Chapter 28 THE TOWER THAT BURNED TWICE
The road to the ruins wasn’t on any map.
Liora led them anyway.
They rode at dawn, when the world was still grey and half-asleep. No escort, no banner, no fanfare. Just four riders slipping out of a side gate: Roman, Aria, Kael, and Liora. Seris had argued to come; Roman had refused.
“If this goes wrong,” he’d said, “someone sane has to be left at home.”
Aria wasn’t sure she agreed with his definition of sane anymore. But she couldn’t argue with the need for secrecy.
The further they rode from the Dark Moon Court, the quieter the land became.
Trees thickened, their branches bare and skeletal, clawing at a sky that looked too pale for comfort. Wind whispered through dead leaves, carrying the faint scent of char and something older—like old, wet stones that had once seen fire.
The path itself felt… wrong.
Not dangerous.
Hidden.
Like the ground knew it was not supposed to remember the way.
“How did you find this place again?” Kael asked, eyes flicking between trees, hand never straying far from his sword.
“I never forgot it,” Liora said.
Her horse walked as if it knew exactly where to step.
Aria’s mount snorted, uneasy. She stroked its neck absently, her own stomach twisting tighter with every step. She couldn’t see anything yet—no towers, no ruins, no obvious scars on the land.
But her bones recognized the air.
“We shouldn’t be able to feel this far out,” Roman said quietly. “The Court’s wards don’t reach past the ridge.”
“These aren’t your wards,” Liora said.
“What are they, then?” Aria asked.
Liora’s pale eyes didn’t leave the path.
“The echo,” she murmured. “Of a night the moon watched and did nothing.”
They crested a low hill.
Aria saw it.
Or what was left of it.
The tower had not survived the first fire.
Once, it had probably been tall and narrow, a watchtower or private wing, half-removed from the main fortress, ringed by its own wall. Now, it was a broken spine of stone jutting up from the earth, its top half sheared away as if a giant hand had snapped it. Burn scars streaked the fallen stones. Ash still clung to cracks that should have washed clean years ago.
No birds perched on the ruin.
No animals grazed near it.
The land avoided it like a wound that had never healed.
Aria dismounted slowly.
Her legs felt heavy when her boots hit the ground.
Roman watched her closely as he swung off his own horse, eyes alert not just to the surroundings, but to her.
“Any sign of the Caller?” Kael murmured, scanning the tree line.
“No smell,” Roman said. “No watchers. If he’s here, he isn’t walking on ground.”
“Comforting,” Kael muttered.
Liora led them forward, stepping over broken stone and brittle grass. Her movements shifted—less like a guest and more like someone coming home to a house that no longer wanted her.
Aria’s fingers brushed a chunk of collapsed wall as she passed.
Her vision blurred.
For a heartbeat, the charred stone wasn’t broken.
It was whole.
White stone, smooth and warm in the sun.
Children’s laughter echoing down it.
Her laughter.
She jerked her hand back with a soft gasp.
Roman was at her side instantly.
“What is it?” he asked.
She shook her head, breath unsteady. “I saw… something. Not a vision. Not a dream. It felt like—like it remembered me.”
Liora glanced back. “It does.”
Aria stared at the ruined tower.
“What was this?” she asked, voice low.
“Your mother’s wing,” Liora said. “Her private tower. Far enough from the main hall that the priests would not hear every time she argued with them. Close enough that your father could pretend he didn’t hear, either.”
Roman’s jaw clenched.
Aria took another step.
Her boots crunched on old debris.
The closer they got, the colder the air seemed to become—not a natural cold. A memory cold. As if the very temperature had been burned out of the world that night and never fully came back.
They stepped through what had once been an archway.
Aria’s heart stuttered.
The interior was open to the sky now, ceiling gone, upper floors collapsed inward. Charred beams lay like black bones across the floor. One wall still stood mostly upright, bearing the faded ghost of a mural—something once bright, now scorched to almost nothing.
Except—
One patch.
A faint crescent.
Painted silver.
The moon.
Aria’s veins prickled.
