. Then, without a word, he tossed a strip of dried meat into the sand between them.

  Selene crouched first, snatching it up, splitting it in two. She handed the larger piece to Kalen, ignoring his scowl. Barek’s mouth twitched—not quite a smile, but approval.

  “You’ll follow rules here,” Barek said finally, voice rough as stone. “Work for your bread. Hunt for your share. Cause trouble, and the desert can keep you.”

  It wasn’t an invitation. It was a test.

  Selene bowed her head. “We’ll work.”

  Kalen chewed his meat in silence, eyes still locked on Barek. The wolf in him didn’t kneel easily. But when Barek turned his back and walked toward the huts, Kalen followed.

  Selene followed too, the vow of revenge still burning in her chest.

  That was the night the twins stepped into the village—still orphans of blood and desert, but no longer alone.

  ***

  Selene’s eyes snapped open.

  The scents of the Crimson Court and the burning desert were gone, replaced by the stench of incense and cold iron. The walls of Hassim’s inn pressed close around her, faint glyph-light buzzing at the edges.

  Her breath left her in a cloud of frost before she realized her fingers were coated in rime. The memory had bled into her power again. The Court. Varik Duskbane. Her parents’ last scream.

  Kalen stirred in the cot across from her. Even half-asleep, his hand twitched toward the void edge of his blade. He lived ready for blood.

  Selene let her frost fade, forcing her pulse steady. But her thoughts wouldn’t calm. They had left the Crimson Court behind. Left the Ashfang. Even left the desert village that had given them shelter. Yet here, in the heart of Ashara, the past felt closer than ever.

  A voice broke the silence—Adonis, standing in the doorway. His silhouette filled the frame, calm but sharp as always.

  “You’re restless,” he said. Not a question.

  Selene met his gaze, her jaw tight. “The Crimson Court won’t forget us. And I won’t forget them.”

  Adonis didn’t move. For a long moment, only the sound of Ashara’s streets seeped through the shutters—carts creaking, voices haggling, somewhere a scream quickly silenced.

  Then Vantage’s voice cut across her mind, cool and clinical:

  > “Alert. Multiple signatures approaching the inn. Not Magi. Not human. Vampire retainers.”

  The frost flared back at her fingertips, sharp and cold.

  Adonis’s smirk was faint, but his eyes glowed with a predator’s calm. “Then it seems,” he said softly, “your past has already found you.”

  Outside, the hoofbeats of armored riders shook the cobbles.