Chapter 119: Saved by the bell 1

EDELINA

I felt rather pleased with myself, walking the corridor with a spring in my step I hadn’t managed in years. My mental checklist was already forming for the next call. My fake father, that convenient old alias I’d carved out decades ago, needed to whisper the right things into the right ears now, planting the seed of a succession war should it become necessary before Johann’s birthday arrived and complicated everything beyond recovery.

I had the pieces arranged exactly where I wanted them, and the thought made my lips curve upward.

I ran through the timeline again as I walked.

The blood test.

The funeral appearance with Willow.

The rogues, quietly winding down before they became a liability rather than an asset.

Every piece was settling into place with a satisfying click, the kind of momentum I hadn’t allowed myself to feel in months, not since Cornelius first started looking at me with suspicion instead of affection.

My phone buzzed against my palm.

I half-jerked upright, the number flashing across the screen stopping my breath for half a second.

Goddess... It was the rogue network. Those idiots.

I cut the call before it finished its first ring, my thumb jabbing the screen harder than necessary. Bradley could very well be intercepting communications through the kingdom’s networks at this exact moment, hunting for exactly this kind of careless slip, and I refused to hand him something so easy after everything I’d already sacrificed to keep myself clean.

A message followed almost immediately, the little notification bubble popping up before I’d even fully lowered my arm.

Do not avoid us.

I thought I already told you we were done, I typed back, my thumbs moving fast and irritated. I am in treacherous waters and I do not need this. Why the heck are you still calling me?

Three dots appeared on the screen, blinking steadily while I waited, tapping one heeled foot against the stone floor.

We have been spreading the gift you blessed us with, the reply finally read. So far, only four have escaped death from the fifty three we shared it with.

A chuckle escaped me, low and dry, edged with something closer to contempt than amusement.

For starters, I typed, it is not a blessing.

I paused, my thumbs hovering over the screen, debating whether the explanation was even worth the effort of typing out for people who’d clearly never bothered learning their own history properly. I decided it was, if only to shut them up permanently.

Do you know why we’re even capable of sharing this thing when werewolves ordinarily cannot? In the old days, some of your people believed we were right. That we stood on the correct side of history, whatever that side turned out to actually mean in the end. Plenty of it came down to loved ones standing on our side of the conflict, people they could not bear to live without once the curse was passed around. The goddess granted those specific few a small mercy, and that mercy carried forward into what my people can still do now, generations later.

I let that sit a beat before finishing, my irritation bleeding fully into the words now.

I reread what I had written. The history was true enough, stripped down to its bones. The goddess had intervened when the pain of separation became too much for certain humans to bear, had granted them the ability to bridge the gap between species through blood and will. But that didn’t make it holy. That didn’t make it good.

It is no blessing. But you must present it as one, regardless of the truth. The four who survived clearly wanted this badly enough to earn it. The others plainly did not want it half as much, or they would have survived too. Give it only to people who genuinely, desperately want it. And stop contacting me directly. This channel is compromised the moment anyone at this estate decides to look closely enough.

I slid the phone into the small clutch at my hip and drew a slow breath, tipping my head back against the cool stone wall of the corridor, letting a moment of quiet settle over me before I continued toward wherever my next task waited.

When I opened my eyes, Willow was sprinting toward me.

Her hair had come loose from whatever elegant style she’d worn it in earlier, dark strands sticking damp to her forehead and the sides of her neck, and her eyes carried a wildness I hadn’t seen from her before, not once, not even during the ritual with the rogue back in that dingy little infirmary room.

I stepped forward to meet her, my hands already reaching because why was Lycaon acting out. "What’s wrong with you—"

She cut me off, breathless, her words tumbling out in a panicked, half-formed rush. "I know you. You’re the Queen. You have to help me. There’s a sick man in my head. He’s killed people. He’s actually killed people, and I don’t know how long I’ve been gone, I don’t remember hours, I don’t remember—"

My stomach dropped straight through the floor, though I kept my face carefully composed.

This wasn’t Lycaon standing in front of me. This was Willow herself, fully surfaced, terrified out of her mind, apparently emerging for the first time since he’d first claimed control of her body back in that infirmary bathroom or earlier than that.

I grabbed her by both shoulders, gripping tight enough to still some of her trembling, and cast a quick glance down the corridor in either direction, checking for witnesses to this particular unraveling.

"Come with me," I murmured, already steering her forward, my grip firm but my voice pitched soft and soothing, the exact tone I’d once used on Johann as a boy when nightmares chased him from his own bed.

I led her to Johann’s chambers, glancing once more over my shoulder before I shut the door and turned the lock with a decisive click.

"Sit," I instructed, gesturing toward the chair near the window.

"Your Majesty..."

"I’m sure you’re simply panicking," I continued, gesturing toward the bed with what I hoped read as calm reassurance. "Sit. Breathe. Tell me slowly."

"You’re not listening to me." Her voice cracked entirely on that, and she pressed both hands against her temples like she could physically hold her own skull together through sheer pressure alone.