Chapter 136: Trumpets 1

EDELINA

I stepped out of that chamber feeling rather pleased with myself, the taste of victory still sweet enough to savor. Then I saw Lysander and his High Beta huddled together near the far pillar, heads bent low, voices pitched too quiet to carry.

I drifted closer, curiosity pulling at me despite the risk. Bradley’s eyes flicked up, scanning the corridor with the alertness of a man who suspected he was being watched, and I retreated before he could confirm it.

Still. What moves could they possibly have left? Lysander had been so desperate to save his mate that he’d handed me far more than I’d dared hope to receive from this entire farce. Johann had been beaten into something barely recognizable, yes, but the heavens themselves seemed to be shining on us regardless. The throne dangled in front of me now, realer than ever and close enough to touch.

I made my way back to my chambers and found Lycaon, still wearing Willow’s borrowed body, tending to my son’s wounds.

It was an odd sight, more like a butcher fattening its livestock.

"How did it go?" he asked, without looking up from his work.

"Fine," I said. "Better than fine. Now all we need is for the healer to lose control again, and the throne is ours."

"You seem to have it mostly figured out."

"I do," I said, crossing to sit near the window. "But I need something from you. I want you to use your magic to keep an eye on Lysander and his High Beta. I have a feeling they’re plotting something, and I’d rather know what before it lands on my doorstep."

He straightened, something wry pulling at Willow’s mouth. "I don’t particularly enjoy being your errand boy."

"If you want your body back," I said, "deal with it."

He crossed the room instead, and his arms came around me, gentler than the moment called for. "I do enjoy it when you’re difficult."

"Lycaon, someone could walk in," I said, pushing lightly at his chest. "Johann could wake and see us like this."

"And so what if he does," Lycaon murmured, trying to pull me back in. "He likely already suspects something exists between us."

I stepped fully out of his reach this time. "Can you please just help Johann before you go spying on those two?"

"Is his current state not necessary?" he pushed, tilting his head. "It sells your story rather effectively while he’s still visibly suffering."

"I can’t bear to look at him like this any longer," I said. "He’ll be trapped here the rest of the day even if you don’t. So just do it."

Lycaon studied me a moment longer, then nodded, turning toward the bed. Blue light bloomed from Willow’s hands, spreading over Johann’s battered face and chest as he inched closer to touch him, and a few seconds later, Lycaon gasped, his whole body jerking like he’d been dragged out of deep water and dropped somewhere cold.

"What happened?" I demanded.

"Nothing." He steadied himself against the bedpost, breathing harder than the effort should have required.

I didn’t believe that for a second. "We’re supposed to be a team, and we have a soul kiss, remember? What happened?"

"I hadn’t realized," he said slowly, "that healing would be this difficult a task on a body I’m merely borrowing. I felt myself being pulled out. Like something wanted this vessel emptied the moment I tried to do something good with it."

He straightened out, already composing himself. "I should be on my way."

I still didn’t fully believe him, but I let it pass. "Fine. Go."

I watched him leave, the door clicking shut behind him, and turned back to Johann.

I laid my hand against his forehead, and that was when his eyes fluttered open.

"Mom?"

"It’s alright, baby," I said, brushing a strand of hair off his brow.

He blinked up at me, something confused crossing his bruised face. "Are you a lesbian or something, Mom?"

"What?"

"I heard you two," he said, wincing as he tried to shift himself upright. "Doing stuff. In here."

"Oh, that." I waved a hand, dismissive. "Forget it."

"I don’t think I can," he said. "And why do you call her that name? I don’t even remember what you actually said."

"Drop it, Johann." I sat on the edge of the bed beside him. "What matters is that you did well today. We’re about to beat Lysander at his own game."

His good eye narrowed, focus sharpening despite the swelling still distorting half his face. "Is the healer bitch dead?"

"No," I said. "But that’s actually good news."

"I fail to see how that’s good if the girl breathes."

