Page 123 of The Lure of Wolves and Whispers

A shriek pierces the air. Then another. A mallet smacks wood, again and again, until Eavan jerks, jaw frozen wide in a dying scream—then, mercifully, she stills.

The woman at Cash’s side collapses. More than one man heaves up the contents of his stomach, retching violently beneath the moonlight.

I watch blood pooling beneath the executioner’s table, spreading along the dock, as if all the souls haunting this place are already seeking the next of us to join them.

And at the top of the customs building, almost blending in with the sharp arch of the roof, I swear I see the snap of a black cloak in the night before it vanishes over the rise.

Wolf was right, that very first night when he snuck into my room with Fang. To survive here, to be a part of this the way I want to be now that I know the truth, I needed to become more ruthless than the version of me he met when we first struck our bargain.

I am not who I once was before I came here.

I am who I need to be to face the war that is coming—the war that will make usallbleed.

And beneath the horror and the guilt…

I think I am stronger for it.

I see the horror, the loathing across every face with each silent step on the long walk back.

We pass without words under the gates, the royal carriage rattling over the cobblestones ahead. Cash still doesn’t wear his crown, and this time he is the one on the bench facing back toward the nobles, never taking his furious glare off his stepmother.

The sight sparks something in the nobles.

I can’t see who first whispers the words as we enter the castle again, but they are sharp and clear in the dark night—just like the murmur of agreement.

Savage,the nobles whisper.

The High Queen is savage.

THIRTY

The whole castle falls into a silence that could pass as mourning.

I know better and use the time to train.

I run through all the drills I can remember from Finn—push-ups and sit-ups and twists, running up and down the stairs outside my room until I can’t breathe anymore. Anything that might give me an edge. Anything that might help me survive.

Because only one of the four of us remaining in the Assay will live through what comes next.

Oona. Aisling. Saraid.

Andme.

The invitation arrives the morning after Eavan’s execution. A fucking ball, of all things, three days from now to celebrate the end of the Assay on the night before the final test. And yes, that’s the actual word the High Queen’s secretary scrawls on the neatly folded paper.Celebrate.

Muzzled fury fills the halls of the castle as word gets out.

There are no crowds in bright colors in the marble foyer, waiting at the gleaming doors of the throne room. I go with Talon to check the halls, to try to get a feel for the mood from the alcoves at the edges of various rooms, hood pulled up over my head to hide my face.

On the second day after the execution, one of the nobles attacks a Cymrean.

The nobleman’s fists slam into the Cymrean’s jaw with a crack that splits the air, and the man’s skull slams back on the marble outside the throne room as he falls. Bruises swell along his jaw, his cheeks, before the other nobles pull him off the Cymrean.

But the gardai don’t arrest him.

There’s no second traipse down to the Black Quay.

If the High Queen has the nobleman executed, she does it quietly. And that alone tells me what I need to know and what makes Talon’s brown eyes glow with a quiet, lethal satisfaction as we spend hours together, trying to figure out who might know where the High King’s been moved, or where we could search for him ourselves.