Reign woke to silence.
Not the peaceful kind. The kind that comes before something breaks.
The direwolf paced the cavern's edge, leaving frost flaking from its paws with each turn. She sat up slowly, wincing as pain stitched through her chest. The scars from the shadow's touch still glowed faintly under her skin.
The direwolf growled. Not at her. At something she couldn't see.
"I feel it too," she said.
The air tasted wrong. Cold, but different from her frost. This carried iron and ash, like blood left to freeze on a battlefield. A presence circled her thoughts, patient and hungry.
"You called for me," the shadow's voice whispered through her mind.
Her whole body tensed. "No. You forced your way in."
"Did I? You screamed. You begged for the pain to stop. I simply answered." The voi
