Page 61 of The Panther's Price

Evryn’s breath caught. “Why now? Why me?”

“Because you were hidden well. Too well. Buried beneath lesser lineage, cloaked by stasis and secrecy. Whoever left you with Eamondidn’t want you found. But when you crossed the Veil, when you bled into the stones during the Hollow rite—that powerwoke.And when it woke, it called to everything old enough to remember.”

Lucien looked at Malrik sharply. “And Seraphine sent you because she couldn’t afford to ignore that call.”

Malrik smiled faintly. “She doesn’t like prophecy. But sherespects it.”

Evryn swallowed. “What does this mean? What do I do now?”

Malrik’s gaze was piercing. “The Houses will come for you. The Queen will escalate. Cassian will move soon. But more than that… you’ll begin tofeelit.”

“Feel what?”

“The pull,” he said. “To reclaim what was lost. Your dreams will shift. Your shadows will grow bolder. And the Sight… it will show you more than you want to see.”

He hesitated then. And that was what chilled her the most—because Malrik didn’t strike her as a man who hesitated for anything.

“You’ll remember things that never happened to you,” he said softly. “Because you’re not just her heir. You’re herecho.”

Evryn’s mouth went dry.

Lucien reached for her hand. She didn’t realize she’d reached for his too until their fingers found each other.

“Why me?” she whispered again.

Malrik’s obsidian eyes glittered. “Because fate doesn’t choose who’s ready. Just who’sneeded.”

They made camp again hours later, further from the ruins, under the arched roots of a dead tree curled like a crown of claws. Lucien had barely spoken since Malrik left them.

Evryn sat beside the fire, staring into it like it might give her answers.

“I’m not ready for this,” she whispered.

Lucien stirred. “No one ever is.”

Evryn looked at him, eyes too tired for anger.

“They’re going to come for me now, aren’t they? Not just the Queen. Everyone. Every House. Every loyalist who thinks power belongs to them.”

Lucien nodded. “Yeah.”

She swallowed. “What if I don’t want it?”

Lucien leaned toward her, brushing his knuckles along her jaw. “Then we burn anyone who tries to take it.”

In the firelight, as her world shifted again, she knew something else for certain: She wasn’t just becoming the girl fate tried to erase.

She was becoming the reason they’dnever forget her nameagain.

TWENTY-SEVEN

LUCIEN

The message came by shadow.

A raven made of smoke and ink, its wings silent as the dead, perched beside their fire at first light. Lucien didn’t need to open the scroll tucked in its beak to guess who it was from.

Only one person sent crows with edges that sharp.

---