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The thing wearing Nia's pendant pulled itself out of the crack, and I stopped breathing.
"Mara, get behind me." Ronan's voice came low and sharp.
I shoved past his arm. "That's Nia's."
The creature dragged one long black hand over the stone floor. Its claws scraped sparks from the tiles. The silver pendant swung from its neck, bright against skin that looked less like flesh and more like wet ash.
Nia never took that pendant off.
Not when she slept. Not when she was sick. Not when I told her the cheap chain would get caught on something and choke her in the night.
She'd only smiled and said, "Mom gave it to you first. You gave it to me. So it has to work."
My knife was already in my hand. I didn't remember drawing it.
"Mara." Ronan stepped in front of me again. "Do not touch it."
"My sister is wearing that thing's necklace. I'm touching it."
"You don't know what that is."
"I know what my sister wears."
The creature raised its head.
There was no face. Just a smooth, split shape where the eyes should have been, and a mouth packed with thin white teeth. A red line opened across its chest. The same blood writing on the broken ground crawled up its body in crooked letters.
HE KNOWS WHERE I AM.
My stomach turned cold.
Ronan's fingers closed around my wrist. "Who does?"
"Let go."
"Mara, answer me."
"Get your hand off me!"
The creature made a sound under the floor. Not a growl. Not exactly. It sounded like a child trying to cry with a throat full of water.
I lunged.
Ronan caught me around the waist and hauled me backward so hard my boots left the ground. I kicked at him, elbowed his ribs, and drove my heel into his shin.
He barely moved.
"Stop fighting me!"
"Then stop holding me!"
"That thing is wearing your sister's pendant. It may be bait."
"Or it may know where she is!"
The black creature slammed both hands onto the floor.
The crack widened.
Stone burst under my boots. Guards shouted and scattered as a wave of dark dust rolled across the courtyard. Something hot struck my cheek. I smelled burned metal and old blood.
Ronan twisted, putting his body between me and the blast. The force threw us into the base of the eastern gate. My head hit stone. His shoulder crushed my ribs.
For one second, all I heard was ringing.
Then the wolf inside him screamed.
Ronan jerked away from me with a raw sound caught behind his teeth. His pupils swallowed the gray of his eyes. Black veins climbed his throat.
The air changed.
Every wolf in the courtyard dropped to one knee.
Even Drake Thorn, who had been yelling orders from behind the guards, went pale and grabbed the gate pillar to stay upright.
"King Ronan," one of the soldiers said. "Your eyes—"
Ronan slammed his fist into the stone beside my head.
The gate shook.
"Run," he said.
His voice didn't sound human anymore.
I pushed myself up. "What?"
"Run, Mara. Now."
The creature crawled higher out of the split ground. Its arms were too long. Its elbows bent the wrong way. The pendant flashed again.
Nia's pendant.
I reached for it.
Ronan grabbed the front of my coat and threw me behind him. "I said run!"
"You're the one losing control."
His head snapped toward me.
That look should have scared me. It did scare me. But under the rage, under the black veins and the sharp teeth pushing against his lower lip, I saw something else.
Panic.
He wasn't warning me because he wanted to kill me.
He was warning me because he thought he might.
The creature struck.
Ronan met it halfway.
They hit the ground hard enough to crack three tiles. Ronan's hand closed around its throat. The thing clawed at his face, but he drove its skull into the stone once, twice.
"Ronan!"
He didn't hear me.
The creature opened its mouth and screamed. The sound punched straight through my skull. I dropped to my knees and covered my ears.
The pendant fell loose from its neck.
It landed less than a foot from my hand.
I grabbed it.
The silver burned my palm.
A flash tore through my head.
Nia on the kitchen floor. Her knees pulled to her chest. A man in a dark coat crouched in front of her. His hand held the pendant chain.
"Tell Mara the truth," he said.
Nia's lip was split. She shook her head.
"I don't know what you want."
The man leaned closer. I couldn't see his face. I could see the ring on his finger, though. A black stone cut into the shape of a thorn.
"You know exactly what she is."
Nia looked toward the window.
"Mara will find me."
"She will," the man said. "That is why we need you alive."
The vision snapped apart.
I came back screaming.
The pendant was still in my hand. Blood ran from my palm and slid over the silver chain.
The creature turned toward me.
Ronan saw it.
He let go of the thing and crossed the space between us in one violent move. He knocked the pendant from my hand, but it was too late. The blood had already soaked into the tiny moon-shaped charm.
"What did you see?" he demanded.
His face was inches from mine. His breath smelled like iron. His fingers dug into my shoulders.
"Get off me."
"What did you see?"
"A man. Nia. He took her."
"Who?"
"I didn't see his face."
"What did he say?"
The creature scraped across the floor behind him.
I shoved Ronan's chest. "Move!"
He turned too slowly.
The creature's claws ripped across his back.
Blood sprayed over the stones.
Ronan roared.
The sound knocked me flat. He staggered forward, one hand reaching for the ground. Four red lines opened through his coat. The wound was already smoking.
"Ronan!"
His wolf answered with another roar.
He spun and caught the creature by the arm. The black limb cracked in his grip. The thing thrashed, slamming its free hand into his ribs. Ronan flew across the courtyard and hit a broken pillar.
I saw the moment the rage took him completely.
His shoulders rose. His jaw stretched. Bone pushed beneath his skin.
No. No, no, no.
If he changed here, he would tear through everyone. Guards. Council members. Me.
And the creature would keep crawling toward the palace.
I grabbed my knife and cut my injured arm across the blade.
