Page 55 of The Panther's Price

Evryn stared at the trail underfoot. Everything blurred together. Leaves. Dust. The sharp rhythm of her own too-steady breath.

“I didn’t even get to say goodbye,” she said finally, voice rough.

Lucien slowed. Turned. “You did. He just wasn’t breathing when he heard it.”

Her throat tightened. “Don’t.”

He didn’t push.

They walked a few more paces in silence before she spoke again.

“I should’ve known. Ididknow. Part of me did. I just… didn’t want it to be true.”

“That’s what grief is,” Lucien murmured. “Wanting things to make sense when the world’s already moved on.”

She laughed—bitter, hollow. “You’re full of inspirational speeches now?”

Lucien gave her a look. “Hard to dodge emotional landmines with sarcasm when you’ve already set them off.”

She almost smiled. Almost.

Then the cold crept back in.

Later, by the bank of a stream hidden under old vinefalls, they made camp. It wasn’t safe, not really, but it was quiet. The kind of place you could pretend the world was just dirt and sky and the sound of water.

Evryn sat beside the fire, arms wrapped tight around her knees.

“I’m changing,” she said, barely louder than the stream.

Lucien was across from her, sharpening one of his daggers on a piece of onyx stone. He looked up.

“I feel it,” she continued. “There’s this… coldness. Not just from grief. From power. Every time I use it, it wraps tighter. Like it’swaiting.”

Lucien nodded slowly. “It is.”

Evryn blinked. “You’re not gonna lie and say I’m imagining it?”

“I wouldn’t insult you like that.”

She studied him for a long beat. “You’re not afraid of what I’m becoming?”

He slid the dagger away and leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “No. I’m afraid of what people will dobecauseof it.”

She bit her lip. “Thalia wanted to use me to start a war. What does your mother want?”

Lucien’s jaw clenched. “I’m not sure yet. But I know it has to be more than your death.”

The world had gone quiet again.

Too quiet.

The kind of silence that came after something irrevocable broke inside you, but your body was too tired to make a sound.

Evryn sat with her knees pulled tight to her chest beneath the arching roots of a moss-covered tree. They’d made camp just off a ghost road in the hills north of Crimson Hollow, far from any scouts or thorns the Queen might send.

But distance meant nothing to grief.

It lived in her.

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