I spin back to her, thoughts racing. “And why did Mother get better suddenly when I became Bonded? She was more lucid the last few months than she has been inyears. Meanwhile, I started having nightmares and hallucinations. None of this makes anysense?—”
I break off, blinking at the wolf in sudden realization.
Perhaps it’s time you do some searching of your own.
She said something like that to me when I started training with Stark and he showed me his library. She wanted me to do research then, but I didn’t listen.
Suddenly galvanized, I return to the journals and gather them up off the ground. Anassa watches with the lupine equivalent of a raised eyebrow.
“Fine,” I say to my wolf, my decision rising above my grief. “If you won’t give me answers, I know where to find them.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
The castle corridors are dark as I make my way to Stark’s office, my senses heightened by my subterfuge. I don’t want to be seen slinking into his private space at this time of night—by him or anyone else.
Not because it’s forbidden, or even frowned upon, but because some creeping intuition tells me the information I’m searching for is… dangerous.
Luckily, after weeks of traversing this path twice a day for training, I know every creaky floorboard, every shadow, every hidden corner. Each time I hear footsteps or voices coming, I melt out of sight.
My mother’s journals, tucked safely under my shirt, are heavy against my skin. Like a terrible, dark secret.
Stark’s office appears empty when I push the door open and peek inside. No sound. Only one lamp is lit, casting the outer room—his sparring floor and library—in deep, flickering shadows. He must be at a late training session, or back in his quarters off the Daemos pack area. I probably don’t have much time.
I slip inside, grab the lamp from its hook beside the door, and cross straight to the shelves. I’m magnetized to a certain onewith unnerving certainty. It’s that shelf with the ancient books that drew my eyes so powerfully before.
Lamplight illuminates the dusty spines in a dull orange glow.
My hand rises to one in particular. It’s visibly older than the others, its leather binding cracked and worn. My heart pounds as I slide it from its perch. The thick volume feels heavier in my hand than it should. The pages are yellowed deeply with age, their edges starting to crumble.
It has no title. No inscription. Nothing to indicate the nature of its contents.
Yet I know it’s the right book, without logic or reason.
Blood rushes in my head as I draw the cover open, fingers gentle on the brittle pages inside. There’s no title page, either. No table of contents.
The first chapter is titled simply, “The Sturmfrost Queens.”
It’s a history of Nocturna, I realize, scanning the first few pages. And it’s not even printed like a proper book—it’shandwritten, every page packed edge to edge in careful, curling script.
My eyes scan the pages rapidly, drinking the information in even as my mind struggles to make sense of it.
The Sturmfrost Queens were the original rulers of Nocturna, the book proclaims. A long matrilineal line of Bonded warriors with incredible powers who ruled the kingdom for centuries. The dates listed are long before King Cyril’s line took over.
I shake my head in silent confusion.Is this for real?
As far as I know, Nocturna has always been ruled by an unbonded human king. There must have been someone ruling over Nocturna before them, but…
I frown, realizing I don’t know the history beyond the last five hundred years. They never taught us that in school. I’ve never seen it mentioned in any history book.
In fact, we were taught that Nocturna as we know it didn’t exist before King Cyril’s ancestor took the throne.Hemade the kingdom of Nocturna what it is today.Hebrought the humans and wolves together under one rule.
I always assumed Nocturna was just a collection of human encampments before that. A scattered civilization fighting to survive in a wild, dangerous world populated by voracious predators—direwolves and Siphons who hunted us like cattle, threatening our very existence.
Then, as the legends say, the Faceless Goddess sought to uplift humans and balance the power between us and our enemies. So, she blessed King Cyril’s ancestor with theDiren Blæd, giving him the power to control the wolves and us the ability to bond with them.
That gave us the strength to drive the Siphons off our land, thus beginning the centuries-long war between our kingdom and Astreona.
But according to this book, none of that is true. Nocturna ismillenniaolder than we’ve been told. And the direwolves were a central part of the Sturmfrost line’s rule. They’ve always been our allies.
