CHAPTER 87: IN HIS TONGUE

It was my turn to be surprised. There was no fear in this man.

Ice spread across the floor beneath my feet. I didn’t try to stop it.

"Worthy of what?" I asked, each word precise and cold as a blade.

The prisoner’s grin widened, splitting his swollen lip further. Fresh blood trickled down his chin.

"To be the mouthpiece," he said, and his eyes—those wrong, WRONG eyes—gleamed with something that might have been reverence or madness or both. "The Fates have been watching you, Vladimir Dragunov. Watching and waiting and WONDERING if you were strong enough, cold enough, RUTHLESS enough to carry the message."

My hands clenched behind my back hard enough for bones to creak. Frost crawled up the walls, turning the condensation to ice.

"Son of Ulric Dragunov, the betrayed. Acolyte of Bjorn, the exiled."

My blood slowed to an excruciating crawl in my veins, my world went dark around the edges. "What message?" I demanded, my voice still level.

Dmitri was no longer looking at the nameless prisoner, his sights were on me.

The prisoner leaned forward as far as his restraints would allow, water still streaming from his clothes, his eyes locked on mine with an intensity that made even Dmitri shift slightly behind him.

"She’s coming," he whispered, and his voice carried the weight of prophecy, of absolute certainty.

My blood went cold in a way that had nothing to do with my abilities.

"And you," the prisoner continued, his smile turning beatific, almost holy, "you have her. The vessel. The one who will BIRTH the new age when the Black Moon rises and swallows the sun. She is the end clad within a soul."

Dmitri stiffened.

I had heard those exact words before.

From Dmitri.

He started laughing again, the sound echoing and multiplying in the confined space until it felt like a dozen voices laughing instead of one.

"She’s already MARKED, High Alpha," he said through his laughter. "Already chosen. And there’s NOTHING you can do to stop what’s coming. It is as inevitable as the phases of the moon."

Ice exploded from my hands before I could stop it, spreading across the floor in jagged spikes that nearly reached the prisoner’s feet.

"Explain," I said, and my voice had gone Arctic, had shed every pretense of warmth or humanity. "NOW."

But the prisoner just kept laughing and laughing and laughing.

"Oh High Alpha," he said, his onyx eyes reflecting my face back at me like dark mirrors. "It doesn’t matter. She’s OURS either way. Has been since the moment she was born. Since the moment her mother opened the door and let us IN."

His head tilted at an angle that was slightly too far, slightly too wrong.

"Lilith Brooks," he said, speaking her name like a prayer. "Daughter of Iris, the human. Bearer of the Lunar Crest as the threads of her fate tangled into the very fiber of the cosmos. She will unravel them and weave them like the Fates themselves."

These riddles... My jaw clenched, my hands curled into fists.

Icicles rose at my command, sharp and deadly. They ripped into the prisoner’s legs, impaling his feet with a wet tear.

He screamed, but it morphed into a strangled laugh, his blood spilling. "High Alpha, I am but a messenger." He gritted his teeth through the agony. "You act as though I am the one who has Anna."

My mouth went dry at the mention of my little sister’s name. I must have grown paler than I usually was because he looked at me almost with pity. "Her eyes will never meet yours. It is too late."

I imploded, tossing caution to the wind. I grabbed a fistful of his hair. I snarled in his face. "Where is she?"

He only smiled, that pitiful look never leaving his face. "She would be ashamed of you----"

My grip only tightened. "Answer me!" I growled. My ribs had grown far too constricted for my lungs, my chest was close to bursting from the emotions writhing within me.

My first thought was to crack open his head and unearth what he knew and hid within his grey matter. But I knew that would get me nowhere no matter how good it would feel in the moment.

"You didn’t ask why, High Alpha. Are you scared?"

I yanked his head further back, his face already turning blue from the cold spreading from my grip, the water on his lashes already frozen, making them stand stiff even as he blinked. "The runes on your back---"

I froze. No one knew of those, not even Veronique. The only person I had deemed to let see them was Lili. For reasons I could not for the life of me fathom. It was the reason I always treated my own wounds. But I had let myself have that moment of rare vulnerability, her touch setting my cold skin on fire.

I could still remember just how close I had been to breaking. Even before the broken bond had entered the equation, making everything endlessly more muddled and convoluted.

The runes were forbidden, carved on me to make sure I won the Alpha’s Duel at fifteen. If anyone found out, I would lose everything: the pack, my life, the war against all those who had wronged the Dragunovs.

His eyes twinkled brighter. "No one must know, High Alpha," he whispered conspiratorially. "But, no need to worry." His voice lowered. "I will take it to my grave."

Then, before either Dmitri or I could react, he bit down HARD.

I sprang into action, freezing him, but blood poured from his mouth as he severed his own tongue, his body beginning to convulse as whatever poison he’d been keeping hidden flooded his system.

"DMITRI!" I shouted, but we both knew it was futile.

The prisoner’s eyes rolled back, showing only whites. His body jerked once, twice, then went completely still, the last breath rattling out of his destroyed mouth.

Dead.

Just like all the others.

But this time, we’d gotten something. Not much, but SOMETHING.

A message. A warning. Some ridiculous arcane prophecy from the lips of a tortured terrorist I didn’t want to believe but couldn’t ignore.

I stared down at the corpse, ice still spreading from my feet, frost coating every surface in the cell. Our breaths turned to fog in the now completely cold air.

I grabbed his face and forced his mouth open, extracting his severed tongue. The capsule had not been under his tongue, it had been IN his tongue. I could still see where the tongue had been cut before for the poison capsule to be implanted.

I retrieved the little capsule of cyanide.

I knew that they were meticulous but this---

"Vladimir," Dmitri said quietly. "What he said about..."

"Fall," I commanded without looking at him.

He fell with a thud behind me.