Lily
The storm wasn't coming. It was here. I felt it in the air, in the tremor of the earth beneath my feet. The wards trembled. The flowers recoiled. A chill kissed the back of my neck. My breath caught and in the next heartbeat, I knew. An attack was coming. Swift. Merciless. And deadly.
I didn't wait for orders. I didn't stop to think. My feet were already moving before my mind could catch up, muscles fueled by something deeper than instinct, something ancient and burning in my blood. They were inside.
The eastern gate decoy had worked. Most of the palace guards had been pulled away. The corridors behind the throne room were now exposed. It was all calculated; too clean and too quiet. They weren't just after power. They wanted him dead. Elis. The name thundered through me. Not a whisper. Not a question. A command. He was the target.
My lungs burned as I tore through the marble halls, skirts hitched high around my legs. Magic pulsed in the air, dark and foul. I didn't need to see them to know they were already moving. Assassins cloaked in shadow, carrying steel tainted with death. Every part of me screamed one thing: get to him. And gods help me, I ran like the wind had loaned me its speed.
Elis' pov
The candlelight flickered as I sat alone, elbows on my knees, the weight of a thousand unanswered questions pressing against my skull. But something felt off. Tika growled low in my chest. The wolf inside me was restless, pacing, nose lifted to catch a scent that hadn't yet reached my human senses. His ears flattened. His hackles rose.
We weren't imagining things. Something was wrong. I stood, the ache in my ribs forgotten as I reached for my blade. The moment my fingers closed around the hilt, the door exploded inward. I barely had time to react. Shadows slipped through the crack like vipers, the first figure lunging with a dagger gleaming under the faint torchlight. I twisted, dodging instinctively. The blade scraped across my side; hot, shallow but not fatal. The pain didn't slow me.
The second shadow came from the darkness, faster this time. I met him with a snarl, catching his wrist mid-strike and snapping the bone clean. He crumpled with a scream I didn't have time to enjoy. Another. Then another. There were too many. Their blades smelled of poison. Their magic…cursed. Their strikes aimed not to kill me quickly but to weaken and to wear me down. They were here to finish what others had failed.
Tika surged within me, but even our combined fury wasn't enough to stop what came next. A third assassin leapt from behind. His blade aimed directly for my heart. I turned but too slow. There was no time to block. No room to dodge. So I braced for death. But it never came. Because just before the blade could reach me, a flash of white and gold burst between us. Lily. My heart stopped. She didn't hesitate. She moved like a flame; brilliant, blinding, and furious. And in that moment, I didn't care if she was light and I was shadow. She was mine. And she had taken the blade.