Chapter 75: First Shift

The meadow behind the palace was quiet.

Butterflies drifted between the wildflowers. Somewhere in the distance, a songbird was trilling.

It was a lovely place to learn something new.

Valen was not enjoying it at all.

"I’m scared," he whispered.

He stood in the middle of the grass, his small hands twisted in the hem of his tunic, his shoulders hunched up around his ears. His father knelt in front of him, one hand braced on his knee to keep his balance.

Karina stood a few feet away, her arms wrapped around herself. Rynan bounced beside her. Daerys sat cross-legged in the grass with his wooden block, watching everything with round, serious eyes.

Even Rafael and Aldric had come, standing off to the side like two grumpy statues.

Karina’s stomach twisted at the sight of Valen’s pale face.

"Maybe," she said slowly, "we shouldn’t do this."

"No."

Leonidas said it so quickly that she blinked.

"No," he said again, much softer this time, his eyes still fixed on their son. "Not yet. Please."

Karina bit her lip. She wanted to argue. She wanted to scoop Valen up and carry him back inside, away from anything that might hurt him.

But she couldn’t. Not with Leonidas sounding like that.

"Valen," Leonidas said gently. "Look at me."

Valen looked up, his lower lip trembling.

"Do you see your mother?"

Valen glanced over his shoulder. Karina lifted a hand and gave him a small wave, her smile a bit shaky.

"Mama is here," Leonidas said. "She is right there. She is not going anywhere."

"...Okay."

"And I am here too."

Valen sniffled. "You are?"

"I am right here. I will not let anything happen to you." Leonidas held out both hands, palms up. "You are safe, Valen. You are safe, and you can do this."

Valen slowly, placed his hands in his father’s.

They were so small in Leonidas’s grip. Leonidas’s thumbs brushed over the back of them.

"Now," he murmured. "Close your eyes."

Valen closed them.

"Good. Take a deep breath."

Valen breathed in.

"Now, I want you to think about being a panther. Not the way I look. The way you feel. You know that warm feeling you get in your chest when you are happy? Or when you are running very fast?"

Valen nodded, his brow furrowed in concentration.

"That is your beast. It is inside you. It has always been there." Leonidas’s voice dropped. "You do not need to force it. You only need to let it out. Picture it stretching. Waking up. Wanting to run."

Silence fell across the meadow.

Karina realized she was holding her breath. Beside her, Rynan had gone completely still, his ears twitching.

For a long moment, nothing happened.

Then Valen’s fingers twitched.

A soft shiver ran through his small frame. His shoulders rolled. A faint sound echoed from deep in his chest, half sigh, half growl.

Fur rippled across his skin, jet black and glossy.

"That is it," Leonidas breathed, and his voice cracked. "That is it, son. Keep going."

Valen’s body curled inward. His tunic slumped to the ground. Bones shifted and reshaped with a crackling sound, and in place of the little boy stood a small black panther cub, wobbling on four legs that seemed too long for the rest of him.

His ears flicked. His purple eyes blinked.

He looked down at his paws.

Then he looked up.

"Yesssss!" Karina cried, both fists shooting into the air. Her heart nearly burst out of her chest. "You did it! Valen, you did it!"

"Weeeeee!" Rynan spun in circles, whooping so loudly that a flock of birds burst from the trees. "Valen shift! Valen shift! Valen is a kitty!"

"Yayyyy!"

The sound was so tiny and so unexpected that everyone turned.

Daerys was laughing.

He had dropped his wooden block and was clapping both hands together, his face split into a wide smile. His shoulders shook with giggles. It was a bright sound, one that Karina had not heard in weeks, and she felt her eyes sting.

She looked at Leonidas.

He was still kneeling on the grass, his hands hovering in the air where his son’s had been. His mouth was slightly open. And down his cheek, ran a single tear.

He did not wipe it away.

"Good work," he whispered. "Good work, son."

The cub gave a chirping little mew.

Then, in a burst of energy, he bounded off across the meadow, paws thumping, tail high. He ran in a wobbly, delighted circle, tripped over his own feet, rolled, and popped back up again, tail lashing.

Karina turned to Leonidas, who had finally gotten to his feet. His face was still damp, but his expression was calm.

"Thank you. For... helping him, you know," she said quietly.

He looked at her.

"Of course, Empress."

~

Five days.

Dorian had counted every one of them.

The first three, he had spent in a miserable, damp cave in the mountainside, barely deep enough to shelter him from the wind. He had chosen it for exactly that reason. Nobody went looking for a king’s general in a place fit only for bats.

The search parties had been thick at first. Those first two nights, he had heard them everywhere, boots on gravel, dogs howling, torches bobbing between the trees like fireflies. But Shadow’s Edge was a small kingdom, and its soldiers were tired and afraid, and Dorian knew every trail they hadn’t thought to check.

By the third night, they had stopped coming.

So he had left.

He had traveled after dark and slept by day, keeping to ravines and goat paths, avoiding roads and villages and anything with a lantern. Twice he had gone to ground in the roots of a fallen tree while patrols passed within a stone’s throw. Once he had shifted and slipped through a farmer’s field, close enough to smell the man’s supper.

Nobody had seen him. Nobody had looked hard enough.

Now he crouched on a high, windswept ridge, elbows on his knees, staring out into the dark.

He scratched at the crusted wound along his shoulder, where a panther’s teeth had almost taken the arm off. It had healed badly. It ached in the cold.

He didn’t mind.

Pain was an old friend. It reminded him of what he was owed.

Rumors were interesting things. He had picked up plenty over the last few days, from the shepherd he had cornered near the ridge, from the merchant caravan that had passed too close to the pass. The white panther Sovereign had survived. And a party of imperial soldiers, led by none other than the Snake King himself, had ridden into Shadow’s Edge with the Empress’s banner flying.

Dorian huffed a laugh.

A snake. Riding to a panther’s rescue. It was almost sweet.

He rose slowly, joints popping, and stepped to the edge of the ridge.

The wind hit him in the face. He breathed it in and stared out over the valley, at the black shapes of the ridges rolling away toward the horizon.

And there, far off past the last of the mountains, glowed a faint smudge of gold.

Lights.

Thousands of them, pinpricks scattered across the darkness like a fallen constellation.

The Imperial palace.

Dorian’s gaze lingered on it. His eyes narrowed. He could not see the walls from here, nor the towers, nor the balcony where a certain red-haired woman slept behind barred windows and rows of soldiers.

But he could see the light.

Slowly, very slowly, he smiled.