Chapter 111 Hundred and sixteen
“Do you know what your queen has done?”
Renna’s voice slid through the fractured courtyard like a blade dipped in honey, smooth and poisonous at the same time. She stood on the broken platform where Sienna had once addressed the packs, but tonight the torches bent toward Renna as if pulled by the gravity of her lies. Wolves gathered in clusters around her, some curious, some furious, most uncertain, and she could feel their hunger for direction. She fed on it.
“I will ask you again,” she continued, her tone soft enough to force the crowd to lean in. “Do you know what your queen has done?”
Someone at the front shouted, “She spared the Ghost Alpha! She let a curse walk among us!”
Renna smiled like she had rehearsed that exact answer. “Spared him?” She let the word melt on her tongue. “My sweet misguided friend… she did far more than spare him. She chose him.”
The murmurs rippled through the packs. Renna thrived on it. She lifted a stack of parchment, ink-stained, forged, but convincingly worn, and raised it high enough for the moonlight to illuminate every falsified mark.
“These,” she said, “are Council records. Reports written by your own advisors before they died… mysteriously… in the queen’s hall.”
The crowd bristled. Shoulders stiffened. Teeth flashed. Even the torches hissed as if the air had thickened.
Renna let the suspense breathe before dropping her next line like an executioner’s axe.
“They suspected Sienna of conspiring with the cursed Alpha King. They believed she would hand the realm to him. And before their accusations could be heard publicly…” she tapped the papers lightly, “they were found dead. Poisoned.”
Gasps broke like glass. Someone hissed, “Lies!” but their voice was swallowed by the rising tide of voices around them.
Renna stepped forward, her shadow spilling long over the stone as she spoke. “Ask yourselves… who benefits from their silence? Who had the power to dismiss their warnings? Who had the authority to move their bodies before dawn, to hide the truth before it could spread?”
A woman called out, “Why would she kill her own council?”
Renna answered without hesitation. “Because love makes fools of powerful women.” She let her gaze sweep the crowd, allowing the sting to settle. “Because she is blinded by him. Because even now, after all the chaos he’s caused, she cannot bear to let him go.”
Anger rose in the crowd like a slow, rumbling storm. Renna watched it take shape in their eyes, the flicker of doubt turning into flame. She felt no triumph, only cold satisfaction.
“You know the curse he carries,” she said gently, as if consoling children. “You’ve seen the destruction he leaves when he loses control. And yet… she protects him. She hides him. She shields him from judgment.”
A man shouted, “She’s our queen!”
Renna tilted her head. “Yes. And queens are meant to protect their people. Tell me, do you feel protected?”
Roars answered her. Not words, roars.
“She would risk all of you,” Renna continued, her voice gaining heat, “just to save one cursed man. She would sacrifice your children, your homes, your futures, for him. For a creature who has taken more lives than you know.”
Another ripple moved through the crowd, but this one felt darker, heavier, like the beginning of a fissure splitting open beneath their feet.
Renna stepped down from the platform and walked among them. She did not fear them; she had them wrapped in her hand. When she stopped before a young wolf trembling with uncertainty, she lifted his chin gently.
“She is weak,” Renna murmured. “And weakness in a ruler becomes weakness in the realm.”
A howl of agreement rose.
She turned toward the rest again. “A queen must choose her people.” She paused. “But your queen has chosen her monster.”
The reaction hit like a spark landing on dry leaves, instant combustion. The courtyard filled with snarls, with growls of betrayal, with voices that no longer knew if they were angry at Sienna or frightened of what she had become.
Renna lifted her arms slowly, allowing the fury to gather around her like wind around a mountain peak. “Tonight,” she declared, “you face a truth you’ve been too afraid to say: your queen does not fear losing her kingdom. She fears losing him.”
The crowd erupted, but Renna wasn’t finished, not until she planted the seed she had prepared meticulously.
“Divide yourselves if you must,” she said. “Choose loyalty if it comforts you. But remember, every kingdom in history that fell… fell because its ruler forgot who they were meant to serve.”
Someone whispered, “Are you saying she’ll fall?”
Renna answered in a voice that could have coaxed gods from their altars. “I’m saying she already has.”
The moonlight shifted as if turning its face away. A heavy silence followed, thick with the weight of unspoken revolt.
Then a voice from deep in the crowd growled, “What do we do now?”
Renna’s eyes glittered. “Now? You watch. You listen. And when the moment comes… you choose the side that will survive.”
There was no cheering. No applause. Only the tense, electrified silence of wolves whose hearts had been turned against their queen with the precision of a surgeon’s hand.
Renna stepped back onto the platform, letting her final words fall softly, like the cold beginning of snow.
“Tonight, the realm breathes differently. Do you feel it?” She closed her eyes briefly, savoring it. “Something has shifted. Something is waking.”
She opened her eyes again, and they gleamed with a hunger she no longer cared to hide.
“Loyalty will not protect you anymore. Strength will. And your queen,” she said slowly, “no longer has it.”
The crowd broke. Some fled to their homes, whispering fear. Some stayed, arguing loudly, forming sides right there beneath the blackening torches. But all of them… all of them had taken her words into their bones.
Renna remained on the platform long after they dispersed, standing in the cold wind as if addressing ghosts.
“She will fall,” she murmured. “And I will be here to watch her shatter.”
Behind her, in the far distance, a single howl cut through the night. It was not loud. It was not angry.
It was mourning.
And Renna smiled.