Chapter 133: Farewell of Flames
"Couldn’t sleep?" he rasped, voice rough from nights of fighting things that didn’t live in the daylight.
Magnolia leaned her shoulder against the doorframe, arms folded under her cloak. "Neither could you."
Rhett’s mouth twitched , the ghost of a smile. "I’ve been talking to the flames. They tell better lies than our council."
She snorted softly, stepping inside. The door drifted shut behind her, the latch catching with a sigh that sounded too much like a farewell. She hated it.
He watched her cross to the hearth, the shadows dancing across his face, deepening the hollows under his eyes. "How bad is it?" he asked.
She crouched at the fire, feeding it a scrap of kindling she’d snatched from the hallway. "Bad enough."
Rhett let out a slow breath, one hand resting on his ribs where the bandages peeked through his half-open shirt. The scar there pulsed faintly , a thin, angry line that Celeste had sworn would never close so long as the Elder’s blood debt remained unpaid.
"Tell me the truth," he said. "No circles. No crown."
Magnolia sat back on her heels, the heat of the fire brushing her skin, almost gentle. "Sterling wants my wolf."
Rhett didn’t flinch. He just nodded, as if he’d tasted that truth days ago and had been letting it rot in his mouth ever since. "And you’ll give it to him."
She looked at him , really looked. Even broken, even half-shadowed by the curse that ate at him from the inside, he still held himself like a king who’d chosen to stand on the wrong side of history because someone had to.