Chapter 191: Get Me The King
The Trance…
Dina’s smile spreads slowly and poisonously, as if savoring the taste of every holy thing Shina just spat out. Her voice slides through the hollow like oil on ice, soft, mocking, and full of teeth.
“Your watch?” she purrs, amusement folding into contempt. “Oh, Shina, always the martyr. Always the circle of hands and sticky prayers. Do you truly believe a braid of light and a few pretty words can hold me where I belong? How quaint.”
She leans forward, and the nothing around them knuckles into shape, a tiny, impossible throne of shadow that grows sharp at the edges. “The queen?” Dina laughs, the sound like a knife dragged over glass. “That small, pale brat? You would have me fear her?” Her head tilts, eyes narrowing to cold pinpricks. “Tell me, which of you taught her to weld claws? Which of you forged her a war cry that could split bone?” She sneers. “I’ve seen children with spoons make more havoc than your golden sovereign. She flutters in gowns and human etiquette and bedtime stories. She does not know how to taste blood yet. She has not learned to make grief into a blade.”
She straightens, the shadow-throne folding like a cloak. “You boast of goddess and altar, sister, but I bow to none. I bend the bones of idols and make them sing my name. You patch your walls and call it victory…how touching.” Her grin widens. “When I return, I will teach that little queen the first language she’s never heard…the language of ruin. I will show her how to forge a war cry that ends empires…or I will teach her how silence tastes on the tongue of the dead.”
The air tightened. The edges of the sealed world shiver as if something enormous has just cleared its throat.
“And if she learns to swing a blade,” Dina adds, voice low and intimate, “it will be because I cut her heart open and laid the lessons there. I will teach her by fire. I will teach her by ash. I will teach her by deciding which of you gets to wake up and which of you does not.”
She laughs then, a dry bark that ricochets through the hollow and slaps against Shina’s ribs like a physical blow. “So keep your watch, sister. Tend your little golden stitches. Mend and pray and tie ribbons on the dead. It will not save you. It will not save them. I am not an old wives’ tale to be dismissed with lullabies.”
Shina chuckled, the sound thin but razor-edged, slicing through Dina’s boast like glass breaking. Her lips curled as her voice cut steady and sharp.
“That’s where you have it all wrong, sister. You call her a brat? A child fumbling at claws? You know better. You know who she carries within her.”
Dina’s smirk faltered, just for a breath, and Shina pressed harder, eyes gleaming.
“Don’t you dare pretend ignorance with me. That wolf that burns inside her flesh…” Shina leaned forward, each word hot with certainty, “is no ordinary pup. She is Nyxara. The goddess’s own protector. The war cry you mock? She forged it herself, in an age when your name wasn’t even whispered in nightmares. She was the shield of clans, the dread of your kind, born from the most feared pack that ever walked the earth while the goddess herself still breathed among mortals.”
Shina’s laugh twisted into something merciless, proud. “You bound her even before she had the chance to raise her head. And now, you think you will teach her ruin? Dina… the queen is ruin, waiting to be awakened. Do you truly want to talk about war cries?”
For the first time, Dina stilled. Her shoulders went rigid, her smile cracked thin. She scoffed too quickly, the sound brittle, defensive.
“Nyxara is a myth,” Dina hissed, but the words lacked the weight of conviction. Her eyes flicked, betraying the hesitation she tried to swallow down.
Shina tilted her head, savoring the tiny crack in Dina’s armor. “Yet you tampered with her reincarnation. Is that fear I hear in your voice, sister? The great Dina, who bows to no altar, suddenly scoffing like a child told ghost stories in the dark? You remember her war cry, don’t you? You remember how it split the skies. And you know it can be born again. You should be scared, sister, because the queen’s wolf is the reincarnation of the undying wolf.”
Dina’s jaw clenched, her laugh sharper this time, desperate to mask the pause. Shadows buckled around her frame, restless.
The trance snapped bright as Dina’s face went cruel, her mouth a red slit and her voice a blade. “Watch me. I will not be quiet. I will not be an outcast. The king will kneel in the dust. You will watch him die at my feet, Shina. You will beg and pray to my name.”
Her words burned the air, tasting of ash and broken promises.
The two of them stared until it felt like the world held its breath. Then Dina raised her hands, and the cold rolled like a tide trying to drag Shina under.
The trance turned violent…shadows coiling around Shina’s throat, memories of every body she’d touched in prayer, every spell that had needed her life for fuel. Images of children bleeding, beds turned into altars, the palace in a slow, grinding collapse.
Shina dug deeper. She thought of the priestesses lying on the marble, of the golden shield pulsing and sealing, of the circle of hands. She thought of the goddess…real or not…and pushed with whatever fragile faith she had left. Power snapped back through her like lightning finding a tree. It cracked the trance, not cleanly, but enough.
Dina howled…a long, ugly sound that shook the hollow…and for a second there was no sound. The wind that had been trying to drag Shina down stuttered and broke, like a rope cut. Dina’s form blurred, became less certain, as if the world itself refused to hold her solid.
“You will not keep me out forever,” Dina promised, voice threading back through the crack like smoke finding a seam. “I will be back. I will have my throne, and then your goddess will have no cloth left to cover her shame.”
lungs burned. She let out a sound that was half prayer, half curse. “Then come,” she said, every syllable a hammer. “Come see the world you thought you had under control. And when you fall, know that we broke you with a child’s blood and a priestess’s prayer.”
Dina’s eyes pierced her…a promise and a threat braided into one…and then she faded like someone stepping back behind a door. The hollow shivered. The cold thinned. The noise of the palace crept in like a tide returning.
Shina’s mind tumbled back with it.
Someone was shouting her name. Fingers shook her shoulder. The world rushed in too loud…torches, ragged breath, the metallic smell of blood. Her body convulsed, and she coughed, hot tears and something bitter in her mouth. Her nose bled again, a hot line she dragged on the stone as she blinked open to the white-sky of the hall.
Around her, the pack members were frantic. One of the guards knelt and pressed a cloak over her face to staunch the bleeding. Another barked orders to fetch water and oil. The priestesses…some awake, some still unconscious…lay like carved things around the hall.
Shina’s hearing was muffled, like she’d been under water. The last thing she remembered before the trance dissolved was Dina’s promise…that she’d be back. The last thing she felt as she came fully back was the weight of it settling on her like an ember.
She was sealed out for now. The wall held. But the mark of Dina’s voice still hung in her ears…Watch out.
Shina wiped a hand over her face, iron biting her tongue. Her body screamed for her to close her eyes, to surrender to sleep, but she swallowed the urge and pushed the words past her lips.
“Get me the king.”