Pain flashed bright.
Blood spilled over my wrist.
"Mara, don't!" Drake shouted.
I ignored him.
I ran to Ronan.
He came at me before I reached him.
One second he was against the pillar. The next, he had me on my back, both wrists pinned above my head. His knee locked my hips to the ground. His face hovered over mine, no longer fully his own.
His claws pressed against my skin.
"Run," he snarled.
"You keep saying that. It isn't helping."
His nostrils flared.
My blood ran between our hands.
The black in his eyes pulled toward it.
His mouth opened. I saw the sharp points of his teeth.
"Ronan." I kept my voice steady because screaming would make him worse. "Look at me."
His grip tightened.
"I said look at me."
The courtyard blurred around his shoulders. Guards shouted. Drake ordered someone to seal the gate. The creature dragged itself toward the palace steps, leaving black sludge behind.
Ronan stared at my throat.
"You smell like the moon," he whispered.
"And you smell like a sewer. We both have problems."
His gaze snapped up.
For half a second, I saw him. Ronan. Angry, exhausted, bleeding, and trapped behind his own teeth.
Then the rage slammed back into him.
His claws cut my wrists.
"Ronan, stop."
"I can't."
"Yes, you can."
"No." His voice cracked. "I can't, Mara."
That scared me more than the claws.
He pressed his forehead to mine. His whole body shook. Blood from his back dripped onto my cheek.
"Get away from me," he said. "Please."
The word didn't fit him. Not the king who had dragged me into his palace. Not the man who had threatened to put a chain around my neck and call it a marriage contract.
But he said it again.
"Please, Mara. Don't make me hurt you."
"Then don't."
"I am trying."
"Try harder."
A broken laugh came out of him. It turned into a growl halfway through.
The creature screamed behind us.
Ronan's head jerked toward the sound.
His claws tightened around my wrists.
"Ronan!"
He looked back at me, and this time there were tears mixed with the blood on his face.
"I can't hold it," he whispered. "I can't hold him back."
"Hold me instead."
I didn't know why I said it. Maybe because I needed him focused on me. Maybe because I was terrified. Maybe because Nia's pendant was burning beside my hand and I had nowhere else to go.
His breath caught.
"What?"
"You heard me. Hold me. Don't bite me. Don't change. Just hold me."
His jaw shook.
"Mara—"
"You want my blood? Fine. Use it. But you don't get to turn it into a weapon. You don't get to put a crown on my neck and call me yours. You want control? Start with your own damn body."
His eyes locked onto mine.
The black veins spread over his cheeks.
Then my blood touched his skin.
The rage broke.
Ronan made a strangled sound and collapsed over me. His claws pulled back. His hands slid from my wrists to my shoulders, holding me down without cutting me.
The courtyard went silent.
Even the creature stopped moving.
Ronan shook so hard his teeth clicked together.
"Stay with me," he said.
I stared at him. "I'm here."
"No. Stay with me. Don't close your eyes."
"I'm not dying."
"You don't know that."
"I know more than you do."
He pressed his face against the side of my neck. His breath came hot and uneven. The bond between us pulled tight, not sweet or gentle. It felt like a hook buried under my ribs.
I hated it.
I hated how quickly his panic reached me. How my heart copied his rhythm. How every shake in his body ran through mine.
"Ronan," I said. "The creature."
He lifted his head.
The thing was gone.
Only a trail of black slime led through the palace doors.
Drake stood at the top step with three guards around him. His face had gone carefully blank, but his eyes kept dropping to my bleeding wrist and the pendant on the ground.
"It entered the palace," he said.
Ronan rose over me. His breathing was still rough, but his eyes had started to clear.
"Seal every entrance," he ordered.
"The east wing is already locked."
"Not the east wing. The lower halls."
Drake paused. "Those halls have been sealed since your father's death."
Ronan's hand curled into a fist.
"Then unseal them."
"That would require the king's blood and the witch key."
Nobody moved.
I looked at the pendant.
The silver chain had wrapped around my cut palm. Blood filled the tiny grooves in the moon-shaped charm. A thin red line spread across its surface.
"What's a witch key?" I asked.
Drake looked at Ronan.
Ronan looked at me.
That was answer enough.
I pushed myself upright. My wrists burned where his claws had cut them.
"You knew," I said.
"I knew old stories."
"You knew there was a key."
"Mara, listen to me—"
"No. You listen. My sister was taken by someone wearing a thorn ring. That thing came out of your palace floor wearing her pendant. Your seal flew across the courtyard. Your wolves started screaming. And now this piece of silver is apparently the magic key to a place you never bothered mentioning."
"I didn't know it was yours."
"You knew my mother was involved."
His silence hit harder than an answer.
The pendant jerked in my hand.
A sharp line of light ran from the charm, across my bloodied palm, and down the stone steps.
Everyone backed away.
The light kept moving.
It drew a map across the courtyard floor.
A palace. A stairwell. Three locked doors. A circle beneath the eastern wing.
At the center of the map, letters burned red through the stone.
THE THRONE BELOW.
Ronan went still.
Drake whispered, "That throne was destroyed."
The map pulsed.
A second line appeared beneath the first.
MARA VALE, BLOOD OF THE LAST WITCH.
My knees nearly gave out.
Ronan caught my arm.
The stone under us groaned.
Far below the palace, something unlocked.
Then a voice rose through the cracks, soft enough that only I could hear it.
"Mara," Nia whispered. "Don't let him take you to the throne."
The map flared white, and every sealed door beneath the palace opened at once.