So unaware.
His breath slowed. His heart did not race. It never did before a kill. Calm was his weapon, shadow his shield. One strike, one breath, and the war would end.
The shadows stirred around him, eager for the taste of royal blood.
Rakhal shifted, ready to slip inside.
He let the darkness curl forward first, threads of anakara winding like smoke through the narrow gap in the shutters. They slid across the chamber, unseen, unheard—extensions of his will, his senses. The shadows touched the stone, the furs, the faint gleam of steel on the bedside table. They brushed against her skin, her breath, the fluttering pulse in her throat.
Rakhal closed his eyes.
Her presence filled him. Every movement. Every sigh. The faint hitch of breath as she shifted beneath the furs. The slow ebb of tension in her body as weariness claimed her. Then, at last, the rhythm evened. A steady cadence, soft and sure. Sleep had taken her.
Still, he waited.
He lingered in the darkness outside her chamber, crouched against the tower's cold stone, letting the night settle around him like a second skin. The city spread below, streets hushed and shuttered. Beyond the walls, faint fires glimmered on the plains where armies once clashed and bled, their embers whispering of old battles, old scars.
The night was his comfort. Its silence. Its embrace. The cool air against his skin, the shadows answering every thought, every breath. Here, in the dark, he was more alive than in daylight, more whole. The night belonged to him, and he to it.
And yet?—
His jaw tightened beneath the mask. How many nights had he crouched like this? How many towers had he climbed, how many chambers breached, how many lives ended with a whisper and a strike? Thousands of dead. Entire bloodlines erased. Kings, generals, soldiers, nameless men and women who had simply stood in the wrong place, belonged to the wrong side.
All of it weighed on him, as heavy as the stone beneath his claws.
They had taught him from youth to despise humans. To see them as carrion, filth, vermin gnawing at the bones of the world. Once, he had believed it. Once, he had killed with fire in his veins, with the certainty of righteous vengeance.
But now?
Now he felt nothing. Not hatred. Not fury. Only a hollow quiet where once there had been rage. The humans stank of sweat and death, yes, but they bled the same as his ownkind. They cried, they pleaded, they died. And his shadows had devoured them all.
Rakhal's gaze lifted to the stars above the tower, faint points of light caught in the veil of smoke. He wondered when it would end. When the blood would stop flowing. When his people—his clan, his kin—would finally know peace.
If such a thing was possible for them.
If such a thing was possible for him.
The queen's breathing deepened. The shadows whispered, restless. The kill was close.
Rakhal stilled himself. He became part of the night, a statue carved of frost and shadow, his body pressed against the cold stone. Time slowed to a crawl.
The world around him breathed in silence. The air bit sharp, carrying the scent of smoke from distant fires and the tang of iron from the fortress walls. A breeze stirred, ghosting along the tower, tugging faintly at his cloak. Above, the clouds shifted, dragging their veils across the pale curve of the moon, dimming its glow, then baring it again. Silver light washed across the courtyard, catching on the helms of weary guards.
Their boots rang as they shifted. A new pair took their posts, voices low, grumbling against the cold. One yawned, the other muttered a curse. The rhythm of it all—the clank of armor, the faint rasp of steel against leather—was a pattern Rakhal had learned to read as easily as a hunter reads the pulse of the forest. Nothing stirred that he did not feel. Nothing moved that he did not mark.
The night was his ally. Still, vast, unbroken but for the quiet breath of wind.
Above him, the queen exhaled once more, long and steady. The cadence of her breathing settled into its pattern. Sleep had taken her fully now, wrapping her in its fragile shroud.
Rakhal's hand flexed against the stone. The shadows thickened at his call, threads of dark energy curling around the window like searching fingers. A pulse ran through them—a frisson of power that vibrated against the latch.
The metal shivered.
With a soft scrape, almost lost in the night, the catch lifted. The shutters trembled, then eased open with a faint creak. The sound was sharp to his ears, but it vanished beneath the sigh of wind and the shifting clouds above.
Rakhal moved.
He slid upward, his body a seamless extension of the shadows. One hand caught the sill, then the other. He drew himself through the narrow opening with fluid precision, slipping into the chamber without sound, without trace.
