I woke up to the uncomfortable realization that my body was healing faster than I willed it to.
Maeve's herbal nonsense tea, It was working.
I expected her to give me more days to recover, I was wrong very wrong.
She woke me up
"We have a lot to learn don't we'
I couldn't make out her sentences I was too stoned up to make out an words
"What?" I murmured
"You're training, I told you I'm not going to go easy on you, Get dressed" she said almost giddy.
You can't tell with what Maeve is always thinking. Is she excited to teach, or excited to wear you out?
I rolled out of bed; sprang out, really, my new, healed muscles obeying before my groggy mind could protest. If I could have mustered the emotional strength, I would have asked her why the hell we were doing this in the dead of night. It was pitch black outside.
"Get dressed, We have history to do" She was practically bouncing on the balls of her feet.
So this was my training.
Hmmm.
I moved sluggishly, pulling on the clothes, and followed her silent, impatient form through the dark halls to the library. She went straight to the shelves, not bothering with lights, pulling down books by the armful. Each one was thicker, dustier, than the last. They hit the massive oak table with soft, final thumps that stirred up clouds of ancient dust.
"Well?" she must have noticed me standing there like an idiot.
"What are you waiting for? Help me carry them."
Once the table was buried, she gestured grandly. "Well? Read them." She must have seen my eyes glaze over, staring at the cracked leather covers embossed with symbols that meant nothing to me.
"Oh," she said, the excitement draining from her voice in a second, replaced by withering disdain.
"They're in Latin. You don't understand Latin." She rolled her eyes, the gesture obnoxious and full of genuine disappointment. "Useless."
She was bored already. My first lesson hadn't even started, and she was bored.
She flopped into a high-backed chair, propping her boots on the table, scattering a few loose pages. "Fine. I'll translate. The quick and dirty version. Sit. Try not to fall asleep."
I sat down on one of the hard wooden chairs, Maeve's face looked serious.
The most serious I had never seen her so serious before.
"The Aethelgard Bond," Maeve began, her voice flat. "It's a magical contract. Your ancestors made it with his ancestors. They traded their bloodline's freedom for a sliver of borrowed power and protection. A bad trade."
She leaned forward, the candlelight carving shadows under her eyes. "The bond creates a conduit between the human Key holder and the ruling Alpha. His strength, his will, his… wolfishness, it flows into you. It makes you sharper, faster, more resilient than a human should be. For a while."
She picked at a flake of wax on the table. "But you're human. You're not built to process that kind of energy. It's like putting jet fuel in a lawnmower. The bond feeds on your life force to sustain the connection. It's not meant to be used on a human."
She looked directly at me dead in the eye. "The first Key holder died at thirty-two. The one after her, twenty-eight. The last one before you? She made it to twenty-five. It was their organs shutting down, one by one, magic burning them out from the inside. Every Key holder is dead, Riley. Or died young. The bond drained them. It is draining you. Right now. That scar is a progress bar."
This. Explained a lot.
That was why I felt so weak.
It's killing me.
"Maeve, what happened to my mother?" My voice was steady. I was sad, yes, a deep, hollow aching pain, but the tears wouldn't come. They were stuck somewhere behind the numbness. I was too dumbfounded to cry.
"Maeve, please. Answer me."
She held my gaze for a long moment, then looked away, her finger were tracing a crack in the old wood of the table. It was the first hesitant gesture I'd ever seen from her.
"Riley… I have no records of your mother. In the official lineage? She doesn't exist. After your grandmother's entry, the record just… stops. As if the line ended there. She disappeared. From our history, and, it seems, from the world."
"I'm the last line of Key holders. I'm the last one. Aren't I?"
Maeve nodded, slowly.
"You are the last registered Aethelgard. The only one the magic would recognize."
"That's why he came to look for me," I whispered.
"It wasn't random. It wasn't because I was special. It's because I'm the only one left. The last hope for his throne.
That was why his brother came after me.
"
He didn't care about me.
He only cared for his throne.
And Kain was no different.
"Kael mentioned a ritual, Maeve I need you to tell me about it" my voice started getting shaky.
The tears pricked at the corners of my eyes ready to fall.
"The Severance. That's its technical name. It has been attempted. Six times, according to marginal notes in three different codices. No Key holder has survived its completion."
