POV: Cael
I don’t sleep. The city doesn’t either. Lanterns dim early—superstition says low light tricks danger into passing us by. We tie the chimes with leather and twine to stop them from singing in the wind so people can pretend the night is quiet.
It isn’t.
Jax taps the drawer. “Locked,” he says. The writ sits under Moon Silence code with two other secrets I would trade my name to burn. I watch his knuckles—steady, sure—while mine press into my own wrist hard enough to hurt.
“We tell her after council,” I repeat, which sounds less like a plan and more like a prayer I keep failing.
“You tell her,” Jax says. “She won’t forgive me anyway.”
“She shouldn’t have to forgive either of us,” I say.
He snorts. “And yet.”
His voice echoes in the hall, swallowed by stone older than my bloodline. Outside, a gust drags cold along the windows. Even Lysanth feels watchful.
We step into the corridor and she’s there—basket on hip, ring shadows under her eyes, mouth set like she’s done being polite to storms. She doesn’t move aside. She doesn’t lower her gaze. She studies our faces like she’s weighing which lie she’s about to be fed.
“What choice are you making about me?” she asks.
“None,” I lie, and the lie tastes like rust. She hears it. Of course she does.
Her chin lifts. “You’re plotting behind my back again.”
“Protecting,” I say.
“Plotting,” she counters. “And hiding. You promised you’d do better.”
Her voice isn’t loud, but it lands like thrown clay. Heavy. Honest. Cracking at the edges.
“I will tell you after—”
“After, after, after!” she snaps. “You keep moving the door.”
Rhun rises—Tell. Claim. Keep.—and I push him down because the truth is a blade in this hallway and I don’t want to stab her with it.
“There’s a writ,” I say finally. The words scrape. “From Moonfell. Addressed to you.”
Her face goes white, then red. I witness every second of it and hate myself for putting those colors there.
“Where is it?”
“Locked,” I answer. “For now.”
“For now,” she repeats, and the words shake. “You pocketed my name and filed it like a spear.”
“I’m trying to keep you safe,” I say. I hate how small it sounds. How close it is to excuses men before me have used for harm.
“I am not safe when men file me!” she says, and the quiet after that sentence hurts.
I have taken punches that stung less.
“Come with me,” I say. “We’ll read it together. In the council room. With the Regent.”
“In your room,” she says, bitter. “In your pocket. In your mind. It’s always your place, your hour, your rules.”
“That’s not fair,” I say, even though it is.
She steps closer. Too close. Aster flares so hard I feel it like heat on my own skin. Rhun answers with a growl I can’t swallow. For a heartbeat the space between us is wolves and fire and the bed we found last night and the war that wants to eat it. Her breath trembles. Mine does worse.
“Don’t you dare use duty to make me small,” she whispers. “Not after you asked me to trust your hands.”
“I did,” I say. “I do.”
“Then act like it,” she says.
The air behind her shifts—shields moving faster than they should, the city holding its breath. It’s like the walls know something is coming before any of us speak it aloud.
From the cliffs, far but not far enough, Moonfell banners gather like a reddening sky.
Jax’s voice cuts in from the stair: “Lines forming at the south field. Drums on the far bank.”
We both turn. We both know what it means.
“This fight isn’t with you,” I tell her, and the second I say it, I hear the lie. The fight is for her and around her and against what wants to own her. It is with us. It is us.
She hears it too. “Everything is with me,” she says, voice flat. “Everything.”
She’s not wrong. Every lever being pulled in this city is pulling her name with it. Every law I’ve written this month has her shadow stitched into the margins.
We stand there, angry and pulled tight, our inner wolves showing their teeth. I reach for her hand; she doesn’t give it. She reaches for my eyes; I look away first, because the law needs my face more than she does right now. And it kills me.
Outside, drums start. Low at first. Then louder. A language of threat.
Inside, something between us snaps and doesn’t break, like a rope with too many knots. A connection twisted into anger and care and fear so strong it makes my pulse feel wrong in my throat.
Her breath shakes. Mine stumbles. For one heart-shattering blink, I think she’ll step toward me anyway.
Then the drums thunder again.
Jax’s hand hits my shoulder. “Cael. Now.”
I look at her—really look—because I don’t know when I’ll get to see her in quiet again. Mara stands like carved stone, furious, hurting, unclaimed by any throne or writ and refusing to bow to any fate not chosen by her own hands.
Rhun pushes against my ribs. “Stay.”
Aster burns under her skin. “Go.”
She is the bravest person I know. And the most at risk.
“I’ll find you after,” I say.
She doesn’t nod. Doesn’t soften. She only whispers:
“You’d better.”
And I turn toward the drums because the city demands me.
But every step feels like I’m walking away from the one thing I’d rather protect than any boundary line on a map.