Nyx
My name is Nyx. Just Nyx.
No title, no last name. I am an elite-trained warrior and, when necessary, an
assassin.
The training mat smelled
like rubber and iron. My fist met the heavy bag with a dull, satisfying thud.
It swung across the chalk line like a pendulum with a grudge.
"Again," Commander Ren
said, his voice flat as concrete.
I hit twice—right cross,
left hook—then stepped in, buried a palm heel into the bag's gut, and pivoted
to keep my center balanced. The bag shuddered. Ren didn't blink.
"Blade," he ordered.
I drew and threw in one
breath. The knife struck the bag's painted throat and quivered there, dead
center. I didn't smile. The Silent Blades never taught us to be proud of what
survival demanded.
Ren walked past me in his
black fatigues, the built-in mic at his collar catching the scrape of fabric.
His hair was more gray this year, lines cut deep around his eyes. He plucked
the knife free and handed it back to me hilt-first.
"Your hands are steady,"
he said. "Your eyes aren't."
"I slept four hours," I
replied.
"You slept two." He
circled me once, and my wolf stirred under my skin. "Tell me something I don't
know. Something that explains why your heart rate spiked when you heard the
chimes."
The palace's morning
chimes echoed through the bunker like music played underwater. They marked the
hour, the shift change, the beginning of the day the entire kingdom would
watch.
"It's the job," I said.
"It's the job," he echoed,
dry. "But it's not the difficulty. It's the shape."
I didn't answer. The shape
of the job was a blade pressed under someone's ribs in a crowded room while
cameras flashed. The shape was knowing where the exits were when none existed.
The shape was pretending I wasn't there at all.
Ren's comm crackled. He
muted it and tossed me a towel. "Clean up. Briefing in five."
I stripped off the gloves,
wiped sweat from my face, and caught my reflection in the wall mirror out of
habit. High cheekbones, straight nose, a mouth that looked softer than it was.
The kind of pretty they put on coins.
Also the kind the kingdom
believed belonged only to one woman.
Princess Liora Morvain
would be upstairs in the East Wing, wrapped in silk and stylists and prayer. If
I stood beside her without armor or a cap shadowing my eyes, no camera would
know which of us to adore and which to erase. That was the point. It had always
been the point.
The shower water hit too
hot. I took it anyway, letting steam blur the tile until I could barely see
myself. When I stepped out, I was someone else—hair braided, uniform pressed,
matte-black plates cinched tight across ribs and spine. The Silent Blades were
not ceremonial guard. We were the ghosts the public wasn't meant to see until
it was too late.
I palmed the scanner at
Operations and the door hissed open. The room was bright and cold, a half-moon
of workstations facing a wall of feeds—gates, helipad, ballroom, cathedral, a
hundred corridors soon to be crowded. The screens bled captions from every
network. Across the bottom, a single headline scrolled: The Binding:
Will Prophecy Finally Bring Peace?
Ren stood at the central
table with Luci from comms, Ortega from intel, and Dahl from routes. He didn't
look up when I entered.
"Nyx," he said.
"Approach."
The table lit under my
palms. Ortega tightened the overlay until the palace map glowed—inner sanctum,
event hall, terrace. Red dots marked choke points, blue for Blades, gray for
guard, gold for civilian eyes.
"At nineteen hundred
hours," Ren said, "Princess Liora proceeds down the central aisle to the moon
dais. The Lycan King arrives from the west entrance at nineteen-oh-seven. The
binding vow, if it happens, is at nineteen-nineteen."
"If," Luci said under her
breath.
Ren ignored her. "Nyx,
you're Shadow One on the floor. Your only objective is the principal. You are a
shadow. You do not exist."
"Copy."
"Threat profile," Ortega
said, tapping the northeast balcony. "We've got chatter from the Fen marshes. A
Kade loyalist cell crossed the border last night. They're pushing a false-mate
narrative. If the King fails to bind to Liora, they'll spin it into the
King has no goddess. We all know what follows."
"War," Dahl muttered.
Ren toggled another layer.
Priest routes lit up, a choreography of sanctity and control. "Church is
insisting on incense. We've secured non-reactive blends. Don't inhale anything
you didn't unseal yourself."
"Noted," I said.
"Camera coverage is wall
to wall," Luci added. "We've mapped dead angles. Stay in them. If you step
wrong, the internet names you before the speeches end."
"I'm invisible," I told
her.
"That's the goal," Ren
said. He slid me a small black glass square. "Blind ID. Opens every door,
leaves no record. If you go down, we never met."
"Reassuring."
He almost smiled. "We
don't fail this, Nyx. The fragile peace of the last two years depends on
tonight. The packs are circling. The monarchists are afraid. The zealots want
their prophecy fulfilled. The world needs a story to believe in. We give them
one night without blood."
