Chapter 113 The Horn

Chapter 113 The Horn
Cassandra's POV

"Absolutely not."

Liam exhaled slowly, the way he did when he was choosing patience over instinct. Around us, the throne room hummed with the controlled tension of men preparing for war dressed as men preparing for a coronation. Commanders stood in clusters. Maps were being rolled and tucked away. Armor clinked beneath formal jackets.

Cam was studying something on the far wall with tremendous interest.

"Of all the things in the world, even in his condition, Roman still chose to protect Tiara." I looked at Liam. "Roman is such a fool. An unrepentant one at that."

"It's his last wish," Liam said. "Let's just honor it."

"Tiara is just as guilty as Harlan," I said. "Every plan he made, every move against you– Tiara was part of it. She tried to kill me. She killed me, technically, and I only came back because the universe had something to say about it." I crossed my arms. "You cannot spare her."

"I'm not sparing her," Liam said. "I'm exiling her."

"That's the same thing."

"It really isn't."

"She'll find a way back. She'll align herself with someone and we'll be doing this all over again in five years–"

"Kiara."

"Don't Kiara me right now. I'm serious. She is dangerous and committed and exile is not enough–"

"Kiara." He stepped forward and put both hands on my shoulders and waited until I actually looked at him. "Listen to me."

I pressed my lips together. "I'm all ears."

"Exile with no resources," he said. "No title, no funds, no property. Guards assigned to watch her movements indefinitely. She will not be able to sneeze without me knowing about it." He held my gaze. "And Roman's confession names her as a co-conspirator. If she sets one foot back across this border, it becomes an execution rather than an exile. She knows that."

I looked at him. At the steadiness in his face, the careful, deliberate way he'd clearly thought this through before bringing it to me.

The anger was still there. But underneath it, something else was shifting.

I looked down.

"I'm a terrible sister," I said quietly.

"What?"

"A good sister would be pleading for her life right now. Begging you to show mercy. Finding reasons to defend her." I pressed my hand flat against my sternum. "And instead I'm standing here arguing that exile isn't punishment enough." I shook my head. "What does that say about me?"

Liam tilted my chin up with two fingers.

"It says that you are a good Luna," he said simply. "And a true leader. You are thinking about what's right for your people, not what's comfortable for you. That's exactly what this pack needs."

Something in my chest cracked open quietly.

Before I could respond, Cam cleared his throat and stepped forward from wherever he'd been very diligently not listening.

"My Alpha." His voice was measured. "It's time."

Liam looked at me. "You know the plan."

"I don't like the plan," I said.

"You never like the plan."

"That's because the plan always involves me hiding while you walk into danger."

"The plan involves you holding our most powerful advantage in reserve until the moment it will do the most damage." He took my hands. "You have a dragon, Kiara. Do you understand what that means on a battlefield? We don't throw that in at the beginning. We save it for when they're convinced they've won."

I looked at him. At the steadiness of his jaw, the certainty in his eyes, and underneath all of it the thing he was working very hard not to let me see that he was frightened too.

"Stay hidden," he continued. "Watch for the signal. When you hear the horn, that's when you come. Not before." His grip tightened on my hands. "Promise me."

I should have just agreed. I knew that.

Instead, I turned his hand over, pressed it flat against my chest over my heart, and held it there.

"Promise me first," I said. "Promise me you will come back. Alive."

He looked at me for a long moment.

"I promise," he said.

Then he kissed me.

I kissed him back with everything I had, my hands in his collar, pulling him closer even as some part of me understood that the blood moon was rising tonight and I had not yet found a way to stop what was coming.

I was going to die tonight.

Or he was.

I held him tighter and kissed him harder and felt one tear slide down my face before I could stop it.

He felt it. He pulled back just enough and wiped it with his thumb, his eyes searching mine.

"I love you," he said quietly.

I had heard those words before. I had said them back before. But something about the way he said it now, simply, without performance, like it was just true and had been for a while… undid something in me completely.

"I love you," I said back.

He pulled me into one final, brief, fierce hug, and then he let go.

He turned to face the room.

What he said to them I felt more than heard, his voice moved through space the way it always did when he was speaking as an Alpha rather than as a man, something that bypassed the ears entirely and landed somewhere deeper. He spoke of the pack, of what they were protecting, of what it meant to stand at the right side of history. He spoke without theatrics, without the performance of courage, just the plain and honest truth of what they were about to do and why it mattered.

When he finished, the room was silent for one beat.

Then they moved.

I watched them march out. Liam at the front, Cam at his side, rank after rank of soldiers who had been drilling under the cover of coronation preparations. The sound of them filled the corridor and then faded, and then there was nothing.



The back hill was quiet.

Claudia stood at the bottom of the slope, her hands clasped, watching as I attempted for the third time to convince an enormous white dragon to let me sit on his back in a way that suggested I knew what I was doing.

"You're doing brilliantly," she said.

"I almost fell off.”

"You stayed on considerably longer before that. It's progress."

Dracarys – the name had arrived on its own and stuck.

I climbed back up.

We worked through it systematically, the way he responded to pressure, to voice, to intention rather than command. It wasn't like riding a horse. It was more like an ongoing negotiation with something vastly more intelligent than you, and the key was convincing it that your idea was also its idea.

By the fourth attempt, something clicked.

I felt it, the shift from tolerating me to actually accepting me, his body moving beneath mine with a purpose that matched my own. We circled the back hill twice, then wider, and when I whooped in sheer startled delight Claudia burst into applause from far below.

We landed and I slid down laughing, my whole body shaking from adrenaline and the relief of finally getting something right.

Mrs. Fernworth appeared from the direction of the palace, walking briskly, her expression doing its best to remain dignified despite the dragon ten feet away from her.

"Mrs. Fernworth," I called out. "Are you done with the servants inside?"

"Yes, my Lady." She smiled. "I came to check if you're ready."

"Getting there."

She reached out and briefly straightened my collar, the way she'd done a hundred times in corridors before meetings and dinners and every ordinary moment that now felt very far away.

"We're with you," she said. "Both of us. Whatever happens tonight."

I looked at the two of them– a maid and a head housekeeper, standing on a cold hill in the dark, meaning every word.

"Thank you," I said quietly.

Dracarys lifted his head.

His attention had shifted. Away from us, away from the hill, toward something in the direction of the palace grounds. His nostrils flared. His whole body tensed with the particular alertness of something that knew before the sound arrived.

Then the horn sounded.

One long, rising note that carried across the entire pack and kept going, cutting through the dark.

Claudia grabbed my arm. Mrs. Fernworth went still.

My heart slammed against my ribs.

Dracarys was already positioning himself, head low, ready.

"That's it," I said, my voice steadier than I felt. "That's the signal."

I climbed.