Grace of a Wolf-Chapter 96: Lyre: Weight of Life (II)

LYRE

My magic curls out like tendrils, brushing against the walls of the chamber, tasting the carnage.

I’m too late.

The walls tremble. Dust sifts from the ceiling. My phone vibrates, one after another. Nonstop, and I already know what’s happening.

Divinity Connect is lighting like a Christmas tree, sensing the shift in my control.

Blood. So much blood. Most of it dried to rusty brown, flaking from the walls in macabre patterns. But near the furthest wall—fresh crimson glistens in the dim light. Still wet. Still new.

I walk deeper into the chamber, my steps deliberate. My magic extends further, parsing through the residual energy, and I go very still.

This wasn’t Isabeau.

Not entirely.

Jack-Eye steps up beside me, his face drained of color. "What the fuck happened here?" His voice shakes. He’s furious, and barely controlling his panic. The scent of it is strong, and yet still almost buried beneath the gruesome stench of this place.

I don’t answer. I can’t. My attention is focused on the room itself, on the energy patterns hanging in the air like invisible cobwebs. The bodies aren’t quite randomly placed. At least, not the ones outside of the cages.

Owen crouches beside one of the bodies, his movements clinical. He acts unaffected, but I can feel his core of arcana shaking. He checks for rigor mortis, examines the wounds on the neck and chest, like he does this every day. And maybe he does. "They didn’t fight back."

"They never had a chance." My voice is flat, but the rage continues building. At Isabeau, at whatever did this—but mostly at myself. I should have come back sooner. Should have evacuated them immediately. Should have not been distracted by Grace and her stupid mate and their nest of soulspliced kids.

I know better than to leave loose ends.

Then Jack-Eye stiffens beside me. "Do you smell that?"

I do. A sharp, chemical tang cutting through the stench of decay. An unnatural odor that doesn’t belong, like rain mixed with burnt sugar and molten iron, wrapped in rotting flesh.

My stomach turns.

"Ritual," I mutter. "But wrong."

Owen rises, his silver eyes gleaming unnaturally in the dim light. "Blood magic. But why does it smell like that?"

"They didn’t know what they were doing." The words taste bitter. Amateur work. Powerful, but sloppy. Like watching a child with a loaded gun—deadly, but not by design.

I step carefully through the bodies, eyes locked on the floor. And there they are. Four symbols, equidistant from each other, perfectly etched into the concrete. The glyphs are pristine, untouched by the blood and bodies surrounding them.

North. South. East. West.

I kneel beside the eastern mark, narrowing my eyes. The lines are a little too squiggly. Some are too short. A few are too long. There’s a hook where there shouldn’t be and a few too many loops, but the glyphs are clear in intent. novelbuddy.cσ๓

"He’s pulling from banks."

Owen’s face hardens as he kneels opposite me, examining the western symbol. "A mass harvest."

"The anchor’s moved." I press my palm against the floor, feeling the emptiness where power should resonate. When I destroyed Isabeau, the magic in this space should have dissipated gradually, returning to the earth. Instead, it’s gone—completely—as if siphoned away and anchored elsewhere.

Owen sighs, a sound heavy with foreknowledge. "She had an unusual hold over this pack."

Jack-Eye moves closer, his tall frame tense with barely contained fury. "Who? Who did this? What are you talking about?"

Someone’s reanimating Isabeau, drawing on her power, perhaps even with the help of her her consciousness. Someone with enough power to gather this much blood energy but not enough finesse to do it cleanly.

Someone desperate.

"I don’t know yet."

It’s a good thing I forced the wizard to stay behind. Who knows how his magic would have responded to such a scene.

It might have even been sucked away, tied to the blood sigils pulling arcana from this room.

I grit my teeth and throw out my hand, channeling my rage through my fingertips. The sigils ignite instantly—blue-white flames burning unnaturally hot, consuming the markings without spreading.

The fire doesn’t make a sound, doesn’t crackle or hiss. It just burns, clean and merciless.

Owen flinches with his whole body, stumbling back like I’ve just tried to incinerate him. His silver eyes go wide, reflecting the flames so they look molten.

The terror on his face would be amusing if the situation weren’t so fucked.

Jack-Eye takes two hasty steps away from me, though his face remains mostly impassive. His eyes twitch, though.

"Get out," I say, my voice rough with barely contained fury. "Take Andrew and that twitchy wizard and get out of here."

"But what about—" The Lycan Beta starts.

"These souls need peace." I cut him off, watching as the flames die down, leaving nothing but black scorches. "And I don’t want even a sliver of Isabeau’s influence to remain here."

My phone vibrates again—and again—and again, a constant buzz against my hip that’s becoming harder to ignore. Divinity Connect is having a field day with my emotional state. Probably logging every spike in my power for some archangel’s spreadsheet.

Or Chaos wants in.

Either way, I ignore it.

"Now," I add when neither of them moves.

Owen stares at the charred sigils and nods once. "Understood."

Jack-Eye hesitates longer, eyes darting between me and the carnage. "What exactly are you planning to do?"

I turn to face him fully, letting just a hint of what I am bleed into my eyes. His pupils contract to pinpricks as he sucks in a breath.

Grace has always been able to see my eyes for what they are. Jack-Eye has only ever caught glimpses.

"I’m going to clean up."

He frowns, but Owen smacks his shoulder and jerks his head back the way we came. "Right. We’ll wait outside."

"Do that."

They back away, Owen moving with the careful precision of someone trying not to startle a predator, Jack-Eye with the wariness of someone who’s seen enough supernatural shit to know when to retreat.

When they’re gone, I close my eyes and breathe in the stench of death and failed magic. Seven hundred years, and the scent never gets easier to bear.

My phone vibrates again, insistent and annoying.

Clairvoyance is not perfect. An overreliance on my abilities will always lead to heartbreak.

It’s a lesson I’ve learned time and time again.

And it never gets easier.