Chapter 5. The King’s Territory

Selene woke to the sound of fire.

Not the loud crackling kind. Just the quiet hiss of embers shifting, a low pulse of heat in the room. Her skin was warm. Too warm. And not just from the fur blankets tangled around her bare legs.

Her heart was already beating too fast.

She sat up too quickly, instinct panicking before memory caught up.

Where—

The room was dim, lit only by the fire pit at the far wall. The stone ceiling arched high above her head, carved into rough, jagged patterns like roots frozen mid-thrash. The floor beneath the pelts was polished obsidian. The walls breathed cold air through vents in the mountain itself.

And the bed she was in—if you could even call it a bed—was a platform built into the wall, layered in thick animal furs, leather, and something that smelled like ancient incense and bl