IRIS
The cold, murderous rage that poured from Kaelen was a physical force in the room, a dark, oppressive weight that made the very air feel heavy and hard to breathe. It was the fury of a king whose subject had been desecrated, the agony of an Alpha who felt one of his own being twisted into an abomination. For a moment, I saw the old Kaelen, the tyrant king who would have already been storming out the door, a single-minded force of violence and retribution, leaving strategy and consequence in his wake.
But he didn't move. He stood there, his hands clenched into white-knuckled fists at his sides, his entire body vibrating with a restrained power that was terrifying to behold. He was fighting it. Fighting the primal, instinctual need to lash out, to tear and destroy. He was fighting it for me. Because I had asked him to. And that knowledge, that trust, was the anchor I needed to hold fast against the storm of his grief and rage.
"Sit down, Kaelen," I said, my voice quiet but firm, the voice of a partner, not a subordinate. I didn't touch him. I didn't try to soothe him with false platitudes. I just met the burning silver of his gaze with my own steady green. "Raging in this room won't save Lysander. It won't stop Marius. We need a plan. My plan."
Ronan stood by the table, his gaze flicking between Kaelen and me, a mixture of shock and a dawning, profound respect. He had expected to have to physically restrain his king, to talk him down from the ledge of blind fury. Instead, he was watching a witch command an Alpha with nothing more than her voice and the unshakeable certainty in her eyes.
For a long, tense moment, Kaelen didn't move. The bond was a chaotic storm between us, his rage a black, turbulent ocean and my own focused resolve a sharp, sliver of ice cutting through it. Then, with a shuddering, ragged breath that sounded like it was being torn from his soul, he sat. He collapsed into the chair he had vacated, his body still coiled and tense, but he was no longer a looming, explosive force. He had chosen to listen.
I turned my attention back to the scrolls, my mind racing, sifting through the horrifyingly elegant details of Marius's plan. It was a masterpiece of cynical, genocidal art. But like any masterpiece, it had a central theme, a core logic. And any logic could be broken.
"He's using a blood magic ritual," I began, my voice losing its emotional edge and taking on the cold, clinical tone of a surgeon dissecting a disease. "That means it requires a specific kind of energy. A resonance. The spell on these scrolls," I tapped the complex sigil, "it's not just about killing. It's about propagation. It's designed to latch onto a biological signature—in this case, human DNA—and then replicate, using the ambient magic of a nexus point like Aeridor to fuel its exponential growth."
"How do we hijack it?" Ronan asked, his pragmatic mind cutting straight to the heart of the matter. He leaned over the table, his gaze sharp and analytical.
"We don't stop the energy," I said, a slow, predatory smile touching my lips. "We redirect it. The spell is like a river, and Marius has dug a channel for it, pointing it at the human world. All we have to do is build a dam. And then, open a new channel."
Kaelen looked up, the red-hot fog of his rage clearing slightly, replaced by a sharp, intelligent focus. "A new channel to where?"
"Back to him," I said simply. The word hung in the air, a perfect, poetic justice. "We let him gather all the power, let him pour every ounce of his hate and ambition into this ritual. And at the crucial moment, just before it's released into the world, we turn the nozzle. We make the river of plague flow back into its source."
A grim, understanding smile touched Ronan's lips. "We make him drink his own poison."
"Exactly," I confirmed. "But to do that, we need to be at the center of the ritual. We need to be close to the conduit—Lysander—and we need a way to invert the sigil. To reverse its polarity from 'outward' to 'inward'."
"And you can do that?" Kaelen asked, his voice a low, rough rumble that was now laced with a hard, tactical edge. The king was back, but he was not alone. He was looking to me, not as a subordinate, but as his chief strategist.
"My magic is moon magic," I explained, my mind already building the framework of the counter-spell. "It's tied to cycles, to ebb and flow, to reflection and inversion. Marius's blood magic is a one-way street, a vector of corruption. My magic can create a reflective surface, a mirror that sends his own energy back at him. But to do it, to hold a mirror against that much raw power, I'll need an anchor. A source of energy that is as potent and as primal as the plague itself."
I looked at Kaelen, letting him see the full weight of what I was asking. I wasn't just asking for his help; I was asking for his very essence.
He understood instantly. The silver in his eyes burned with a new light, not of rage, but of fierce, unwavering purpose. "My Lycan energy," he said, his voice a low, possessive growl. "The raw, untamed force of the beast."
"It's the only thing that can match it," I confirmed. "Your power is a force of life, of instinct, of the wild. His is a perversion of that, a force of anti-life. When they meet, guided by my inversion spell, they won't just cancel each other out. They'll create a feedback loop. A singularity. And Marius will be at the epicenter."
The room was silent for a moment, the three of us bound together by a single, audacious, and terrifying plan. It was a high-wire act of the highest order. One misstep, one miscalculation, and we wouldn't just fail; we would be consumed by the very power we sought to control.
"It's a suicide run," Ronan stated, his voice flat, but his eyes were gleaming with a warrior's appreciation for a glorious, impossible fight. "The spire will be a fortress. Marius's acolytes will be elite. And we'll be walking into the heart of their ritual, a place where magic will be so volatile it could tear us apart just by being there."
"Then we don't walk in," I said, my mind already moving past the obstacles. "We create a diversion. Something big enough to draw every guard, every acolyte, away from the central chamber. Something that makes it look like the main attack is happening somewhere else."
"Like a full-scale assault on the spire's foundations," Kaelen finished, his mind seamlessly linking with mine. He leaned forward, his forearms braced on the table, his gaze locked with mine. A shared, tactical intimacy that was more potent than any touch. "Ronan can lead it. A small, elite force. Loud, explosive, and distracting. They'll breach the lower levels, draw the main defense, and make it look like we're trying to bring the entire structure down."
Ronan nodded, a slow, decisive movement. "It'll be a bloodbath," he said, his voice devoid of fear, just a statement of fact. "But my pack can hold. We can create all the chaos you need."
"While you and I," Kaelen continued, his gaze never leaving mine, "take a different path. A forgotten one. The old servant's passages. They run from the underbelly of the city, through the spire's core, and exit just below the apex chamber. They're unguarded. Forgotten."
"Perfect," I breathed, a thrill of dangerous excitement running through me. It was a mad, brilliant plan. A symphony of destruction and misdirection. "We get inside, we wait for the ritual to reach its peak, and then we unleash hell."
The three of us sat there, a war council in the quiet light of a dawn that now seemed impossibly far away. We were no longer just reacting to Marius's plots; we were writing our own. We were taking his masterpiece and turning it into his execution.
I looked at Kaelen, at the hard, determined lines of his face, at the burning silver of his eyes that held no trace of the unthinking rage from before. He was my partner. My king. My co-conspirator. And together, we were an unstoppable force.
"We get Lysander out," I said, my voice a quiet, fierce vow. It wasn't just about stopping the plague anymore. It was personal. It was about rescuing one of our own.
Kaelen's jaw tightened, a flicker of the old pain crossing his features, but it was quickly replaced by a cold, hard resolve. "We get him out," he confirmed, his voice a low, dangerous promise. "Or we avenge him. There is no other option."
Ronan began rolling up the scrolls, his movements efficient and sure. "I'll gather the pack. We'll be ready to move at your signal." He looked at Kaelen, a look of deep, unwavering loyalty passing between them. "Be careful, brother. Don't let this… thing… change you."
Kaelen's gaze flickered to me, a soft, almost imperceptible warmth entering the cold, hard silver of his eyes. "It's already changed me," he said, his voice a low, intimate rumble. "Now it's time to change the world."