Page 81 of The Panther's Price

She paced a few steps, fingers curled into fists. “You see the best in me, Lucien. Even when I’m at my worst. Even when I’m half-shadow, half-fire, and nothing human left. Youlookat me and I remember who I want to be.”

She turned back toward him, her voice cracking. “But what happens when I don’twantto anymore? When the throne demands something uglier? When choosing you means I don’t make the hard call—because loving youfeelsmore right than doing what’s needed?”

He stood still, a statue made of restraint and grief.

“If I keep you close,” she whispered, stepping in as if to break her own rule, “I won’t be able to tell the difference. I’ll choose you every time, Lucien. And I’ll blind myself to the cost. I’ll forget what the people need, and I’ll thinkyouare all that matters.”

Tears threatened, sharp as blades behind her eyes.

“I can’t afford to love you like that.”

Lucien didn’t move for a long moment. Slowly, he stepped forward. Close enough that she could feel the warmth of him, the heartbeat she’d once brought back from the edge of death.

But he didn’t touch her.

“You think loving me is your weakness?”

“I think it might be your downfall,” she said. “And I can’t be the reason you fall.”

Silence bloomed between them. Dense. Breathless.

Lucien looked at her, not as a warrior, not even as a man who’d bled for her.

But like someone being asked to carve out the best part of himself… and call itloyalty.

“I would’ve followed you anywhere,” he said.

Her voice cracked. “You still will. Just not into my heart.”

He bowed his head. Then, quietly left. The doors shut behind him like a tomb.

And Evryn, Panther Queen of a broken throne, sat back down—alone.

THIRTY-SEVEN

LUCIEN

The throne room looked different now.

Not in stone or structure—no one had touched the deep-cracked floors or replaced the shattered sigils in the glass. But in the way light moved through it.

It no longer felt like a tomb. It felt like something exhaled. Like a weight had been dragged off its bones.

Evryn stood at the top of the dais, not seated on the throne this time, but beside it. Hair braided with silver and shadow-thread. Panther eyes steady. Cloak trimmed in the colors of no single house—only dusk and light. Balance.

Lucien watched her from below.

Every step she took, every word she measured—he saw the cost of it.

How heavy the crown felt, even when it wasn’t on her head.

She was doing what no queen before her had dared.

Breaking the Accords.

The words themselves felt like heresy.

They were older than the stone of the Court. A pact carved in magic and iron after the First Dominion War—when the Veil fractured and the Houses clawed for survival like starving beasts.

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