Chapter 92
Chapter 92
* Jiselle*
The first dream didn’t feel like a dream at all.
Fire licked the edges of my vision, not warm and inviting but violent, alive. It wasn’t the kind of flame that destroyed by accident. It was the kind that hunted. The kind that devoured. My feet moved through ash as though drawn forward by something unseen, something ancient. Shadows twisted around the trees, and above me, the moon was swollen and bleeding silver. A howl echoed in the distance–long, mournful, and raw.
Then I saw her.
The white wolf.
Larger than any I’d ever seen, her fur like moonlight woven with flame. She stood at the crest of a ridge, eyes burning–not red, not gold, but silver–white, piercing straight through me. She didn’t speak, but her gaze roared louder than words ever could.
And then she ran.
I followed.
Through fire. Through shadow. Through something that felt older than death. Until the dream cracked like glass, and I was gasping awake, heart hammering against my ribs like it wanted out.
The chamber was quiet, lit by a single torch burning low in the bracket by the door. The same stone walls. The same runes faintly pulsing beneath the cuffs still chained to my wrists. But something was different. Inside me, something had shifted. A low hum buzzed through my veins, slow and rhythmic–like the pulse of an unseen tide.
My power.
Not fully returned. Not wild and bright like before. But flickering. Lingering. A pulse instead of a flame.
I sat up slowly, the cool air dragging across sweat–damp skin. The dreams weren’t just echoes. They were something more. Visions. Memories that weren’t mine. Or maybe ones I hadn’t yet lived.
The door opened with a soft creak, and Kael stepped in without preamble, his eyes sharper than I remembered. He didn’t speak at first, only studied me as if reading a new language.
“You saw her, didn’t you?” he said at last.
I didn’t ask how he knew. I didn’t waste breath denying it.
“The white wolf,” I murmured.
He nodded once. “She comes to us when the shift begins.”
“What shift?”
“The change in blood. The breaking of the leash.”
I frowned, the words too vague to make sense of, too weighty not to matter. “What is she?”
Kael crossed the room, sitting across from me without touching the torchlight. He always moved like that–fluid, controlled, but never without gravity.
“She’s not what,” he said. “She’s who. The Ethereal. The first gifted. Some say the goddess’s avatar. Others say she was the goddess herself, before wolves forgot how to listen.”
“And you think she’s trying to speak to me now?”
“I don’t think,” he said. “I know. Because she’s spoken to me, too.”
That made me sit straighter.
His gaze held mine, unwavering. “I saw her in my sixth year, when they first marked me. When they first forced the runes into my skin. I thought I was hallucinating. But the same dream came again and again–always the white wolf, always the fire. She didn’t speak, but she showed me things. Buried things. What the Council did. What they would do.”
“And now she’s coming to me,” I said slowly.
He nodded. “Because your gift is waking.”
I pressed a hand to my chest. “But I don’t feel like myself.”
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truth.
“You’re not,” he said, and for once there was no sharpness fly yun!! “You’re more. That’s why she’s guiding you.”
I didn’t know how to hold that. How to breathe under the weight of it.
“I don’t want to be anyone’s weapon,” I said softly. “Not the Council’s. Not yours.”
Kael’s jaw tightened. “Then don’t be. Be something else. Rule yourself. Rule them.”
Chapter 92
I stared at him. “Rule?”
He nodded slowly. “That’s what she wants. Not obedience. Balance. Power with purpose. And she chooses who carries that torch.”
I laughed bitterly. “And you think I’m next in line?”
“I don’t think,” he repeated, eyes glowing faintly in the dim. “I know.”
I rose to my feet, blood rushing hot through my limbs, the pulse of my magic crackling just under the surface. “Why me? Why now?”
“Because they tried to break you. And you survived. The others–they were strong. Gifted, Brave. But none of them broke the binding like you did. You fought the collar. You shattered the rune net. You survived the suppression disc. And now she s come to finish what she started.”
I didn’t want to believe him.
I couldn’t afford to.
But a whisper deep inside me–the place where the white wolf’s eyes still burned–said he was right.
“She chose you,” he said, rising as well. “Just like she chose me. And we can’t ignore her. Not anymore.”
I turned away, breath catching. My thoughts tumbled too fast to tame. Visions, fire, prophecy. And somewhere in the haze, Nate’s voice. His eyes. The bond we once shared, now severed and dangling like a thread frayed by storm.
“She said nothing,” I whispered. “In the dream. She didn’t speak.”
Kael stepped closer. “She doesn’t need to. Her fire does the talking.”
Silence stretched between us like wire. Taut. Sharp.
“I’m not your queen,” I said, voice tight. “I’m not anyone’s savior.”
“You are what you choose to become.”
He didn’t press further. He simply walked to the doorway and paused there.
“Rest again. There’s more coming. The next time she appears, don’t run. Walk through the fire.”
Then he left, his shadow stretching long across the floor.
I sank back down, staring at the flickering torchlight, the echo of the dream still burning behind my eyes.
Rule. Choose. Become.
I didn’t know what I was becoming.
But the fire had found me.
And part of me–gods help me–wanted to burn.
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