She had no pity in her eyes.
I would have wanted empathy in her eyes.
At least she was being honest.
"The ritual requires three components. First, the physical blood of the ruling Alpha, willingly given. Second, a concentrated discharge of the Key holder's own latent magical energy, It is what you would call a surge. Third, a spoken renunciation of the oath in the presence of the original artifact used to seal the first bond. A moonstone chalice. Its location is unknown."
She ticked the points off on her fingers.
"The documented attempts failed at stage two or three. In four cases, the Key holder could not produce a sufficient energy surge, as the bond itself suppresses the wielder's native magic. The ritual stalled. In one case, the Alpha withdrew his blood. In the final attempt, the Key holder produced the surge but could not locate the chalice. The unresolved magical feedback caused systemic organ failure within seventy-two hours."
She looked at me, her gaze impersonal. "The consensus is that the bond's parasitic nature prevents the accumulation of energy needed to break it. It is a self-reinforcing system. To break it, you must draw power from a source it is actively draining. A paradox. No one has solved it."
The tears didn't fall. They receded, frozen by the sheer, sterile hopelessness of the data. "So it's impossible."
"The data suggests a survival rate of zero percent," Maeve corrected, as if that was a meaningful distinction. "It is a theoretical procedure with no successful clinical trials."
I began wiping my face. My cheeks were wet. I hadn't even felt the tears fall.
"Riley," Maeve said. Her voice shifted, It sharpened into something almost urgent. "You're not thinking, Leaving is not logical.
It's going to be different."
"Different how?" My voice sounded flat even to me.
"Kael killed his father, His father was old, weak. Couldn't lead the pack properly. Kael did it for the pack. For stability."
I said nothing, I let her keep digging information.
"After that… Kain challenged him," she continued, gesturing vaguely. "He won.
Took the throne. Took the pack. Took his mate."
"Everything," I said under my breath.
"By the law," Maeve added, "Kael should have been killed for patricide. But Kain didn't. He exiled him. Sent him away instead of ending him. That's how it's been ever since."
I swallowed hard, letting it settle in.
"He wasn't overthrown and executed," she said. "He was exiled. Spared. It would have been simpler if he were dead. For everyone."
I let the silence stretch.
"Now," she said, shifting her weight, "he wants the throne back. And he wants you."
I took in every word she said. I refused to show sympathy, I couldn't afford to be weak.
This people were to manipulative to afford emotions.
"Does your king," I said, stressing each word to lay my emphasis, "know the ritual has never been completed?"
Maeve didn't answer me. She was silent ? Good!
"Does he know I could die before I ever find out what happened to my mother?"
She was quiet. Pin drop silent!
I nodded slowly. "Then his deal is useless."
Maeve opened her mouth. I didn't let her speak.
"How exactly do I find my mother if I'm dead before I reach her?" I asked calmly.
"What's the point of his archive, his truths, if I'm not alive to hear them? Is someone supposed to read it to my corpse?"
I stood, shoving the heavy chair back. It scraped loudly against the floor.
"He wants me beside him when he takes his throne," I said. "But if the bond kills me at twenty-five, and the ritual to break it kills me sooner, what throne am I standing by? His… or the one waiting in whatever afterlife dead Key holders get shoved into?"
I looked down at her. My eyes were dry. That scared her. I could tell. I saw her mouth tighten.
"But I die anyway," I said, my voice lost its depth it was hollow and empty
"Vampires are hunting me. His brother wants my head. What more can they take from me?"
"He's taken everything. There isn't a day that goes by where I'm not reminded of what I am. A key. A target. A dead woman walking."
The heavy library door creaked open before Maeve could even respond.
Jax stepped in. His quiet presence filled the doorway like he'd always been here, waiting. He didn't speak. His eyes flicked between Maeve and me.
He finally looked at me.
Before I could respond, another figure slipped past him.
Kael!.
The air shifted the second he entered. He didn't need to say anything; his gaze swept over the open books, over Maeve, I saw his body tense and alert, and then locked on me. He must have seen it; he sees everything. He saw Jax standing there, too.
A low growl rumbled from Kael, so deep it vibrated through the floor, the books, even my chest felt it more than heard it.
I froze. Maeve froze. Jax froze.