Page 24 of The Panther's Price

Evryn recovered fast.

She grabbed the blade from her boot and circled around to flank, adrenaline burning the doubt from her limbs.

“On your left!” she shouted.

Lucien ducked just as a second creature leapt from the shattered arch above, claws whistling through air where his head had been.

Evryn struck the first with a clean slash across its throat.

Black ichor hissed into the air. The beast fell, writhing.

Lucien turned, shadows coiling like whips from his hands, slamming the second into a wall hard enough to shatter bone.

It collapsed in a twitching heap.

Silence returned. Except for the thunder of their breath.

Evryn wiped her blade on her sleeve, hands shaking. “What the hellwerethose?”

“Veil spawns,” Lucien said, still watching the shadows. “Drawn to raw bloodlines. Old power.”

He looked at her.

“You’re starting to call to them.”

Evryn felt her spine stiffen.

“Is that a bad thing?”

Lucien’s gaze darkened. “It means you’re awakening. And that means we’re running out of time.”

She met his eyes. Still panting. Still pulsing with adrenaline. Stillangry.

But under it all, something unspoken passed between them.

She had almost kissed him. He had almost let her.

Instead, they turned from the corpses and gathered what little they had because survival didn’t wait for emotions to catch up.

ELEVEN

LUCIEN

The old outpost stank of dust and rusted iron.

Lucien moved through it first—always first—pushing open the warped doors of the long-abandoned waystation carved into Hollowreach’s ridge wall. It used to belong to Thalia’s people, back when rebellion had teeth instead of whispers. You could still see the faded sigils of House Shadeborn branded into the floor tiles—white ink, worn with age and ash.

Evryn stepped inside slowly behind him.

She said nothing, but he felt her eyes on his back.

Still shaken from the shadowbeast ambush. Still coiled tight from what she’d done to survive.

She’d killed one of them.

And the way the shadows hadrespondedto her—flinching back, then circling like theyknewher—it wasn’t subtle.

Lucien watched her settle against a bench half-collapsed by mold and rot. She rubbed at the side of her neck, eyes unfocused, chest still rising and falling like she hadn’t fully come back from the fight.

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