Chapter 2The Oracle’s Price

The stitches pulled when Soren tested his shoulder. Three hours since Thorne had sealed the wound, and already the ache had dulled to something manageable. He pressed his palm flat against the timber wall of the safehouse, measuring his breathing, forcing the world into focus.

*I should be dead.*

That thought should have carried weight. Instead it hung hollow, displaced by the memory of Vesper’s voice cutting through the ritual firelight. *He conspired with the Shadows.* She had rehearsed that line. He knew it the way he knew the cadence of her lies—intimately, from years of watching her charm information from rivals.

Thorne had saved him. Why? That question gnawed harder than any wound.

The safehouse smelled of old blood and damp wool, with something sharper underneath—herbs Calla had crushed into the bandages. A fire hissed in the iron hearth, casting long shadows across a table littered with maps.

“You’re awake.” Thorne emerged from the back room, a leather satchel slung across his chest. “Good. We don’t have time for you to heal properly.”

“I noticed.” Soren straightened, testing the range of motion. “What’s the plan?”

Thorne spread a map across the table—the southern territories, marked with symbols Soren didn’t recognize. “The Council holds a prisoner manifest at a supply outpost near Thornwood. Every captured Shadow, every rebel, every dissident—it’s all there. Names, locations, sentences.”

“And Vesper’s family?”

“If they’re in Council custody, they’ll be on that list.” Thorne’s jaw tightened. “Or they won’t, in which case we’ve got a bigger problem.”

Soren studied the map. The outpost sat at a crossroads, close to Ironclaw territory. Familiar ground. He knew the patrol schedules, the shift rotations, the blind spots in the garrison’s defenses.

“I can get in,” he said. “But not alone.”

Thorne almost smiled. “You won’t be.”

The door opened, and Calla stepped inside. She moved like someone who expected an ambush—shoulders low, weight balanced, eyes scanning before her feet crossed the threshold. A blade hung at her hip, worn smooth from use.

“Thorne’s apprentice,” Thorne said, catching Soren’s questioning look. “Her father was a scholar who asked the wrong questions about Council history. The Council answered with steel.”

Calla’s gaze settled on Soren, cold and measuring. “He’s still breathing. Disappointing.”

“We’ll need to work on your bedside manner,” Soren said.

“We’ll need to work on *you* not getting us killed.” She stepped past him, trailing frost in her wake. “I know the outpost’s layout. I’ll handle the perimeter. You get the manifest.”

“And if I find something useful?”

“You won’t.” She didn’t look back. “Council outposts don’t keep secrets worth knowing.”

Soren exchanged a glance with Thorne, who gave a slight shrug. *She’s your problem now.*

---

The outpost rose from the treeline like a scar on the landscape—stone walls topped with iron spikes, torches burning at intervals that left shadows between them. Standard design. Soren had helped plan similar fortifications for Ironclaw.

Calla moved ahead, a blur against the dark. She cut left toward the rear gate, where the patrol rotation left a gap of exactly four minutes between sentries.

Soren counted.

*Three.*

*Two.*

*One.*

The nearest torch guttered. He slipped through the gap.

Inside, the outpost smelled of smoke and cheap cooking oil. Barracks lined the eastern wall. Storage sheds crowded the western yard. The command building stood at the center, its windows dark except for one—the quartermaster’s office.

Soren pressed against the wall, listening. Footsteps approached from the left. He held his breath, counting steps until they faded.

The office door yielded to a blade slipped between the frame and latch. Inside, ledgers and scrolls covered every surface. Soren scanned the titles, looking for anything marked with the Council’s seal.

*There.*

A leather-bound folder, stamped with the iron wolf crest. He pulled it open, scanning the first page.

Names. Dates. Charges.

No mention of Vesper’s family.

He flipped further, his pulse steady despite the danger. Moonbane. The word caught his attention, repeated across several entries: *Moonbane administered. Subject reduced. Transfer pending.*

He didn’t understand the context, but the pattern was clear—this wasn’t just a prison manifest. It was a record of experiments.

A scream cut through the silence.

Soren’s hand stilled on the page. The sound came from beneath the outpost—a cellar, or a laboratory. He could picture it: chains, instruments, a shifter writhing as their soul-scent was stripped away.

