Chapter 58 Shards In The Blood

• The road north twisted through broken hills, where the stars looked pale and the wind carried whispers that did not belong to the night.
• Lucia walked with her cloak pulled tight, though the chill was not from the air but from the sensation that every stone, every shadow, was watching. Kelvin moved at her side, shoulders squared, jaw locked. The gash across his chest, wrapped in layers of cloth that Mirabelle had soaked with priestess oils, throbbed faintly. It should have knitted by now. For a Lycan King, wounds were not supposed to linger. But this one pulsed with an ugly rhythm, as though it carried the heartbeat of something not his own.
• Behind them, Abby murmured prayers into the air, the soft cadence meant to quiet restless spirits. The warriors marched in uneven silence. Even Varian, who always had something clever or cutting to say, kept his mouth closed and his blade near his side.