His words were a brand, searing themselves into my mind. Not entirely unfamiliar to me.
Back in the gilded cage of my rooms, I paced the plush furs until my feet were numb, the motion a poor outlet for the frantic energy thrumming beneath my skin. His claim was a poison, seeping into every certainty I had ever held. My entire life, I had been defined by my otherness, my absolute isolation. The Conclave had taught me that I was a void, a Null, a singular anomaly in a world governed by the sacred connection of the mate bond. To be unique was to be powerful, Valerius had said.
But what if I wasn't unique?
What if the monster on the obsidian throne, the Soulless King who held my life in his hands, was a mirror of my own cursed existence? The thought was nauseating. It was a terrifying, unwelcome bridge between captor and captive. It bound us together in a way that felt more intimate and violating than any chain. I replayed the moment in the library over and over—the coldness of his voice, the chilling sincerity in his winter-blue eyes. He hadn't been mocking me. He had been stating a fact.
For two days, I was left to stew in that chilling revelation. The silence of my rooms became a pressure chamber, amplifying every doubt and fear. The king's brief, nightly appearances at my door ceased. The absence of his watchful silhouette was, somehow, even more unnerving than its presence. The cat was no longer playing; it was planning.
On the third day, Helga arrived, her face as impassive as ever. This time, she led me not to the library, but down a winding stone staircase into the colder, deeper parts of the keep. The air grew still and heavy, thick with the weight of history. We stopped before a circular door of solid iron, marked with the royal crest. Helga produced a different key, this one smaller and more ornate.
"The King awaits," she said, and left me on the threshold.
I pushed the heavy door open and stepped inside. It was a reliquary, a vault for the treasures of his bloodline. Glass cases held ancient crowns and ceremonial daggers. Tapestries depicting great battles and royal lineages hung on the stone walls, their colors faded with the centuries. This was not a place of knowledge like the library; it was a place of reverence, of legacy. And in the center of the room, on a velvet-lined pedestal, sat a single, unassuming object: a smooth, palm-sized stone of milky white quartz.
Jorvik stood beside it. Today, his gloves were off. His bare hands were resting on the cool glass of a display case. They were strong hands, with long, elegant fingers that looked more suited to a scholar than a warrior king, though I had no doubt of their strength.
"Do you know what this is?" he asked, his voice low in the hallowed silence.
I shook my head, my eyes fixed on the white stone.
"It is a Hearthstone," he explained, his gaze on the object, not on me. "An artifact of the First Pack. It resonates with the energy of a true mate bond. It is said that in the presence of fated mates, it emits a soft, warm light and a low hum, like a contented heart." He paused, a flicker of something unreadable in his eyes. "It has been in my family for a thousand years. A symbol of the continuity of our line."
He looked at me then, and the full weight of his curse was in his gaze. "For the last three hundred years, since the curse took my ancestor, it has been nothing more than a rock. Cold. Silent. Inert."
My throat was dry. I understood now. This was the next experiment.
"You want me to touch it," I whispered.
"I want to see if a void can create a greater void," he corrected, his voice clinical again. "I want to see if your anomaly can overwhelm an ancient magic."
He gestured to the stone. There was no guard this time. There was no one but the two of us and the ghosts of his ancestors. The air was thick with unspoken things. This felt different. More personal. More dangerous.
My hand trembled as I reached out. The Conclave had tried to test the limits of my power, but they had nothing like this. Their tests were crude, involving animals or low-born shifters they considered expendable. This was a royal artifact, steeped in the very magic I was born to negate.
My fingertips brushed against the surface of the Hearthstone.
It was cool, but not cold. There was a faint, almost imperceptible vibration deep within it, like a slumbering pulse. The moment my skin made full contact, the pulse stopped. The coolness became a deep, biting cold that leeched the warmth from my hand. The milky white of the quartz seemed to darken, turning a dull, lifeless grey. The last, faint echo of its ancient power died under my touch.
I felt the familiar, draining hollow as my power did its work, and I pulled my hand back.
Jorvik watched, his face a mask of stone, but his eyes burned with an intensity that belied his calm. He stepped closer, his gaze fixed on the now-dead stone.
"Utterly negated," he murmured, more to himself than to me. "Fascinating."
He looked at my hand, then back at the stone. A new, dangerous idea was forming in his mind; I could see it in the slight narrowing of his eyes.
"There is one more variable," he said softly. "The transference of energy. I must observe it directly."
Before I could process his words, he acted. He placed his left hand flat on the pedestal beside the stone. With his right, he reached out and covered my hand, which was still hovering near the artifact.
His skin on mine.
The shock was electric. He was warm, a living, breathing heat against the chill of my own skin. His grip was firm, inescapable, his long fingers wrapping completely around my own. He guided my hand back to the dead Hearthstone, pressing our palms against it together.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened. There was only the cold stone, his warm, firm hand engulfing mine, and the frantic pounding of my own heart.
Then it happened.
A flicker.
Deep within the stone, a light sparked. But it wasn't the warm, golden glow he had described. It was a flash of cold, silver light, sharp and brilliant as a shard of a shattered star. A single, pure, harmonic note chimed in the silent room, vibrating through the stone, up our arms, and into the very center of my chest. It wasn't the sound of a contented heart. It was the sound of something impossible being born.
The light died as quickly as it appeared. The note faded into silence.
We both snatched our hands back as if we had been burned. I stared at the stone, now a dull grey rock once more. Jorvik stared at me, his mask of clinical detachment finally, completely, shattered. On his face was a look of raw, unadulterated shock, mingled with something else—something that looked terrifyingly like a dawning, ravenous hunger.