"Let me explain," I said, settling more comfortably beside him. "Lysander made a deal with the Elder Circle. If Bonnie loses control again, if she harms anyone else the way she harmed you, he forfeits the throne entirely. Walks away from it. Renounces his claim on the spot, in front of witnesses who will hold him to it."

Johann’s brow furrowed, the movement clearly pained him. "He agreed to that? Willingly?"

"Desperately," I said. "He’s so consumed with protecting her that he handed us the exact leverage we needed without us even having to ask for it. All we have to do now is ensure she loses control one more time. Publicly and undeniably."

"That sounds like a trap," Johann said. "Obviously constructed for us to walk right into."

"Obviously," I agreed. "But Lysander doesn’t know we have Willow at our side. A witch with the ability to reach inside someone’s dreams, someone’s memories, someone’s very sense of self, and pull the right thread until everything unravels exactly the way we need it to."

Johann gave me a long, searching look.

"What," I said.

"What’s her other name?" he asked.

I felt something in my chest go very still, very careful. "The throne should be your focus, Johann. Not the particulars of the name of who’s helping us reach it."

***

LYCAON

I stepped out of the chamber and drew in a breath my borrowed lungs craved, not out of necessity but from some stubborn reflex of Willow’s body I hadn’t yet bothered to erase.

The instant my hand met the boy, healing energy weaving through his shattered face, something else slipped in alongside it. I hadn’t meant to pry, but the vision forced its way through our contact, sudden and unwelcome, seeping in like water finding every fissure in ancient stone.

Lysander had found something.

I hadn’t seen its full shape, only the aftermath: Edelina and Johann, both kneeling before a tribunal, the promise of an axe heavy in the air. I watched them both lose their heads. The sense of it was urgent, as if the thread I’d glimpsed would soon become reality.

I needed them alive. Not from any fondness for either, though the boy’s blood held something worth saving. I needed the throne anchored through them before I could pursue what truly mattered. Their deaths now would topple the careful architecture I’d spent so long constructing.

So I had to uncover the path that led to that end, and shatter it before it could fully take shape.

Willow surged against the edges of my control, her scream echoing from deep beneath the surface I wore, her voice thin and raw with near agony.

"Your lie is burning me alive. Please. Please stop this. I can feel myself dissolving because of the pact you made. Let me go. Let me go."

I silenced her as I always did, pressing down until her screams faded to a distant, manageable hum, like a fly buzzing behind glass.

Enough, I told her. This won’t last much longer.

It was a lie, of course. But lies came cheap when it came to her.

I let Willow’s form dissolve and reshaped myself into something less noticeable, a sentinel’s uniform draping over borrowed shoulders, my face rendered so plain I could slip through the estate unseen. I moved deeper into the corridor, heading for the main courtyard.

Bradley hurried across the gravel drive toward a car just inside the gates, his stride brisk and urgent, the posture of a man chasing something he could not afford to lose.

I slipped into step several paces behind him, unremarkable and invisible in the way only a borrowed uniform allows, watching to see what prize he was so desperate to claim.

The car door swung open, and a woman emerged, blonde and unhurried, her boots meeting the gravel with a precision that revealed more than Bradley’s excitement ever could. I recognized her gait before her face: the way she balanced forward on the balls of her feet, ready to spring in any direction, her spine so straight it spoke of someone who had never needed to bow for anyone’s comfort but her own.

A Blossom, unless I’d lost every instinct I’d sharpened over centuries of reading power in a body’s smallest movements.

This person was also talented. More so than the vessel I currently wore, and that realization tightened a wary knot in my chest. Willow’s bloodline had been useful, pliable, easy to shape once I found the seams. This one would not yield so easily. Even from thirty feet away, I could feel it radiating from her: something dense and coiled, the kind of power forged through training, not merely inherited.

Bradley reached her and extended a hand, his relief plain even from this distance.

I hung back, folding myself deeper into the sentinel’s borrowed stillness, watching her eyes sweep the courtyard—brief, methodical, like a predator scanning a room before deciding if it is worth entering.

With this one, I would need to tread carefully.

Very carefully indeed.