Page 1 of The Panther's Price

ONE

LUCIEN

The Court smelled like secrets.

Lucien Umbraclaw moved through the marble corridor with the quiet menace of a shadow made flesh, his boots silent against ancient stone polished by blood and time. His cloak whispered behind him, black and layered, its hem dragging hints of darkness like oil through water. He didn’t rush. No one rushed in the Court of Claws unless they were prey or foolish.

He was neither.

“Prince Lucien,” a guard murmured, bowing low as he passed. The man’s voice cracked on the name.

Good. Let it.

Lucien didn’t glance his way. He didn’t need to.

Let them remember what he was. What he had been made into.

He passed beneath twin statues of panthers mid-pounce, their stone fangs frozen in eternal threat. Beyond them lay the Throne Hall—his mother’s lair. The heart of the panther kingdom. Cold, vast, cathedral-dark, and hung with black velvet banners that rustled without wind. The air here was dense with old magic and older sins.

Lucien’s breath misted, even though no cold should’ve lingered this deep in the heart of the fortress.

She always kept it this way. A reminder.

He stepped into the hall and was hit, as always, by the scent of her magic: smoke, violets, and the bitter sting of something long dead. Shadows curled along the edges of the space, licking the walls like lazy serpents. They bowed to her will, as everything did in this cursed place.

Queen Selyne Umbraclaw sat upon her onyx throne like a goddess grown bored with mortals. Her hair was woven in silver braids sharp as wire, her skin porcelain under the dim light, and her violet-black eyes gleamed with that ageless, predatory patience that had earned her the crown two centuries ago.

“Lucien.” She didn’t rise. She never did. Power didn’t rise—it summoned. “Kneel.”

He didn’t question.

He knelt. Because obedience had been bred into his bones, seared into the marrow by decades of training, of lessons carved in pain and praise. Because she was his mother. His queen. His creator.

His jailer.

“You summoned me.” His voice was low, sandpaper and smoke, deliberately calm.

“I did.” She stood now, silk whispering around her like a spell. “There is a problem. And you, my sweet knife, are going to carve it out.”

Lucien looked up slowly. Only to her collarbone. Never higher unless permitted.

“A name,” he said, voice flat. “Give it.”

She descended the obsidian steps with the elegance of a falling star. “Evryn Hale. Human, allegedly. Lives on the outer Borderlands. But she is not what she seems. The Sight is active in her, and… there have been whispers.”

Lucien’s mouth tightened. “What kind of whispers?”

“Old blood. Forgotten blood. She is no commoner. She is one of us. A relic of the royal line wiped out in the First Betrayal. Somehow, she survived. Somehow, she hid. And now she dares to exist.”

Lucien exhaled through his nose. A relic. A ghost.

A girl.

“Kill her.”

His body didn’t move, but something deep inside flinched. A moment passed, and his mother’s head tilted. “You hesitate.”

Lucien’s hands curled into fists behind his back. “I don’t question your orders,” he said.

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