Chapter 9 The Silver Threads
For a moment, I couldn’t move. The world had fractured: the sprawl of Chloe’s limbs, the dark pool of wine against white marble, the stark horror on Greyson’s face.
The scent of poison clung to the air, bitter, acrid, undeniable, cutting through the sweet perfumes and rich food.
Chloe’s body lay crumpled like a discarded doll, her pale dress soaking up the spill from the shattered wineglass. The noise in the ballroom had turned jagged, shouts, sobs, the frantic scrape of heels as people rushed forward to give the illusion of helping while keeping a safe distance from the taint of death.
Greyson was kneeling over her, his broad shoulders hunched, his hands, hands I’d once seen hold a sword with unshakable steadiness, were trembling as he brushed hair from her forehead, trying to call her back.
The pack healer pushed through the crowd, her hands glowing with a soft green light as she chanted a stabilizing incantation. The magic fizzled against Chloe’s skin, dying before it could take hold. Too late.
The silence that followed the healer’s failed spell was more deafening than the chaos. It was a void that was quickly filled by a single, rising whisper from the crowd, a venomous hiss that swept from one side of the hall to the other:
Poison.
Poisoned.
Who would poison Chloe Vance?
And then, as if drawn by some unspoken command, every gaze in the room swung toward me. The weight of their collective suspicion was a physical pressure, pushing the air from my lungs.
“Evie?” Helena Knight’s voice cut through the haze, gentle but wary, a lone thread of reason in the madness.
I shook my head, my own voice a strangled thing. “No... No, I didn’t...”
Greyson’s eyes found mine. His expression was hollow, stripped of all reason, filled only with a grief so profound it had already curdled into certainty.
“You were the one with her,” he stated, his voice flat and cold.
“She offered me the glass,” I said, the words tumbling out too fast, too desperate.
“She switched them, I didn’t even drink, it was meant for me!”
He rose slowly, cradling Chloe’s lifeless head as her final breath left her lips. The sound was soft, final.
“Liar,” he said, the word barely audible, yet it hit me with the force of a physical blow, splintering the last of my hope.
By the time the Alphas gathered, the ballroom had been transformed into a grim crime scene. The healers covered Chloe’s body with a white silk veil; the air itself shimmered with the activated glow of truth-scrying runes that cast long, dancing shadows.
Isabelle Vance arrived like a storm, her face carved from pure, undiluted fury. Her gaze, sharp enough to flay skin from bone, found me immediately, her grief twisting into a razor-edged accusation.
“You murdered my daughter.”
“No!” The denial was ripped from me.
Luna Helena stepped between us, a shield of calm authority. “Isabelle, stop. No one knows what happened yet, we must have an investigation.”
“I know enough,” Isabelle hissed, her voice dropping to a venomous whisper meant only for us. “Her father stole from the pack. Now she kills my child. This family’s rot runs deep, Helena, and you’ve been blind to it.”
Alpha Marcus’s voice boomed, “Enough!” He looked at me, his eyes a turmoil of conflict, the Alpha’s calm a mask over clear guilt and uncertainty.
“Evangeline Hart, until a formal inquiry can clear your name, you’ll be taken into custody.”
Custody. The word echoed in the silent hall. They were going to lock me away.
My mother pushed forward through the wall of bodies, her voice breaking. “She’s just a girl, my daughter didn’t do this! Marcus, you know Richard, you know us!”
But the guards were already advancing, their faces stern and impersonal.
Helena turned to Marcus, her tone low and urgent. “She deserves due process. She is still a Hart.”
Marcus’s jaw tightened. “She’ll have it.”
He sounded like a man lying to himself, bargaining with a monster he could no longer control.
They bound my wrists in silver-thread cuffs that shimmered with suppression runes. The moment they clicked shut, a wave of nauseating weakness washed over me. My wolf, who had been snarling in panic, let out a pained whimper and fell silent, pushed down into a muffled corner of my mind.
The crowd parted as the guards led me through them. Every face blurred, people I’d known since childhood, people who’d toasted my eighteenth birthday only a year ago.
The traitor’s daughter.
The murderer.
I kept my chin high, digging my nails into my palms to keep the tears at bay, though my hands shook violently in their binds.
At the door, Helena caught my arm, her grip firm. “Evie, listen to me,” she whispered, her words fast and desperate. “Don’t speak to anyone until I get to you. Not the guards, not the council, no one. Do you understand?”
I nodded numbly, clinging to her words like a lifeline.
Behind her, Greyson lifted Chloe’s veiled body in his arms. He turned, and for a heart-stopping second, his eyes met mine over her shoulder. There was no grief left in them, only a cold, bottomless void of hatred. He didn’t look at me again.
The holding chambers beneath Silverbourne Tower were colder than I’d ever imagined, bare, damp stone, no windows, just the constant, oppressive hum of warding magic that made my teeth ache. The guards left me there without a word, the silver cuffs a constant, burning cold that bit into my skin, a permanent reminder of my powerlessness.
Hours blurred into one another. I sat on the hard stone bench, my mind a frantic, trapped animal, replaying the moment again and again, the switch of glasses, Chloe’s triumphant smirk, her final, cutting words. You ruin everything.
It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. The poison was in my glass. I hadn’t even touched hers.
But in Silverbourne, truth was a commodity. And the Vances owned most of it.
When the door finally creaked open, I expected Helena. Instead, Alpha Marcus stepped in, his expression tight with the weight of his office.
“Evangeline,” he said, his voice echoing in the small space. “The council is in uproar. Isabelle wants blood. She’s calling for your execution.”
My breath hitched, the stone walls seeming to close in around me. “I didn’t kill her.”
“I know,” he said quietly, and for a moment, he looked like the man who had once bounced me on his knee. “But knowing and proving are two very different things.”
“What happens now?” My voice was a ghost of itself.
He hesitated, glancing toward the enchanted lock behind him as if it had ears. “Grayson will speak for the pack at tomorrow’s hearing. The outcome… depends on him.”
“Grayson?” I whispered, the name a shard of glass in my throat. “He hates me. He thinks I killed her.”
Marcus’s silence was answer enough. His inability to meet my eyes was the final, crushing blow.
When he left, the heavy door sealing shut with a sound of finality, I pressed my forehead against the cold, rough stone of the wall, the chill a feeble counter to the fire of despair in my chest.
The last thing I saw before the magelights dimmed was the faint shimmer of my father’s pendant, reflected in the oppressive gleam of the silver cuffs.
He’d told me to be brave.
But bravery didn’t stop betrayal. And it couldn't silence a lie that an entire city had already decided was the truth.