Page 5 of Haunted Crowns
Eris didn’t move.
Change loomed, inevitable, and close. For the first time, she might taste freedom. But the cost was clear: she’d have to walk straight into the maw of the very world that feared her, a world on the verge of breaking.
The Astareth Summit wasn’t a gathering. It was a crucible, masked in diplomacy, lined with teeth. Power would pass likepoison in a wineglass. Every whispered oath carried a blade’s edge. Loyalties would fracture. Blood would rise.
And Stephan… what had he meant when he said things would change? Was it only politics, or had she imagined the softness in his eyes? The way his voice caught when he looked at her?
She didn’t know what he felt. But she hoped—gods, she hoped—that he wanted her the way she’d never stopped wanting him.
The wind stirred around her. It carried no answers. Only questions. And a warning.
Firstblood Directive 221-B: All Lycan attendees are to be seated on the lower level.
Group gatherings beyond four are prohibited without guard supervision.
—Astareth Summit Orderbook, Revised Year 1450 A.O.
Chapter 2
One year later
The iron gates of the Astareth Summit loomed before Eris, ornate and ancient in their suffocating grandeur. It was a place of diplomacy, and of quiet, calculated war. Unlike the halls of Dragov Manor, Astareth was open to all: Firstbloods, Lycans, turned vampires, and humans, each summoned yearly from the age of twenty-one to partake in a week of mandated unity, political theatre, and tribute to the Crown. All trapped together in a fragile peace that could shatter at any moment.
For years, Eris had been warned about the factions waging a silent war for Goznoth’s future. About the Lycans, thick with old rage and rebellion. About the Obsidian Order, made up mostly of Turned vampires, humans remade in blood, impure in the eyes of the Crown, and furious enough to want it toppled. And about the Firstbloods, her own kind, born of the ancient line andbound in unwavering loyalty to the Dragov throne. She knew what awaited her: the hatred, the whispers, the silent appraisals she could never escape. But worse than the judgment was the unknown.
Stephan.
One year had passed since his departure. A year of aching. They had exchanged warm yet cautious letters. Their words circled truth like fire, careful, intimate only in the safest ways. A part of her longed to see him. A part of her was terrified.
What if she looked at him and saw a stranger? What if he looked at her and saw only a girl who had imagined too much? The storm in her chest raged, but she kept walking.
The gates of Astareth Summit opened before her, and she stepped inside. Into war. Into fate. Into the memory of him.
The halls of Astareth swallowed her.
Eris walked, chin high and steps steady, feeling every glance, every sneer, every flicker of barely concealed laughter. They whispered behind her: strange girl, unnatural girl, the one who hears the wind.
As she climbed the grand staircase, the air shifted: a cold wind threaded through her long auburn curls, wrong in the way a breath on the neck is wrong when no one stands behind you. Then came the whispers, low and hissing, curling through the empty hall like smoke only she could hear.
A warning. Of what?
Her chest tightened. She exhaled, shook her head, and stepped forward. Her foot missed, and the world tilted: stone slammed into flesh, pain burst immediate.
Loud laughter erupted behind her, merciless.
Her belongings scattered as she stayed where she had fallen. Burning.
Then boots planted firm before her, worn leather scuffed but meticulously polished. Someone stood over her, someone who had not laughed. Not yet.
Slowly, Eris lifted her head. Her breath caught as she met the sharp, disdainful eyes of Kareon Duskbane.
She knew who he was—everyone did—but there was something different about seeing him like this, up close. No title, no herald. Justhim. She had never trusted power taken by force, and he wore it like a second skin. He was not just another attendee at the Astareth Summit; he was the Alpha of the Lycans, his name spoken with fear and reverence. A boy without a past, a fighter without a choice, a ruler without a throne. He had not inherited power. He had taken it through dominance and sheer will. Among his own, he was called "K," a name weighted with respect and a sliver of fear. To the rest of the summit, Kareon Duskbane was a warning, a living reminder of the power struggles simmering beneath Astareth’s ceremonial pageantry.
He towered over Eris, commanding. He didn’t just walk through rooms. He changed the gravity inside them. Messy brown hair framed angular features. A scar slashed his cheek, not a flaw but a mark of survival. His skin was sun-warmed and tanned, his beard sharp against a jaw carved from iron. A silver piercing caught the candlelight as he tilted his head. His faction uniform clung to his frame, immaculate but undone: sleeves rolled, collar loose. A contradiction by design, discipline forged with defiance.
Then came his eyes, golden and unyielding. Scorn flickered beneath the surface, but so did something else: a predator’s intrigue. His smile bared sharp, white teeth, a glimpse of the wolf beneath the skin.
It wasn’t the smile that unsettled her. It was the fact that he was watching her so closely. For the first time since falling, Eris felt like prey.
