The night of the New Moon brought a darkness so absolute it felt like a physical weight against the stone walls of the Shadow Palace.
There was no silver light to guide the way, only the oppressive, freezing silence of the mountains. I stood in the center of my chambers, dressed in a dark, sturdy tunic I had managed to hide beneath my silks days ago. My heart was a frantic bird trapped in a cage of ribs, beating with a rhythm that felt loud enough to wake the entire fortress.
Min-Ah stood by the servant's entrance, her face a pale blur in the gloom. "Princess Sun-Hee, please," she whispered, her voice barely a thread of sound. "If they catch us, there will be no mercy. Madame Vane is just down the hall."
"We have no choice, Min-Ah," I replied, my fingers finding the cold, folded map in my waistband. "If we stay, we are just waiting for the Emperor to arrive and claim whatever the General has left of us. Are you ready?"
She gave a sharp, trembling nod. We moved like ghosts. I had spent every night for the past week memorizing the sound of the guards' boots on the stone floor. I knew the exact moment the rotation shifted, leaving a thirty-second window where the West Wing corridor was unguarded.
We slipped out the door and into the narrow servant's passage. The air here was damp and smelled of old earth. Following the map Joon had pointed me toward, we descended a spiral staircase that seemed to lead into the very heart of the mountain. My lungs burned with the cold, thin air, but I didn't stop.
We reached the drainage grate at the base of the foundation. It was heavy, rusted iron, but Joon's contact had done his job. The bolts had been loosened. With a desperate heave that scraped the skin from my palms, I pushed the grate aside.
The tunnel was a nightmare of filth and narrow stone, but it led outward. We crawled through the blackness, the sound of our ragged breathing echoing off the wet walls. Minutes felt like hours. Just as the walls seemed ready to crush me, the air shifted. I felt a breeze, sharp and smelling of pine and freedom.
We burst out into the ravine, tumbling onto the soft, needle-strewn floor of the forest. I scrambled to my feet, gasping for air, and looked toward the forest edge. There, standing with three horses, were the resistance leaders. The young scholar from the banquet stood at the front, his face etched with a desperate, hopeful relief.
"Princess!" he hissed, stepping forward to catch my hand. "We thought the wolves had taken you. We have a trail through the pass. We must move before dawn."
I looked back at the towering, jagged silhouette of the palace. For the first time in what felt like an eternity, the weight of the blood-seal seemed to lift. "Let's go," I whispered. "Before the shadow finds us."
I took a single step toward the horses.
The forest suddenly went deathly silent. The wind died in the trees. The horses, which had been restless, suddenly froze, their eyes rolling back in terror. A thick, unnatural mist began to curl around the trunks of the pines, a mist that smelled of frost and old leather.
A low, guttural growl vibrated through the ground beneath my feet.
The shadows behind the scholars began to detach themselves from the trees. One by one, the massive forms of the Shadow-Wolves manifested, their amber eyes glowing with a cold, predatory fire. They didn't attack; they simply stood there, a wall of smoke and teeth.
"No," the scholar gasped, drawing a short blade. "How? The moon is dark!"
"The moon has nothing to do with it," a voice rumbled from the darkness.
Kai-Zin stepped out from behind a massive cedar. He wasn't wearing his armor. He was dressed in a simple black tunic, his hair wild and his eyes flaring with a molten, terrifying gold. He looked less like a man and more like a god of the hunt who had finally cornered his prey.
"Did you truly think I would not hear the change in your pulse, Sun-Hee?" he asked, his voice a low, terrifying caress. "I told you. I can hear the way your heart lies to me."
"Run!" the scholar screamed, lunging at the nearest wolf.
It wasn't a fight; it was a massacre. Before I could even cry out, the Shadow-Wolves moved with the speed of thought. I watched in horror as the men who had come to save me were swarmed by the shifting darkness. There were no screams, only the sickening sound of snapping bone and the smell of fresh blood on the snow.
Kai-Zin didn't even look at the carnage. His eyes never left mine.
He raised a single hand, and a wave of black fire erupted from his palm, racing back toward the drainage tunnel we had just exited. The stone groaned and shivered as the fire consumed the oxygen within, collapsing the passage in a roar of dust and heat. The only way back to the palace was through him.
"You killed them," I whispered, my voice breaking. "They were just... they wanted to go home."
"They were a pestilence," Kai-Zin said, walking toward me. He stepped over the body of the scholar without a glance. "And you, Little Light, are a disappointment. I gave you a gilded cage, and you chose the mud."
He reached out, his hand wrapping around the back of my neck. His grip was not gentle this time; it was a claim of absolute authority. I tried to pull away, but the blood-seal on my wrist flared with a white-hot agony that dropped me to my knees.
"Princess Sun-Hee!" Min-Ah shrieked as a wolf pinned her to the ground, its jaws inches from her throat.
"Let her go!" I sobbed, clutching Kai-Zin's forearm. "It was my plan! I forced them! Kill me, but let her live!"
Kai-Zin leaned down, his face inches from mine. The scent of blood and frost was suffocating. "I will not kill you, Sun-Hee. That would be too merciful. You want to be close to the world? You want to play at being a rebel?"
He stood up, hoisting me into his arms with a strength that felt like it could crush my ribs. He turned back toward the palace, his wolves following in a silent, lethal pack.
"The West Wing is closed," he declared, his voice echoing through the ravine like a curse. "Your rooms, your privacy, your distance from me, it is all forfeited. From this night forward, you do not have a wing of your own. You do not have a door that I do not guard."
He carried me back through the main gates, past the trembling Imperial guards and the silent, terrified servants. He didn't take me to the guest quarters. He marched up the Great Staircase, through the gallery of ghosts, and straight into the heart of the High Tower.
He kicked open the massive, iron-bound doors to his personal bedchamber. It was a room of black stone and fur, dominated by a bed that looked more like an altar. The air here was saturated with his power, a heavy, musky scent that made my head swim.
He threw me onto the bed, the furs swallowing me up. Before I could move, he was over me, his massive frame pinning me to the mattress. He didn't touch me with lust, but with a terrifying, absolute finality.
"This is your world now," he whispered, his amber eyes burning into mine. "You will sleep where I sleep. You will eat when I eat. When I wake from the madness, your face will be the first thing I see. We are no longer a General and his guest."
He leaned in, his lips grazing the shell of my ear.
"We are two halves of a single, bleeding debt. And I am tired of waiting for you to come to me."
He sat back, watching me with a dark, satisfied hunger as the doors to the chamber locked with a heavy, magical thud. I was no longer just a prisoner of the Shadow Palace. I was a prisoner of his bed.