This can’t be real, I think, staring at the narrow script.Everything we’ve been taught… it can’t all be wrong. Can it?
I flip ahead a few pages, scanning names and stories I’ve never seen or heard before. Queens who ruled with direwolves at their sides, uniting the humans. Protecting them.
And then I find the drawings.
My breath catches in my throat.
I turn and set the book on the little table beside the shelf, pulling out my mother’s journals. I don’t need to see the drawings side-by-side to know they’re the same, but I lay them out, anyway.
It’s the crown my mother drew over and over—the twin wolves leaping at a precious gem set between them. Absolutely identical.
This is the crown of the Strumfrost line, forged thousands of years ago and imbued with powerful magic.
My mind reels. How could my mother know about this? Where could she have possibly seen it?
“Anassa?”I reach out, prodding the bond. She’s silent. If she knows anything about this, she’s not giving me a fucking hint.
I turn the page, looking for an explanation, anything.
What I find is another drawing.
Adrenaline floods my veins.
It’s an illustration of the carving I found behind that tapestry in the servant’s passage: a queen astride her direwolf, the Sturmfrost crown with the two leaping wolves perched atop her head.
Fuck. I almost forgot.That’swhere I’ve seen the crown before.
But how?Why? The questions flash through my mind in a nonsensical tumble.
This is… impossible.
And yet…
Something tugs at my memory. The carving, the illustration, my mother’s drawings… this isn’t the only place I’ve seen the crown.
The realization hits me like a blow to the head.
The arena. That flash of metal in the drain—the shape of it.
It was the crown.
Before I can even begin to process what this means, the sound of heavy footsteps approaching the door snaps me out of my thoughts.
My heart stops.
Stark.
The urge to hide the book surges through me, but something tells me it’s pointless. This isn’t just any book. He’s going to know I touched it. Like the knowledge inside has left some indelible mark on me.
That makes no fucking sense, I think, shoving my mother’s journals back under my shirt.
But it doesn’t make sense that I knew exactly which book to read, either. That this particular volume is the one that called to me. That the illustrations inside match with my mother’s drawings, her visions—and mine.
Noneof this makes sense.
Behind me, the door creaks open.
With my heart pulsing in my throat, I turn.
