The words hit like a punch.
I turned to the shadow wolf. She met my stare without flinching, her amber gaze steady, unapologetic.
“Andromeda is not a regular Asena wolf,” Noxx continued, circling the hearth with slow, measured steps. “She is a guardian of the underworld. She cannot exist inside someone who is full of life, who has never tasted death. Only someone who has died, who has breathed this air, who knows the weight of this world, can be a proper host for what she is.”
I looked down at my hands. Turned them over. They looked the same as they always had, but I could feel the difference now. The thick air of the underworld had seeped into whatever was left of me. Into the spaces between my atoms.
“That's why she couldn't come to me before,” I said. Not a question.
“That's why sh
