Chapter 120 Send Him Straight to the Study
Outside the thick glass of the study window, the pitch-black sky was just beginning to bleed into a bruised, pale gray. The long, terrifying night was over.
Jax stepped away from the window, his hand instinctively dropping to the hilt of the silver blade at his hip. He didn't look back at the room; his eyes were locked on the tree line.
"Sun's coming up, Fenn," the Beta said, his voice stripped of all its usual humor, tight and pulled back like a bowstring. "Perimeter wards just flared. Vane’s convoy is at the gates."
The air in the study instantly turned to ice. They were out of time.
Elder Veda didn't panic. She turned back to the heavy stone bowl resting on the edge of the desk—the exact same bowl of rusted, necrotic mud she had just used to paint the binding sigil beneath the rug.
"Lift your shirt, Luna," Veda commanded, her milky eyes flashing with terrifying urgency. "We must hide the child before he crosses the threshold."
Leela took a shaky breath, her fingers trembling as she pulled the hem of her shirt up, exposing the round swell of her pregnant belly and the skin over her heart. Fennigan stepped close to her side, his jaw clenched so tight a muscle ticked in his cheek. He placed a large, steadying hand on her bare shoulder, his thumb gently brushing the fluid gold at the base of her throat.
At his touch, a memory flashed behind Leela's eyes—a sharp, vivid recollection of the day that gold had fused to her skin.
She remembered picking up the heavy iron chain that used to hold her Earth Stone. "I should probably put this back on until we can talk with your mother and father," she had told Fennigan, reaching for it. "Just to be safe." But the second her fingers wrapped around the links, she had hissed, "It's hot!" She had tried to fling it away, but the iron hadn't fallen. Instead, it dissolved. She remembered watching in absolute horror as the metal liquefied against her skin, turning into a stream of shimmering, gravity-defying liquid gold that slithered up her wrist and forearm like a living snake.
"Fennigan!" she had cried out. He had rushed forward, but before he could reach her, the liquid gold circled her throat like water caught in sunlight. Then, the heavy green Earth Stone slammed against her chest. She had gasped, clawing at her sternum, choking out, "Get it off!" as a searing heat radiated from it. But her fingers had passed right through the pure energy. And wherever she brushed the gold light, the skin didn't burn—it bloomed. Intricate, bright white tattoos of tiny star-flowers had erupted along her collarbone, filling her with a happy, bubbly warmth before the stone embedded itself permanently right over her heart.
It had been a terrifying, beautiful awakening of her true power.
But as Leela blinked back to the dim light of the study, there was no beauty left to be found.
Veda plunged her bare, crooked fingers into the remaining blood-clay mixture. The stench of open graves and heavy iron filled Leela's nose.
"Do not flinch," the Matriarch whispered.
Veda pressed her necrotic, blood-soaked fingers directly over Leela’s heart—right over the embedded Earth Stone—drawing the jagged sigil.
The clash of magic was instantaneous and violent.
The fluid gold beneath Leela's skin surged in a desperate defense against the death magic. The vines around her neck flared to life, but the bright, happy white star-flowers were gone. Instead, searing, red-hot crimson blossoms erupted violently along her collarbone and throat.
Leela gasped, her fingernails digging painfully into Fennigan’s arm. The red flowers burned like branding irons, violently reacting to the necrotic mud suppressing her lifeforce. As the angry, fiery petals rapidly withered and faded back into her skin, tiny, acrid wisps of smoke curled off her neck, leaving the faint scent of scorched earth in the air.
Veda’s hands remained perfectly steady as she moved down, painting a larger, heavier ward directly over Leela's womb despite the smoking, defensive flares of the Luna's magic.
As the wet clay settled over her stomach, a profound, terrifying numbness washed over Leela. The warm, fluttering butterfly sensation of the new baby was instantly muted, swallowed whole by the heavy, necrotic earth. To the outside world, her womb now radiated the cold, empty signature of death.
"It is done. The mask is on," Veda rasped, stepping back and wiping her hands on a rag. She pointed her stick at Fennigan’s massive leather chair behind the desk. "Sit, Luna. Take the Alpha's place."
Leela moved stiffly, the clay pulling tight against her skin, the ghostly heat of the red flowers still stinging her neck. She walked around the massive oak desk and sank into Fennigan's seat. It positioned her perfectly: barricaded behind the heavy wood, directly aligned with the hidden trap beneath the rug, and looking dead center at the door.
Veda reached into her shawls and pulled out the raw, uncut crystal—the beacon she had brought to open the eye of the Moon Goddess. She set it dead center on the desk.
"The divine will see his sins," Veda muttered, looking at the glowing, milky stone. "But a god's judgment is slow. We need swift consequence. His soldiers must see the horrors he committed on the Whisper Wind land with their own eyes. We need a prism to project the memories. Glass born of this house."
Fennigan looked at his brother. "Jax. The ballroom."
Jax sprinted out of the study, his boots echoing frantically down the long hallway. Less than a minute later, he returned, breathless, clutching a massive, fist-sized teardrop crystal of antique cut glass ripped clean off the center chandelier.
Jax walked over to the desk, leaned over the hidden salt circle, and placed the heavy chandelier crystal directly in front of Veda’s raw stone.
The moment the cut glass touched the wood, the ambient magic in the room snapped into alignment. The milky light from Veda's stone hit the facets of the chandelier crystal, refracting outward and casting sharp, fragmented green and white shadows across the walls of the study.
The trap was fully armed. The cage was set. The projector was primed.
The heavy intercom on Fennigan's desk suddenly buzzed with a harsh, grating static. It was the gate guards.
"Alpha," a panicked voice cracked through the speaker. "High Councilor Vane is at the perimeter. He has two dozen armed guards with him. He says if we don't open the gates in thirty seconds, he will tear them off the hinges."
Fennigan stood beside Leela’s chair, his hand resting protectively on her shoulder—ignoring the faint, smoky heat radiating from the fluid gold beneath her skin. He leaned down and pressed the intercom button.
"Let him in," Fennigan ordered, his voice echoing with absolute, lethal calm. "Send him straight to the study."