Chapter 10. The Siege of Shadowfang

The alarms split the sky.

Not the courtly chimes that woke servants and gossip—these were iron-throated bells, forged in ages when cities bled beneath sieges and walls stood only as long as their keepers did. The sound did not ring so much as tear, rattling stone, making the marrow inside my bones jolt and shiver.

Shadowfang stirred like a wounded beast: archers surging up the battlements with bows already strung, Seers spilling ribbons of moonfire across the wardstones until the glyphs burned white, warriors slipping into half-form—limbs lengthening, eyes glowing, jaws sharpening into the edges of their truer selves.

I was already moving when the first shadowfire arrows hissed through the fog and shattered against the wards, their poison bleeding into harmless curls of smoke.

Elyan reached me first.

“You were never meant to lead,” he said. Too calm. The words came like a prayer recited wrong, something meant to bless but warped into a curse.

The