Chapter 72

Serena

The snow did not fall inside Nightshade.

It never had.

The wards burned too warm, too alive, the magic of generations keeping winter’s bite at bay even when the mountains beyond the walls lay buried beneath ice and bone-deep cold.

That was how I knew the Frostfang delegation had arrived before anyone announced it.

Cold followed them.

Not the natural kind — but the kind that clung to wolves who had stood too long beside something wrong.

I stood in the council chamber ...