"And if it doesn't hold?"
"It holds."
"Understood."
He dismissed the others.
As I turned, he caught my sleeve. "Two things," he said. "Don't die."
"Is that an order?"
"It's a preference.
Second—if something goes wrong with the King or this bond nonsense starts to
spiral, your job doesn't change. Protect the principal. Liora only."
The name landed in my
chest like a coin dropped in water.
"Copy," I said.
At eighteen hundred hours
the palace transformed. The East Wing doors opened to a sliver of neon sky.
Black SUVs slipped through the gates. Inside, staff wheeled carts hung with
crystal and winter roses. The orchestra tuned, sound checks flashing patterns
across the vaulted ceiling. The moon dais gleamed white at the far end, a stage
built to look like blessing.
I took my post in the
southeast shadow, cap low, comm in place. The armor hugged me in a familiar
grip. Knives at the small of my back and thigh, baton across my spine, pistol
as a last resort. I planned for precision, not chaos.
"Shadow One, status," Luci
murmured.
"In. South line clear."
"Copy. Stream goes live in
twelve. Don't sneeze."
Guests drifted in with the
weight of perfume and politics. Priests glided like swans, robes hiding inked
wrists. Drones whispered above, mapping for the broadcast.
At eighteen forty-nine,
the princess entered for rehearsal. Liora Morvain moved like someone who had
been trained to enchant gravity. She glowed in white silk, a moonstone at her
throat, a crown resting in dark hair identical to mine. My throat tightened.
Her eyes flicked once,
almost toward me. Maybe she saw me. Maybe she always looked that way—like she
knew where her shadow stood. Liora had been groomed for every gaze. I had been
trained to disappear under them. She was the reason I existed and the reason I
didn't.
Aunt Serice followed half
a step behind, pearls precise at her throat, eyes always moving. When her gaze
brushed my corner, the hairs on my arms rose.
"Shadow," Ren's voice said
in my ear, soft but edged. "Silver protocol. Unvetted florals by the west
doors. Dahl's on it."
"Copy."
I tracked the florals, the
priests, the guards rehearsing their marks. The King would arrive in eighteen
minutes. My wolf paced inside me, uneasy with incense, with priests, with men
who spoke of fate.
"Comm check," Luci said.
"Solid."
"Motorcade five minutes."
The room changed. People
stood straighter. Even the air felt staged. The Lycan King wasn't a ruler who
entered quietly. He arrived like an answer to a dangerous question.
"Breathe, Nyx," Ren said
softly.
I did. In for four, out
for six.
"Motorcade at the gate,"
Ortega reported. "Two decoys, three primaries. Advance cleared."
The west doors opened.
Cold air swept through silk. Camera lights cut the dark like knives. His guard
entered first, black suits and mirrored lenses. Then Dorian Voss stepped
through—tall, composed, a living contradiction of restraint and threat.
He didn't look like
prophecy. He looked like consequence.
He greeted the Prime, the
Archbishop, the cameras. The orchestra swelled. My gaze swept the room—doors,
balconies, exits, lines of sight. My wolf paced again, then froze.
A hum slid through my
bones. Not sound—something deeper, like a tuning fork struck beneath the world.
"Shadow, your vitals
just—" Luci began.
I didn't hear the rest.
The King had paused just past the threshold, his guards forming a quiet wall
around him. He should have been looking at the dais. He wasn't.
His gaze cut through the
crowd and stopped where I stood.
His eyes met mine.
The world narrowed. My
wolf rose, tall and certain inside me, and said with terrifying clarity, Mine.
Voices filled the comm,
all of them saying my name.
I couldn't move. The bond
hit like a line thrown across a chasm, snapping tight and singing as if it had
always been waiting.
On the screens above,
cameras found his face. The angle lingered—long enough for every watching
citizen to see their King look past the princess to the shadow on the wall.
My hand was steady on the
baton. My heart was not.
"Nyx," Ren's voice
snapped. "Stand down."
I hadn't moved.
The King took one step,
then another. The wolves in the room felt it and murmured. Liora's smile
trembled, then returned. Aunt Serice's jaw locked.
My wolf pressed against my
skin, all warning and want. She did not kneel. She simply existed at full size
for the first time.
The bond pulled again.
And in the brittle silence
of a night the world had called sacred, the thing I'd spent my life refusing to
be—seen—found me anyway.
The chandelier glittered.
The cameras watched. The King's mouth parted as if to speak a word he didn't
believe in.
My comm went dead.
Incense smoke curled blue.
And something ancient and
inconvenient inside me began to burn.