Liora stopped in the center of the debris-strewn floor.
“This is where it started,” she said.
“It?” Aria asked.
Liora looked at her.
“The end.”
Kael moved around the perimeter, eyes sharp, boots careful. Roman stood a few paces from Aria, close but not crowding, senses humming. His scars tingled faintly.
Aria closed her eyes.
“If you brought us here to tell us a story,” she said, “tell it.”
Liora’s shoulders rose and fell with a slow breath.
“You were four,” she said. “He was six.”
Her gaze flicked to Roman.
“You’d spent the entire day under this tower. Training room. Private hall. Nursery. The priests had demanded to see the children. Your mother refused. Your father stalled.”
She smiled faintly—sad and small.
“I spilled wine on his cloak, so he couldn’t go to the Council chamber without changing. It bought her ten minutes.”
Roman’s brows drew together. “You?”
She nodded. “I told him I was clumsy. He believed me.”
Kael snorted. “Of course he did.”
Liora’s face darkened.
“The priests grew impatient,” she said. “They said the prophecy would not wait. They said the children must be presented under the moon, as the old texts required. Your father said to give him until moonrise.”
Her eyes moved to Aria.
“Your mother said they could have the moon, but not her children.”
Aria’s heart hurt.
“She called me to the nursery,” Liora went on. “Told me to pack nothing. To take you. To be ready.” Her voice shook. “She kissed your forehead and told you that if she said run, you were to go with whoever carried you and not look back.”
Aria felt the words like a phantom touch.
Run, little moon.
Her hand drifted to the bracelet on her wrist.
“The Caller arrived before the priests did,” Roman said, eyes narrowed.
Liora nodded.
“Yes.”
“Why?” Aria whispered.
Liora looked tired.
“Because he was there before the priests,” she said softly. “He was there from the start.”
Roman’s shoulders tensed. “Explain.”
Liora swallowed.
“The Caller wasn’t always what he is now,” she said. “Once, he was just a man. A powerful one. A dangerous one. But a man. He came to court as a ‘friend’ of the prophecy. An interpreter. A scholar. He said he could help the North understand what it meant to have a Luna born under an eclipse.”
She looked at Aria.
“He looked at you like you were a riddle he liked too much.”
Aria’s stomach twisted.
“And my mother?” she asked. “Did she like him?”
Liora hesitated.
“No,” she said finally. “She respected him. Feared him. Fought with him. But she never liked him.”
“Then why did she let him near us?” Roman asked.
“Because your father did,” Liora said simply. “And because she thought she could outwit him. For a while, she did.”
The wind picked up, moaning through the broken stone.
Aria shivered.
“What happened that night?” she asked.
Liora’s eyes grew distant.
“He came to the tower alone,” she said. “The Caller. No priests. No guards. Just him. He had a parchment in his hand. He said the prophecy had changed.”
Kael swore under his breath.
Roman’s power prickled under his skin.
“The first reading said only that a Luna would be born under the Blood Eclipse,” Liora said. “Later interpretations hinted that her power would surpass the King’s. Dangerous enough. But that night, he claimed to have found a new line. Hidden. Old.”
She closed her eyes for a moment, as if seeing it.
“When the moon chooses twice, the crown will break.”
The words slithered down Aria’s spine.
“Twice,” Roman said.
“Twice,” Liora echoed. “Two children. Two names. Two possible vessels. The priests assumed it meant one would die, one would rise. They wanted to test which one the moon favored.”
Aria’s stomach lurched.
“Me,” she whispered.
“And me,” Roman murmured.
“Yes,” Liora said. “Your mother heard that line and decided there was only one way to save you both.”
“She hid us,” Aria said.
Liora shook her head slowly.
“No,” she said. “She split you.”
Aria blinked. “What?”
Liora pointed to a scorched, half-collapsed section of wall.
“There,” she said. “There was a door. A hidden passage. It led to a storage room under the tower. Not on the blueprints. Only she and your father knew it existed.”
Roman moved toward the wall, brushing his hand along the broken stone.
His scar burned.
