Esmerelda, Leonard, and Min burst into the dining room. The instant Esmerelda sees her father, a sound tears out of her—high, raw, and keening. Not human. Not even wolf. It’s the sound of something breaking in a place so deep, I can feel it splinter in my chest. Ice floods my veins. Not adrenaline. Not heat. Just cold dread clawing up my stomach.
“Please. Please, someone help me,” Mr. Lovell begs again, his voice frayed and shaking. His lower body is locked solid, gray marble where flesh should be. His upper body jerks violently, desperate to escape what’s already claimed half of him.
This is a man I’ve heard about in stories. Brave, unyielding, feared. As alpha, he’s stared down silver blades and enemies without flinching. But now, seeing him plead for his life…it’s wrong in a way I can’t put into words.
Inch by nightmarish inch, the stone creeps higher. His final scream is an unholy sound that will brand itself into my memory to fester there.
“Lay him down.” The words tumble from my mouth, but I feel detached, like I’m watching someone else speak.
Esmerelda’s face… Gods. I’ve never seen pain like that. Not even when Leonard grieved over Jake and Jackson. She turns to me, eyes red, cheeks slick with tears.
“Please, Marcus. Please do something.”
Her voice splinters on the last word, and for a heartbeat, I falter. It nearly breaks me in half. But I will not, cannot, let her father die in my house.
Mrs. Lovell drops to her knees beside him, clutching his petrified hand.
“Iziah, don’t you dare leave me. Please, I can’t live without you. Let’s go to our maze. Come with me into the maze.”
He shifts the only thing he can…his eyes. One tear escapes, carving a wet trail down his graying cheek. There’s an apology in his gaze, and then…nothing. His eyes go glassy. Two perfect, terrible orbs of stone.
The world narrows to a tunnel. My legs move before I think, carrying me to the herb cabinet just outside the dining room. My hands tear at jars, sending lids clattering to the floor as I grab stalks, leaves, anything that might work. I crush them in the mortar, the grating of the marble on marble a merciless rhythm in my ears. It doesn’t drown out the sobs. Or the panic. I work faster than I ever have, but these stalks are stubborn, and time is bleeding away with every heartbeat.
When I rush back into the room, the scene hits me like a physical blow. Esmerelda’s father isn’t the only one. The petrification is spreading. Two more guests are half-gone, their limbs locked and faces frozen mid-scream.
“I need more help!” I bellow at Tammy, one of my servers.
She doesn’t hesitate, bolting from the room. Within seconds, staff and healers flood in, shoving past one another to those affected.
But it’s too late. Before our hands can even touch them, the transformation sweeps through the last of them like a tsunami.In moments, every single person at the table is replaced with cold stone.
And I’m standing in the middle of it, surrounded by statues that used to be people I was supposed to protect.
11
ESMERELDA
The council members drag us through the portal, and the world snaps into a chamber that feels like a tomb. Cold coils around me, carrying the metallic scent of rot and decay beneath the center of the damp stone. The walls rise high, carved from black rock and etched with markings from a time so ancient it feels wrong to even look at them.
The symbols pulse faintly, as if they’re alive, shifting in the corner of my vision, reshaping themselves when I’m not looking. My wolf bristles beneath my skin, her claws scraping at me in warning. The carvings emanate a sound too deep for human ears, vibrating in my bones with the weight of judgement.
Ancient. Stone. This is a place where the stone remembers every error. A place that knows your name before you say it. A place that never forgets.
The fire crackles in the hearth, but it doesn’t warm me. If anything, the heat makes the chill in my blood more pronounced. Fear coils tighter around my ribs with every breath I drag in, like a living being wrapping around me. Tightening. Squeezing. Daring me to exhale so it can constrict more, forcing my breaths to become shallower with each inhale.
I can’t stop shaking. My wolf paces frantically beneath my skin. She hates this space. Hates the judgment saturating the air. The stone walls. The weight of eyes on us. She wants out. She wants to run. She wants blood.
My hands tremble under the blanket Min shoved at me before they dragged us in here. The wool is soft, familiar. It smells like lemon and rosewater—so achingly like her that I hold on tighter, hoping the scent alone will tether me to something solid. Something that isn’t this nightmare.
But nothing feels solid.
The silence in the room is excruciating. It stretches and stretches, so loud in its absence of sound that it becomes a scream all on its own. I want to shout at them to stop wasting time. To do something. To catch whoever did this. Someone stole nearly everything I cared about in a single breath, and all I’ve gotten are questions that slice like knives.
Every word tossed our way cuts deeper than the last.
I still can’t believe this is real.
My mind spins, looking for an exit, any way out of this horror. I whisper the words silently over and over like a prayer:Wake up. Wake up.
