I need answers. I need to know what happened to her, who did this. For Daciana’s sake.
The grave comes into view, marked by the stone I helped place and the flowers that Daciana left. They’re wilting now, but somehow that makes it more poignant. More real.
I kneel beside the grave, feeling the earth beneath my knees. The wolves emerge from the shadows, surrounding me in a loose circle. They aren’t threatening me; they’re just…watching. Waiting to see why I’m here.
“I know what I’m about to do borders on forbidden,” I say to them quietly, my hand hovering over the stone. “But I need to understand. I need to see.”
The largest wolf—the new alpha of this small group—tilts his head, amber eyes fixed on me.
“I will protect Daciana,” I continue, the words feeling like a vow. “With everything I have, with everything I am. I swear it to you.”
I press my palm flat against the gravesite, and magic rises to the surface unbidden. The earth begins to glow beneath my hand—a soft, pulsing purple that makes the wolves shift restlessly.
I should stop. Should walk away and leave well enough alone.
I remove my hand slowly, watching as the purple light follows my fingertips like smoke. The magic feels wrong already: too heavy, too eager. This is the kind of power that demands payment.
I draw the symbol carefully, each line precise despite the tremor starting in my fingers. It’s an old symbol, one I learned from texts I wasn’t supposed to read. One that opens doors that should stay closed.
When I complete the circle around it, the ground doesn’t just glow.
It opens.
The ground disappears beneath the symbol, replaced by a round basin filled with swirling, translucent images. I stand up and take a step back, my heart pounding as I see her—the female wolf—in her final moments.
She’s running. Suddenly, she stops, her head jerking up like she has heard something.
Then, I hear it, too.
The whistling cuts through the vision like a blade, high-pitched and so wrong that I wince, my hands flying to my ears. It doesn’t help. The sound is coming from the basin, from the past, but it feels like it’s drilling directly into my skull.
In the basin, the wolf collapses.
My stomach clenches as I watch her hit the ground, her body convulsing. This is what I came to see, but witnessing it now makes rage and grief explode in my chest.
She writhes on the ground, her legs kicking uselessly as whatever magic that horrible sound carried tears through her. Then, a figure appears—tall, shrouded in shadow, moving with deliberate calm.
I strain forward, desperate to see his face. This is it. This is the bastard who did this.
But the angle is wrong. The wolf can’t lift her head, can’t see anything but his legs, his torso. And I can only see what she saw.
“Come on,” I mutter. “Show me. Show me your face.”
The figure kneels beside her, and for a moment, I think I’ll finally see him. But his face remains in shadow, too far above her line of sight.
His hand extends toward her, and I freeze, every muscle in my body going rigid.
There, on the inner side of his wrist, is a scar. Ugly and puckered, the kind that comes from a deep burn. The tissue is raised and twisted, like whatever burned him went all the way through the skin to the muscle beneath.
The mark of old magic. Of rituals that demand blood and pain as payment.
The wolf’s vision begins to darken, fading at the edges.
I hold my breath, bracing myself for what comes next. I’ve seen death visions before, felt the echoes of final moments. When someone dies in agony, there’s always a flash—white-hot and searing, the pain so intense it burns itself into the magic.
I wait for it. Brace for it.
But it doesn’t come.
