Page 50 of The Panther's Price

And maybe, deep down, feared the answer.

He looked up at the sky, the veil-thinned clouds bleeding violet light through morning mist.

“Cassian thinks I’m soft,” he murmured.

His shadows stirred in response, slow and rising like a tide coming for blood.

“Let’s prove him wrong.”

TWENTY-TWO

EVRYN

The sky above Crimson Hollow bled rust.

It wasn't the color of dusk or even the haze from the alchemical mines threading the cliffs around the rebel stronghold. No, this red sky wasritual. Painted by intent. Summoned by power.

Evryn stood beneath it, cloaked in deep charcoal robes lined with silver thread. The high collar scratched against her throat, but she didn’t flinch. The wind tugged at her curls, the hem of her robe. Her hands were steady at her sides.

A symbolic heir. A daughter of the forgotten bloodline.

She was becoming what Thalia had said she would be. What Lucien once feared shecouldbe.

The courtyard before her was ringed with the devout—witches and Veilborn from every forgotten clan. Old warriors in rusted armor. Hollow-eyed assassins marked with ritual scars. Some knelt. Some watched.

All of them waiting.

Thalia stood to her right. Regal, serene, deadly.

“This is what survival looks like,” she whispered, voice just loud enough for Evryn alone. “When the world writes you off, you rewrite the language they used to erase you.”

Evryn nodded once, cold. Inside her chest, her power curled. It wasn’t a flicker anymore. It wassteady. Coiled. Listening.

She stepped forward into the circle. The blood rite began.

The blade was obsidian-veined bone, passed from Thalia’s hand to hers.

“Do you claim your blood?” the gathered voices asked in unison.

Evryn’s voice didn’t shake. “I do.”

“Do you claim your shadows?”

“I do.”

“And do you carry the right of flame and void, of panther and Veil?”

Evryn pressed the blade to her palm, sliced deep and clean. The blood that hit the earth sizzled against the rune-carved stone.

“I do,” she whispered.

The sky howled. The wind rose.

Power surged into her chest like a floodgate torn open.

She staggered. But she didn’t fall. And when she looked up again, the entire circle was bowing.

Later, in her chambers, stone walls laced with shadowglass, the scent of nightthorn incense thick in the air—Evryn stood in silence, watching the silver wound on her palm knit closed.

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