Snow muffled the world. Each flake drifted down like ash, settling on the black iron bars of the prison wagon. The wagon creaked along the frozen road, its wheels biting into ruts of ice. Lantern-light swung with each jolt, casting long shadows across the skeletal pines that flanked the trail.
Rowan Vesper walked with the patrol, though he wore no chains. His wrists were bare, his stride unhurried, yet every soldier's eye lingered on him with the same wary suspicion they gave the shackled prisoner inside the wagon.
Two hearts beat in his chest.One pulsed quick and wild, a wolf's heart, straining against leash and law.The other throbbed slow and heavy, a vampire's heart, cold as buried stone.Together they set a rhythm that no man should carry, a rhythm that kept him half-alive, half-dead, and never whole.
The prisoner rattled his chains. "You don't belong with them," he rasped, eyes glinting crimson through the bars. His voice was raw, yet filled with strange reverence. "You walk like prey, but smell like predator. Which one are you, boy?"
Rowan said nothing. He had learned silence long ago. Wolves snarled at his scent, vampires spat at his blood, men crossed themselves when he passed. Words only fed the fire.
One of the Wardens struck the bars with the butt of a spear. "Quiet!" The prisoner laughed, a sound like cracked bones.
Above them, a pale moon tore free of the storm clouds, silver light spilling across the snowbound path. Rowan lifted his gaze to it, and for a moment both hearts inside him beat in unison, pulled by a gravity older than empires. The wolf howled for freedom, the vampire whispered of dominion.
And Rowan, cursed child of both, walked on in chains that were not his own.
The bells tolled then—distant, hollow, carried on the winter wind. Every soldier stiffened. The prisoner smiled. Rowan's golden eyes caught the lantern light, glowing faint against the dark. He knew that sound. He had dreamed of it.
The grave-hounds were awake.