*Finish the mission. Get the manifest. Leave.*

But the scream came again, weaker this time, and Soren thought of Vesper’s voice during the ritual—controlled, rehearsed, but underneath it, something raw. Desperation.

*She chose this. She chose them.*

He stuffed the manifest into his coat and moved toward the sound.

---

The laboratory was hidden behind a false wall in the cellar. Soren found the mechanism by touch—a loose stone that triggered a latch. The wall swung inward, revealing a chamber lit by a single lantern.

The shifter hung from chains bolted to the ceiling. His fur had begun to sprout, patchy and incomplete, as if his body couldn’t decide whether to transform. A needle still dangled from his arm, attached to a tube that fed into a glass bottle of glowing blue liquid.

Moonbane.

Soren recognized it now—the color, the faint luminescence. He’d heard rumors in the pack halls, dismissed as rebel propaganda. But here it was, real and venomous.

The shifter’s eyes found him. “Please,” he rasped. “Don’t let them—”

“I’m not Council.” Soren crossed to the chains, assessing the lock. Simple design. He pulled his blade and pried it open.

The shifter collapsed, barely catching himself on the wall. “They’re coming. The alarm—”

“I know.” Soren grabbed the bottle of Moonbane, tucking it into his coat. “Can you run?”

“I can try.”

They made it three steps before the door burst open.

Two guards filled the frame, crossbows raised. Soren didn’t hesitate—he grabbed the lantern and hurled it at their feet. Oil exploded across the floor, flames leaping between them and the guards.

“Go!”

He shoved the shifter through the gap, following close behind. The alarm bell began to ring, sharp and insistent, as they burst into the yard.

Calla was already there, her blade red. She stared at the shifter Soren had brought, then at the flames rising from the cellar.

“What did you *do*?”

“Saved someone.” Soren grabbed her arm, pulling her toward the gap in the wall. “Now run.”

---

The safehouse felt smaller with the rescued shifter occupying the corner cot. Thorne had given him something for the pain, and he’d fallen into a restless sleep, his breath still ragged from the Moonbane’s residue.

Soren sat at the table, the manifest spread before him. Calla stood by the fire, her arms crossed, her silence louder than any accusation.

“You compromised the mission,” she said finally.

“I completed it.” Soren tapped the manifest. “And I brought back evidence of what the Council is doing. That’s worth more than an untaken manifest.”

“To who?” She turned, her eyes sharp. “To you, so you can feel righteous? Or to the Shadows, who now have to move our safehouses because the Council will tighten every patrol route for fifty miles?”

“The Council was already tightening patrols. I just gave them a reason to focus on the wrong area.”

Thorne emerged from the back room, his expression unreadable. “The shifter will live. He says there are others—dozens, maybe more—being held in similar facilities across the Hinterlands.”

“Moonbane,” Soren said. “That’s what they’re using. A drug that suppresses the shift.”

“I know.” Thorne sat across from him. “We’ve known about Moonbane for months. What we didn’t know is that the Council has started mass-producing it. The prisoners in the manifest—most of them are marked for Moonbane treatment.”

Soren looked down at the list. Names he didn’t recognize, but each one represented a life being slowly drained. “Vesper’s family isn’t here.”

“No.” Thorne’s voice dropped. “Because they’re not in the Council’s main prisons. They’re in a secret facility—one that doesn’t appear on any manifest.”

“Then how do we find them?”

Thorne leaned forward, his eyes catching the firelight. “There’s someone who knows. Someone who’s mapped every hidden Council installation across the Hinterlands. The Shadows call her the Oracle.”

Soren felt the weight of the name settle over him. “Where do I find her?”

“That’s the problem.” Thorne’s expression darkened. “The Oracle doesn’t come to supplicants. You have to prove yourself worthy of her knowledge. And the price she demands… isn’t always measured in coin.”

Calla’s hand drifted to her blade. “You’re not seriously considering this. The Oracle is a myth. A legend the Shadows tell to scare new recruits.”

“The Oracle is real,” Thorne said. “I’ve met her. Once.”

“And?” Soren asked.

Thorne’s jaw tightened. “And she took something from me that I never got back.”

The fire crackled. The rescued shifter groaned in his sleep. Soren stared at the manifest, at the names of the condemned, at the empty space where Vesper’s family should have been.

*Borrowed time.*

He met Thorne’s gaze. “Tell me how to find her.”