Chapter 108 The Blood Moon

Chapter 108 The Blood Moon
Cassandra's POV

I coughed so hard my eyes watered, tea spraying across the blanket as I tried to get air past whatever had lodged itself in my throat.

The liquid burned its way down.

"Gently," Fauna said, moving fast, one hand on my back, rubbing in firm circles. She shot a look at her sister over my shoulder. "Did you have to say it like that?"

"There isn't a soft way to say it," Fiona said, entirely unapologetic.

I got my breathing back under control, wiped my mouth and looked at Fiona with what I hoped was a convincing show of offense.

"I don't know what you're talking about," I said. "And I'd appreciate it if you stopped making accusations like that. They could get you thrown out of this palace instantly."

Fiona smiled. She reached forward and took my hand before I could pull it away.

"We're not your enemies, Cassandra," she said. "We only want to help you."

The name landed like a hammer to the side of my head.

I remembered, then, that one of them had said it once before, when I'd been drifting in and out of consciousness.

Not Kiara. Not Luna. My actual name, the one nobody in this entire world was supposed to know, spoken as easily as if she'd known it her whole life.

"You're from a world far from this one," Fiona continued, watching my face carefully. "We've known since the moment I touched your forehead."

I stared at her. At all three of them. They were watching me with the same expression, patient, knowing, entirely unsurprised by anything I might say next.

"I– um– it's not–" I stuttered before Fiona cut me off.

"Can you drop the act and cooperate?" she said, not unkindly. "Someone like you should already know we don't need you to confirm anything. Denying it only prolongs the conversation."

There was no point lying.

"Please," I said, the words coming faster than I meant them to. "Please don't take me back yet. Not now. I have to help Liam. I have to stop Harlan before the coronation, before he destroys everything, before–" I was rambling and I knew it and I couldn't stop. "I can't leave yet. I can't leave him. Please."

"Cassandra." Flora's voice cut gently through the rest of it. "We're not here to expose you."

I didn't believe her. Not immediately.

"She means it," Fauna said. "We have no interest in undoing what's already happening here."

Something in me loosened, just slightly.

Fiona tilted her head. "Do you love him?"

‘What a question to ask right now.’ I felt the heat climb up my neck, felt something in my chest answer before I could stop it, and from the look on all three of their faces, it was answer enough.

"I have to help him," I whispered. "Whatever this is. Whatever I am. I have to help him survive this."

The three of them exchanged a look and sighed in near unison.

Then, taking turns, they began to explain.

Dragons and their riders had existed since before any record the witches themselves kept bonded pairs, chosen by bloodline, the rider's power and the dragon's nature intertwined so completely that one rarely survived long without the other. It wasn't the part of the story I'd read in that library book a lifetime ago. This was older. Deeper.

I listened, asking questions when I had them, and they answered each one without hesitation.

"Kiara descends from one of the last great riding lines," Flora said. "The power should have passed to Tiara as the elder twin. But the bond requires more than blood. It requires a good and virtuous character." She paused. "Tiara was too vain. Too proud. The bloodline rejected her and passed to Kiara instead, but her blindness meant she could never make use of it, so it stayed dormant."

"Until you arrived," Fauna said. "And congratulations, you've just activated it."

I sat with that for a moment. The dream made sense now, the mountain, the dragons circling, none of them ever quite touching me until the very end. It hadn't been random. It had been mine.

And then the excitement arrived, sharp and immediate.

"If I can summon a dragon," I said, sitting up straighter despite the ache still in my limbs, "we could actually win this. We'd have something Harlan has no answer for–"

"It's true," Flora said. "But it isn't that simple."

"What does that mean?"

Flora took my hand. Her grip was steady and careful.

"You don't belong to this world," she said quietly. "You were pulled into Kiara's body, into Kiara's story, to correct something the universe needed corrected. That comes with a price." She held my gaze. "To fix the timeline, to settle what was disturbed when you arrived… you have to kill Liam. The man who was always fated to become Kiara's tormentor."

The room went very cold around me. ‘Did I just hear that right?’

"What?" The word came out barely above a breath. "You're joking. Right?"

"And if you fail," Fiona said, gently, terribly, "if you don't kill him before the next blood moon arrives, you will die instead."

I froze.