Page 58 of A Queen's Shadow

He added, “And not only him, but the witch knows, too. You said she needs me because I can break something, and the whole point of the challenge was to see what I was capable of, if something was true about me, if I’d stop holding back. And I did; I gave in.”

“Completely?”

Her question earned furrowed brows, but before Isla could elaborate, a scream tore through the air.

* * *

“There’s a body in the river!”

Isla’s legs were like lead, her lungs burning when she and Kai finally reached the crowded riverbank amongst the city’s rubble. The moment she heard the words, her heart stumbled. Sobs and gasps fell from the mouths of everyone around them, and something about all of this struck her as too familiar.

But there was no Wall here. No bak. No trainees. Had someone gotten too drunk and passed out, inevitably drowning?

“Ameera!”

Isla hadn’t realized Kai was behind her again, and she hadn’t noticed Ameera amidst the milling crowd. She remained rooted while Kai bound up to his friend, wearing clothes now that he’d found to slip into.

The general turned, and the blanched look on her face made Isla’s breath catch.

Oh, no.Isla spun, desperately searching for every other member of their family—Adrien, Sebastian, and her father. Rhydian, Jonah, and Davina.

Nowhere.

“Who is it?” Kai had his hands on Ameera’s shoulders, trying to get her out of her fugue-like state. “Meera, who is it?”

Ameera blinked, bewildered. “E—Eli.”

The name clanged through Isla with all the power of the storm they’d just witnessed.

“Someone,” Ameera gulped. “Someone murdered Eli.”

Murdered.

“Isla!”

Isla hadn’t known she was moving, running,sprintingdown the riverbank to where the body had been covered by a burlap canvas until Kai called after her. But she didn’t stop. Couldn’t,wouldn’tstop, even as the guards looked ready to halt her pass, not realizing who she was, looking like a drowned rat.

But they stepped back, either recognition sparking or at Kai’s instruction because she knew he was behind her. Her next movements blurred: nearly slipping on the muddy ledge into the water, pausing at the edge of the corpse, the way she bent and pulled, and all air vanished from the world.

Eyes closed and skin sallow, his chest and innards exposed as he’d been clawed to high hell, Eli laid.

Isla stumbled back into a solid force, a body, her hand going to her mouth. It was a miracle, an unconscious remembrance that she was a queen and in front of her people, that made her able to hold down her bile.

“You don’t need to see this,” Kai whispered, his words caressing the shell of her ear. He tried to turn her into his chest, but she was stone.

She did need to see this. He’d told her that he wasn’t safe, that he was in danger because of the Hierarchy and Cassius, and those claws that had sliced through him were not those of bak. The lines were too thin, too numerous. She’d seen the damage the monsters could do on the man currently holding her upright. No, these slash marks were from another wolf.

“I’m dead in the water anyway.”

How horribly fucking ironic.

A coldness like Isla had never known slid over her bones, became her breath, became her blood, became everything she was. Darkness clouded her vision. Her fingers twitched at her sides, ready to draw claws and her gums ached, her canines threatening to punch through. But there was no shift, just that cold, that dark, as she felt something within her rising. Pulling up,up.

“Isla.”

Whoever did this, she’d kill them. Make that sacrifice. Make it last; make ithurt.

“Isla!”

---