Chapter 4 Four

CHAPTER FOUR

Jason POV

The moon is high when I finally give up pretending I can sleep.

For three years the nights have been the same—quiet, suffocating, relentless. But tonight is different. The weight in the air is the same one I felt earlier in the forest, right before something unseen snagged at the edge of my senses. A whisper of energy. A flicker of familiarity.

Something I haven’t felt since the night Mira died.

I rub a hand over my face and step onto the balcony overlooking the courtyard. Soldiers patrol the walls. Torches burn. Everything looks secure. Yet unease crawls up my spine like cold fingers.

General Rylan steps into the moonlight behind me.

“You’re awake,” he says. “Again.”

I don’t turn. “I can’t shake the feeling that something’s coming.”

“Something is always coming,” Rylan mutters, but there’s tension in his voice. He feels it too.

For three years we’ve fought off rebellions, attacks on Council caravans, disappearances of nobles in the night—all claimed by the masked rebel known as the Shadow Wolf. No one has seen their face. No one knows their origin. No one knows their motive.

But every time Shadow Wolf strikes… the kingdom loses a little more of itself.

And every time I smell smoke and magic on the wind, something inside me aches in a way I can’t explain.

Rylan hesitates. “There’s been another attack. Northern trade route. Council shipment destroyed.”

I exhale slowly. “Shadow Wolf?”

He nods.

Of course.

Of course it’s them.

I grip the balcony rail until my knuckles turn white. “Send word to prepare my unit. We leave at dawn.”

Rylan stiffens. “You, personally? That’s… reckless.”

“I’m done waiting for shadows to crawl to my doorstep,” I say. “I’m going to hunt them.”

Rylan’s silence says everything he doesn’t dare voice.

He’s afraid for me.

Because every time Shadow Wolf strikes, I return from the field changed—angrier, colder, more unstable.

It’s ridiculous. I’ve never seen this rebel’s face. Never heard their voice.

Yet something about them claws at the edges of my mind like a memory just out of reach.

Rylan clears his throat. “There’s more. The Council wants you at the tower at sunrise. They claim new ‘magical disturbances’ detected in the eastern wards.”

My heartbeat stumbles.

Eastern wards.

Where Mira first manifested her shadows.

Where I last saw her alive.

I turn away from the view. “Prepare the horses. And Rylan… don’t tell the Council I’m leaving until I’m already gone.”

He frowns. “You’re crossing them again.”

“I cross them every day,” I mutter. “This time, it’s intentional.”

When Rylan leaves, I stand alone in the moonlight, staring at my palms.

Hands that once held Mira like she was something precious.

Hands that delivered her into the Council’s reach.

If she were alive…

If she could see me now…

She’d hate me.

I swallow hard, pushing away the thought.

Mira is gone.

The shadows took her.

I buried her.

I mourned her.

But tonight, as the clouds shift and the moonlight intensifies, the air thickens again.

The same sensation from the forest earlier.

Familiar.

Haunting.

Calling.

Like a heartbeat echoing inside the dark.

My heartbeat spikes, undeniable and unwanted. “No,” I whisper. “It can’t be. She’s dead.”

The shadows at the edge of the courtyard ripple.

Just a breeze.

Probably.

But a whisper curls through the air—soft, cold, unmistakable.

Jason.

I freeze.

My breath doesn’t return.

My heart stops completely.

Because I know that voice.

I’ve dreamed of it.

Feared it.

Begged for it.

And for the first time in three years…

I wonder if Mira ever truly died.