The door closed softly behind the messenger, leaving the room steeped in tense silence. Wren turned away from it and faced Roan with a heavy expression, his sharp eyes shadowed with something that looked too close to dread for the King's comfort.
Roan watched him for a moment. "Tell me what you're really thinking."
Wren hesitated, his hand brushing the pommel of the dagger at his waist—a nervous habit he rarely displayed.
"I think it's a curse."
The words dropped like a stone into a still pond, quiet but impossible to ignore.
Roan's brow furrowed. "A curse?"
Wren nodded. "This isn't a disease, Roan. It came too suddenly. It spreads too violently. Rabid one moment, convulsing the next—like something twisting them from the inside out. Natural illness doesn't do that to werewolves. Not to our kind."
Roan scoffed under his breath. "You're saying magic did this?"
"Yes."
"The witches?"
