Chapter 6: The Ink That Remembers

I woke to the sound of a door closing.

Not the soft click of a latch, but the heavy, final thud of oak meeting stone. My eyes flew open, heart hammering against my ribs before my mind even caught up to where I was. The canopy above me was dark velvet, the sheets beneath me were silk, and the air smelled of cedar and frost.

The King’s chambers.

I sat up too fast, and the world tilted. My head throbbed with a dull, splitting ache, and I pressed my palm to my temple, trying to piece together the fragments of the night before. The rogue attack. The silver in my blood. The way Kael had carried me through the castle like I weighed nothing.

And then—

His face. That flicker of something raw and broken in his golden eyes, right before he’d pulled away.

I scanned the room. The massive four-poster bed dominated the space, its curtains half-drawn. A fire crackled low in the hearth, casting long shadows across the stone floor. But the bed beside me was empty. The sheets were rumpled, as if someone had lain there, but the coldness of the fabric told me he’d been gone for hours.

There was a tray on the bedside table. Water, bread, a small pot of honey. My stomach turned at the sight of it, but I forced myself to reach for the water first. My throat was raw, like I’d been screaming.

I had been.

But that was before. Before I’d told him the truth. Before I’d watched hope and horror war in his eyes and known—*known*—that the curse had already sunk its teeth into him.

I swung my legs over the side of the bed and winced. My side was wrapped in clean white bandages, the wound beneath already knitting together thanks to whatever wolf blood ran through my veins. But the silver had left a deeper mark. Something cold and lingering, like frost that refused to melt.

I needed to find Kael. I needed to make him *listen*.

I stood, my legs shaky but holding. I’d taken two steps toward the door when my foot brushed against something on the floor. A leather-bound book, its pages splayed open, lying where it must have fallen from the bedside table.

My journal.

I bent down and picked it up, my fingers tracing the worn cover. I remembered starting it yesterday—a foolish, desperate attempt to anchor myself in reality when everything around me felt like a dream. I’d written in it before the ceremony, before the rogues, before I’d looked into Kael’s eyes and seen the man he used to be.

Curious, I flipped to the first page.

*Day 1—or maybe Day 300, I’ve lost count.*

*I am Aria of the Moonshadow pack. I am the daughter of Elena Blackwood, the witch who cursed the Lycan King. And I am his fated mate.*

*I know because the bond hums beneath my skin like a second heartbeat. It pulls me toward him even when his eyes are cold and empty. It whispers his name in my sleep. It tells me that the man who looks at me like I’m a stranger is not the man I’m meant to know.*

*The curse is real. I’ve seen the proof in the faded marks on his chest—the runes that bind his heart to the night he lost everything. I’ve seen it in the way he flinches when I say his name, like it’s a sound he’s forgotten how to answer to.*

*They call him the King of Wolves, the beast who conquered half the realm. But I see the truth. He’s a man drowning in a sea of his own making, and he doesn’t even know he’s underwater.*

I stopped reading, my breath catching in my throat. The words were mine. I remembered writing them, the ink still wet on the page as I’d listened to the wolves howl in the distance. But reading them now, in the cold light of morning, they felt like a prophecy.

I turned the page.

*If the curse is real, then so is the cure. The old texts say that only a mate’s love can break it—but not just any love. A love that’s been tested. A love that’s been *chosen*, not just fated.*

*He doesn’t remember me. He doesn’t remember the night we met, the way he looked at me like I was the first star in a dark sky. He doesn’t remember the promise he made to find me, no matter what it cost.*

*But I remember.*

*And I will make him remember too.*

A tear slipped down my cheek, and I wiped it away with the back of my hand. The ache in my chest was worse than the wound in my side. Because I knew, with a certainty that chilled me to the bone, that Kael had already begun to forget the moments we’d shared. The ceremony. The way his hand had trembled when he’d placed the crown on my head. The way his voice had dropped to a whisper when he’d said my name.

That was the curse’s work. It fed on memory, on connection, on the fragile threads that bound two souls together. And every day that passed, it frayed them a little more.

I couldn’t let that happen.

I closed the journal and pressed it to my chest, letting the leather warm against my skin. The vow I made in that moment was stronger than any oath I’d ever spoken.

*I will make you remember, Kael. Even if it kills me.*

*Even if it kills us both.*

I dressed quickly, pulling on a simple gown of deep green that hung in the wardrobe—it must have been left for me, though I had no memory of anyone bringing it. The fabric was soft, but it did nothing to warm the chill that had settled into my bones.

I found him in the great hall.

He stood at the head of a long table, surrounded by his advisors, his back straight and his shoulders squared like a man carved from stone. His hair was dark as midnight, his jaw sharp enough to cut glass, and his eyes—

His eyes swept over me with the same cold indifference he’d shown me the day I arrived.

“The queen is awake,” he said, his voice flat. “Good. You’ll want to hear this.”

I stepped forward, ignoring the sting of his words. “Kael, we need to talk. About last night—about what I told you.”

His gaze flickered, just for a moment. A crack in the ice. But then it was gone, smoothed over by centuries of practiced control.

“There’s nothing to discuss,” he said. “The rogues have been dealt with. The borders are secure. And you, my queen, will remain in the castle until I decide otherwise.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know what you meant.” He took a step toward me, and the air in the room seemed to thicken. “You think you know me. You think you’ve seen something in me that no one else has. But the woman I met yesterday is a stranger. The bond you feel is a phantom—a trick of fate that means nothing.”

He was lying. I could see it in the tension of his jaw, the way his fists clenched at his sides. But I could also see the truth, the one he wouldn’t admit even to himself.

He was afraid.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out the journal. I held it up, letting the firelight catch the worn leather.

“This is not a trick,” I said. “This is the truth. And I’m going to prove it to you—even if I have to write every memory we’ve ever shared in this book before you’ll believe me.”

He stared at the journal, his expression unreadable. And then, for the first time since I’d walked into the hall, his lips curled into something that wasn’t quite a smile.

“Prove it, then,” he said. “But I warn you, Queen—I have no patience for fairy tales.”

I met his gaze, and I didn’t flinch.

“Neither do I,” I said. “That’s why I’m going to make you *live* one.”

The words hung in the air between us, heavy and electric. And somewhere in the depths of the castle, a clock began to strike the hour.

I had seven days until the curse completed its work.

And I had just challenged the Lycan King to remember a love he’d already forgotten.

*Game on.*