One
...?
My good daughter (Her voice dripped with honeyed concern,but with the sharpness beneath)
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her ears stiffened to attention,every line of her body focused to sound ;
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(The light in her large innocent eyes dimmed;as realisation dawned upon her.If not today .....)
...?
(his lips curled in smirk,but the true disgust was in his eyes-a hard,glittering disgust)
The air in the Grand Athenaeum was thick enough to taste—a potent mix of cold stone, ancient incense, and the musky scent of the gathered panther court. Torches flickered in sconces carved like grasping claws, casting a dance of light and shadow over the stern, elegant faces of the nobility. They were a sea of obsidian, onyx, and charcoal silk, their collective gaze fixed on the center of the chamber.
There, upon a dais of polished basalt, stood~"Rhyse"
His black fur, still damp from the ritual cleansing, gleamed like a river of oil under the firelight. Every powerful muscle in his shoulders and back was defined, not from tension, but from an innate, relaxed power. He held himself with a stillness that was louder than any boast, the deep, even rumble of his breath the only sign of life. The recent victory was not written in a smile on his sharp-featured face, but in the *unyielding set of his jaw*and the *calm, predatory certainty in his molten gold eyes*. He did not look at the crowd. His gaze was fixed on the elder priest now approaching him.
The priest, an ancient panther whose fur was frosted with silver, moved with a slow, deliberate grace. In his gnarled paws, he held a cushion of deepest midnight velvet. Upon it rested the crown.
It was not a crown of gaudy gold, but something far more suited to the King of Pendragon: **a circlet of woven obsidian and polished jet**, shaped like twisting thorns and sharp, elegant claws. At its front, a single, flawless moonstone gleamed with a soft, internal light, a captured piece of the moon itself.
The priest’s voice, dry and rasping like leaves over stone, broke the silence, echoing in the vast hall.
Priest
"Rhyse of the Blackwood line. Scion of the Night. You have proven your strength is without equal. Your mind is without falter. Your will is without fracture. The mantle of the crown does not grant you power. It reveals the power that already flows in your blood. It does not grant you authority. It announces the authority you have already claimed."
The priest lifted the crown. It seemed to drink the light from the very air around it
Priest
"Do you swear to wear this burden? To be the shadow that protects, the claw that defends, the night that gives this kingdom rest?"
𓃮
His voice, when he spoke, was a low, resonant vow that vibrated through the stone beneath their feet. **"I swear it."**
"Then let the night itself bear witness."
As the court erupted into a deep, thunderous roar of approval—a sound that was more growl than cheer—Rhyse's gaze finally broke from the middle distance. It swept over the roaring nobles, over the bowed heads of his generals.
The crown was on his head. The game was now truly beginning.
𓃮
Rhyse Pendragon
Rhyse Pendragon, the twenty-two-year-old Panther King, was a sovereign forged from midnight and muscle, his well-built frame a monument to lethal power and predatory grace that commanded a room with mere silence.** Crowned not by choice but by conquest, his youthful age was belied by eyes of ancient, molten gold that held the weight of his crown and the sharp, calculating stillness of a predator who knew his every move could ignite a war.
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Sylvie Burrowes was a living paradox, a gentle soul whose spirit bore the fractures of abandonment. At eighteen, the bunny possessed a sweetness that felt like a balm and a naivety that left her vulnerable, her speech often dissolving into a fragile stutter when fear took hold—a constant, painful reminder of the generational magic she lacked and the family that cast her out for it.
Author Bunny
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