The road north swallowed the light.
At first, Aria barely noticed. The first few days passed in silence, with little to mark the time but the changing sky. The warmth of the southern sun faded behind them like a story already told. Clouds gathered slowly, thick as wool, turning gold into grey and grey into fog.
She sat inside the royal carriage, alone. A single guard rode at the front. Two more flanked her on horseback. None spoke. None looked at her.
No one had told her how far the journey would be. Or how cold it would become.
She should have brought a heavier cloak. But maybe that was the point.
The inside of the carriage was finely made, polished wood, velvet seats, brass lanterns, but it felt like a box. A moving coffin. The kind nobles used to bury daughters in plain sight.
Aria folded her hands in her lap. She hadn't spoken since she stepped into the carriage. She hadn't cried, either. But silence wasn't peace. Silence was... waiting. And beneath that, something else. Something she hadn't yet named.
The land began to change by the third day. The roads narrowed. Villages vanished. The trees turned tall and sharp, clustered close like teeth. Even the birds stopped singing.
Aria tried to read a book to pass the time. Her eyes kept sliding off the page. She tried to pray. But the words felt hollow in her mouth, like dried leaves blown through a locked door.
By the fourth morning, snow appeared, not flurries, but sheets, blanketing the ground in silence. That was the first time her breath fogged the glass. She touched the window with her fingers and stared out.
"How can it be snowing?" she whispered. "It's still spring."
But no one answered. The guards never spoke.CThey were part of the silence now, too.
That night, they stopped at a stone outpost half-buried in snow. No fire. No food. Just a hollow room and a pile of furs laid out on a wooden bench.
The guards didn't invite her to speak, or offer anything but a nod toward the far corner. She slept alone.
Her dreams were thick and slow.
She walked through a hallway of bone-white trees, the moon overhead cold and full. Snow fell in slow spirals around her, and far ahead, something moved, a shape between the branches, dark as shadow and tall as a man. Or a monster. When she turned to run, she saw them.
Wolves.
A ring of them, eyes shining like glass in the dark. But they did not growl and they did not move. They only watched her.
She woke before dawn, her mouth dry and her heart racing. The room was still cold. Still empty. Still real. The dream had been nothing. Only... it hadn't.
By the fifth day, the wolves arrived for real.
The first howl came just before dusk. Low, distant, and long enough to make the lead horse shudder. Aria leaned forward, heart stilling.
The driver didn't look back.
The second howl came closer.
Then they appeared, one, then three, then seven, shapes running just beyond the treeline, too fast and silent to be ordinary.
Aria pressed her hand to the carriage window. The snow outside was soft, untouched. The wolves ran with eerie grace, their bodies barely disturbing the ground. They didn't break formation. They didn't look at her.
But she knew they saw her.
The guards reacted instantly. The one to her left drew his blade. The others muttered something to each other and pulled closer.
She saw the fear in their eyes.
But not in hers.
She didn't understand it. She should've been afraid. These were beasts, wild, massive, their coats darker than coal. Their eyes glowed amber in the fading light. And yet…
Aria could not look away.
They weren't here for blood. Not yet. They were watching. Guarding. Maybe even waiting.
Her breath fogged the glass again. The wolf nearest to her carriage turned its head, just slightly. Their eyes met.
And for a second, her stomach flipped.
Not from terror. From recognition.
Something inside her stirred, heavy and cold.
That night, she lay beneath furs in another quiet, abandoned station. She didn't sleep.
She heard footsteps outside.
She heard the wolves circling.
She felt something in her chest, beating slower than her heart but deeper, older.
The castle came into view at sunset on the seventh day. It rose like a jagged black wound from the side of a cliff. The towers were crooked, some broken off near the top. There were no banners. No lights in the windows. The gate stood open, but unmanned.
Snow blew sideways in the wind, thick and endless.
And then she saw him.
He stood at the top of a long stone staircase. Tall. Still. A figure carved from shadow and wind.
The Beast King. Damon.
Aria stepped down from the carriage, and the cold bit through her shoes like teeth. Her legs trembled, half-frozen, yes, but also unsteady with fear. She had never been this far from home. Never stood alone at the edge of a world that didn't want her.
No one here knew her. No one waited to greet her.
And the man at the top of the stairs, the Beast King, was nothing like the lords of the South. He didn't bow. He didn't move. He only watched, tall and still, his black coat stirring like smoke in the wind.
She had heard the stories. Of what he was. Of what he might do.
What if he's cruel?
What if he tears me apart the moment the doors close?
She was afraid. Deeply, quietly afraid. Not the screaming kind, but the kind that wrapped around her spine like frost.
Still, she walked. She had been raised for grace. For silence. For sacrifice.
And so, with her heart thudding like a drumbeat in her throat, she lifted her chin and climbed the steps, one slow step at a time, toward the man who was now her betrothed.
He didn't greet her.
He didn't offer a hand.
He only watched.
His eyes glowed faintly in the dark, like coals behind glass.
He looked at her the way someone might look at a ghost.
And then, without a word, he turned and walked into the castle.
She followed.
The servant who met her in the hall did not speak until they reached her room.
It was small. Cold. A cracked mirror hung beside the bed. The air smelled of stone and age.
The servant lit one candle, then turned to her.
"Eat. Sleep. Don't wander at night."
Then she was gone.
Aria stood by the window.
The moon outside was bone white and full, casting silver over the snow-covered trees. Far below, she saw them again.
The wolves. Watching. Still. Waiting. She didn't know why they followed her. But she knew this wasn't the end of their gaze.
It was only the beginning.
She did not sleep that night.
And when morning came, the cold had not left her. It had crept deeper.