Chapter 3: Mistaken Gratitude

"Open your eyes slowly, Lord Theo. Easy now."

Theo blinked. Warm light filtered through a gauze canopy above his bed. The temple’s familiar cedar scent filled his lungs.

“You’ve been unconscious for two days,” the healer said, adjusting the herbs steaming in a clay bowl.

He sat up sharply. Pain lanced his chest. His hand instinctively went to the pendant still strung around his neck—the wolf tooth. Cold. Real.

“I wasn’t alone in the pass,” he murmured. “There was a woman.”

The healer hesitated. “You were found alone. No one reported seeing—”

“The arrow that saved me was moon-silver,” he said. “No one carries those. No one but—”

The door opened.

“I’m so relieved you’re awake!” a feminine voice rang out, laced with practiced sweetness.

Theo turned—and saw her. Eirene.

Her blonde curls were arranged in court-perfect loops, her cheeks painted with careful bloom. In her gloved hand hung a matching wolf-tooth pendant, swaying deliberately.

“I found you,” she said brightly, kneeling beside him. “I heard the skirmish and rushed in with healer sachets. You were cold as death.”

Theo stared. “You… found me?”

She nodded solemnly. “It’s all a blur. I remember calling your name, and your eyes opened. You gripped my hand.”

He frowned. “I don’t… remember that part.”

The healer cleared his throat awkwardly. “Lady Eirene hasn’t left your side. Her aid was vital.”

Eirene smiled demurely.

Theo’s fingers tightened on *his* pendant under the blanket. “This was with me when I woke.”

“Oh!” she said, eyes wide. “That’s strange. I… may have dropped mine when helping you.”

His heart thudded unevenly.

Something didn’t add up.

But the room was filled with soft praise and comfort, and his thoughts were still fogged by the poison. So he nodded numbly and let her place her hand over his.

“Thank the gods you were there,” he murmured.

Her smile deepened. “Yes. Thank the gods.”

---

Meanwhile, far beneath the keep, Freya dragged her aching body through a servant tunnel, bleeding from reopened wounds beneath her coat. No one met her eyes. No one stopped her.

She collapsed behind the old armory, hands shaking.

The tribunal had been swift. Her protests ignored. Ulric’s report falsified. And Garrick’s face, unreadable as ever, had sealed her fate.

Exile.

Freya bit back the scream in her throat.

She touched the bandage on her palm. The glow had faded—but the cost of that silver blood still pulsed through her veins.

“Cowards,” she whispered. “All of them.”

Then a soft cough interrupted.

“Freya?”

She flinched.

A young stable boy peeked from behind crates. “They said you were gone.”

“I’m not,” she rasped.

He stared, eyes wide with fear and awe. “Are you really… silver-blooded?”

She froze.

“Who told you that?”

He held up a piece of parchment—her personal journal. The one she’d hidden.

Stolen. Torn. Stamped with the mark of “EVIDENCE.”

“I found this in the council wing,” he whispered. “In Garrick’s drawer.”

Freya’s heart pounded. “You never saw this.”

“I didn’t,” he said quickly. “But I want to help.”

She hesitated, then tucked the journal into her cloak.

“Thank you,” she said.

Then she was gone again, slipping into the night like smoke.

---

In the palace, the atmosphere shifted.

Eirene now moved through halls like a rose among frost. She recited her version of the “rescue” a dozen times to eager listeners. Her pendant gleamed with polish. Her hands remained suspiciously uncalloused.

When asked about tribal proverbs, she laughed and mispronounced every one.

Theo frowned at her often.

Still, the court celebrated.

Even Lady Sylra, Theo’s stepmother, had taken notice.

“She’s charming,” Sylra said, sipping tea laced with cynicism. “Good optics for a warlord’s heir. A public sweetheart softens your image.”

Theo didn’t answer.

He walked the corridors alone that night, fingers clutching the original pendant. He kept seeing those eyes—glacier-blue and rimmed with sorrow.

A ghost? A fevered dream?

Then why did the pendant still smell faintly of snow and steel?

---

At the edge of the Deadwood, a soldier shoved Freya forward.

“No use running,” he said, untying her shackles. “This place eats everything.”

She turned, slowly. “Not me.”

“Sure,” he scoffed, kicking her toward the blackened trees. “Go make friends with the shadows, runt.”

They left her standing alone before the obsidian treeline.

The Deadwood loomed—twisted trunks, leaves like brittle whispers, air choked with rot and old curses. It was said to devour light. To drive sane men mad.

Freya stepped forward.

The dark swallowed her whole.

---

The first thing she heard was the wind.

It didn’t whistle—it *spoke*, in broken syllables and dead names.

Bones cracked beneath her boots. Animal or man, she didn’t check.

She remembered her mentor’s words: *“A hunter survives by naming every silence.”*

So she whispered names to herself.

Each name steadied her feet.

She found an old outpost, ruined and buried in vines. There, she scavenged arrows and a shard of polished glass to reflect threats behind her.

Then, under the moss, she saw them—ancient runes carved into stone.

She pulled off her glove.

Pressed her bleeding palm to the sigils.

Silver blood hissed.

The runes flickered awake.

The forest *paused.*

And somewhere, an owl called once—low and lonely.

Freya smiled.

“I’m not dead yet.”