Choice was not a word. It was a strike of lightning.
The Winterborn hall thundered behind me, runes blazing along its walls like veins filled with molten silver. The ground beneath my feet responded to my pulse, not with obedience, but recognition. The land did not kneel because it was commanded. It knelt because it remembered.
Valen stared at me as though he had never seen me before, though he had chased my bloodline for decades. His voice came out hoarse. “Choice cannot stop prophecy.”
“It already has,” I said. “I am not you. I am not her. I am not what the moon wanted.”
The wind whipped around us, lifting snow into spiraling currents. Wolves that had been frozen moments ago found their footing. Some shifted back into human form, gasping as if waking from near drowning. Others looked
