Page 33 of The Panther's Price

Not after that little slip—I haven’t killed her yet.

And especially not after the way he avoided her eyes every time she looked too close.

He knew more than he was saying. About her. About the Queen. About this place they were headed. He walked like a man who had memorized every turn of the road and every trap along it. That made him valuable.

It didn’t make him safe.

She didn’t bother asking again where they were going. The answers came slow with Lucien. Half-truths braided with silence.

But when they passed the veil-marked rock—a shard of onyx etched with sigils older than either of them—she felt it ripple through her.

Something ancient and watching had justnoticedher.

And it didn’t blink.

They crossed a bend, the mountain split open ahead, and there it was.

A ring of blackstone columns buried in silver ash, glowing faintly with residual ward magic.

The summit.

She hadn’t known what she expected.

Definitely not the two people waiting for them.

One leaned against a stone archway with the kind of stillness that came from long wars and longer regrets. He was massive—towering, broad as a damn wall, arms crossed over his chest like he didn’t know what to do with them if they weren’t ready to crush something. His skin bore the sheen of battle and time. Storm-gray eyes, ringed faintly with gold, stared her down like she was a weapon being weighed in a warrior’s hand.

Calder Grimhart.

Eamon had showed her pictures and legends of the bear shifters, and he matched the prince’s description to a T.

The other presence was fire coiled into grace.

A woman stood at the center of the circle, poised like a blade. Her ember-black hair was braided in looping knots that whispered discipline, control. Her skin shimmered faintly with an undercurrent of bronze-scale beneath flesh. Eyes gold-flecked and sharp as whitefire caught Evryn’s immediately anddid not look away.

Seraphine Drakar. The Dragon-blooded heir from her books.

So this was what royalty looked like.

Power. Poise. Calculated intensity that made Evryn’s skin itch.

“Didn’t think you’d show, Umbraclaw,” Seraphine said, arms folded. Her voice was velvet dipped in steel.

Lucien didn’t react. “Didn’t think you’d still be standing in one place this long.”

Seraphine’s lip twitched, just once.

“And this,” she said, eyes drifting to Evryn, “must be the reason you’re pissing off your mother?”

Evryn bristled.

She wasn’t anyone’sreason.

Lucien didn’t speak.

So Evryn did.

“Evryn. Not ‘this.’”

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