Like a warning.
Stubborn old wolf.
***
I don’t notice when Valeria starts moving without me.
It happens slowly, the way rot happens, from the inside out, invisible until it isn’t. She comes back with blood on her hands I haven’t watched her earn. She makes decisions I haven’t been part of. She turns three humans without asking, then three more, building her own small court of freshly made scions who look at her the way she once looked at me.
Valeria is not hiding it.
She doesn’t think I’ll object.
She’s right that I don’t, not at first.
It’s the direction of it that eventually catches my attention. The Coven has laws for reasons even I respect. TheLaw of Silenceexists because, without it, we are hunted.
Valeria knows this.
Valeria doesn’t care.
She has started to move like something that believes itself untouchable, and the cold, ancient part of me, the part that wasmade from darkness and therefore understands it better than she ever will, recognizes what she’s becoming.
A problem.
For the Coven.
For me.
I am still deciding what to do about it the night the Coven of Crows comes.
One moment, smoke drifts lazily above the ruined farmhouse, embers spiraling upward into a sky streaked with ash, and the next, the stars dim as though something vast has passed between them and the earth. The fire lowers instinctively, its flames drawing inward, and the air tightens with a pressure that feels less like arrival and more like correction.
Black wings sweep across the dark in a single, unbroken arc.
The sound is heavy and deliberate, silk drawn across stone, and when it fades, Nyx stands before me as though she has always occupied that exact place in the courtyard. Shadows move around her in slow currents, brushing the edges of the firelight until the flames shrink back from her presence. Her purple eyes rest on me without heat or curiosity.
“She broke the Law,” Nyx says.
The words settle into the space between us with the quiet finality of a blade laid on stone.
Behind her, the Coven fans out with ritual precision, boots touching earth in unison, wings folding into dark cloaks that drink the firelight. They move through the courtyard like a closing net, not hurried, not uncertain, their presence reshaping the night around them.
I look past Nyx.
Valeria stands against the stone wall, smoke threading through her hair, eyes blazing with the last incandescent flare of the storm she has always been. The laughter is gone from hermouth, but the fire remains. It burns hotter now, distilled into something lethal and bright.
Her gaze finds mine.
Understanding passes between us.
The Law has never bent.
Khaos steps forward, and the air compresses.
Shadows tighten first, drawing inward as though the darkness itself is being gathered into his grasp. The courtyard falls unnaturally still, the fire flattening into a low, strained glow.
Reality loosens around her.