Faint images flickered at the edge of his mind—dark stairs, the smell of dust, a child’s hand gripping his.
Aria walked with him.
When her fingers touched the same stone, the air seemed to ripple.
The ruins blurred.
For a heartbeat, she saw—
A room.
Crowded with old trunks and rolled tapestries.
A shaft of moonlight through a narrow window.
Her own small hands gripping a wooden toy wolf.
A boy’s voice—
“Stay behind me.”
Roman’s breath hitched beside her.
He heard it too.
Liora’s voice drew them back.
“She meant to send you away separately,” she said. “One to the allied packs in the East. One to the mountains. She thought if the moon could not see you together, it would not know to choose.”
Aria swallowed.
“But something went wrong,” Roman said.
“Yes,” Liora whispered. “The priests arrived early. The Caller was already with them. He had told them there were two children. He had told them the prophecy would be fulfilled tonight.”
Her face tightened.
“Your father hesitated,” she said. “He believed the North needed an answer. He believed if they did not give the moon what it ‘wanted’, something worse would come. Your mother begged him to run.”
Aria could see it now.
Her mother, silver eyes blazing, holding a child under each arm.
Her father, torn between a woman and a world.
“He chose wrong,” Roman said flatly.
Liora didn’t soften it.
“Yes,” she replied. “He told the priests to wait in the courtyard. Gave them a few minutes. Told them he would bring the children himself so they would not mishandle them.”
“And instead?” Aria asked.
“He ran,” Liora said. “For once, he ran the right way. He took you both to the hidden room. Shoved you inside. Told me to bar it from within. He said the priests could have the prophecy, but they would not have the children—not yet.”
Roman’s brows drew together. “Then how—”
“He went back,” Liora whispered. “For her.”
“Their mother,” Kael said quietly.
“Yes,” Liora said. “He went back for Elaria. He thought he would bring her to you. Thought they would run together. Thought he could fix a choice years too late.”
Her voice shook.
“The priests saw him. The Caller saw him. The argument spread to the whole tower. Words. Shouts. Threats. Your mother’s power stirring. Your father’s storm awakening. The priests terrified.”
Aria’s heart raced.
“What did he choose then?” she asked, barely breathing.
“That’s when you heard it,” Liora murmured. “The first time.”
Aria’s skin prickled.
“The first what?” she asked.
Liora’s gaze met hers.
“The first scream,” she said softly.
It rolled through Aria’s memory like a wave.
High. Terrible. Not fear.
Power.
“Elaria’s magic broke something,” Liora said. “The Caller tried to bind it. Your father tried to shield them. The priests tried to control it all at once.”
She looked around at the ruins.
“And the tower paid for it.”
Flashes hit Aria in jagged shards.
Her mother’s eyes gone pure moonlight.
The Caller’s hand outstretched, ring glinting dark red.
Her father’s voice shouting her name—both their names.
Fire. Not red. Not orange.
Silver.
The memory hit like a blow.
Aria staggered.
Roman caught her arm.
His storm roared against her magic for a heartbeat—then steadied, matching it.
She clung to that contact.
“What happened to us?” she asked.
Liora’s answer was quiet.
“I dragged you out,” she said. “He shoved you into my arms and told me to run. You screamed for your mother. You tried to shift before your body was ready. It nearly killed you.”
Her eyes flicked to Roman.
“He tried to follow,” she said. “But the fire—”
Her voice broke.
“The fire took the stairs,” she whispered. “Took the doors. Took everything but the tower itself.”
“And them,” Aria said.
“Yes,” Liora whispered. “Your father stayed. Your mother stayed. The Caller stayed. The priests stayed.”
She breathed in, shaky.
“Only we left,” she said. “You, unconscious in my arms. Him, fighting to get back inside until his power burned him out. The North woke to a tower on fire and a prophecy screaming in a language they didn’t understand.”
Kael’s hand went to his mouth.
Roman’s scars burned.
Aria’s heart felt like it was in two places—then and now.
“But why does it feel like I met him?” she asked, voice small for the first time in a long time. “The Caller. Why do I remember…”
She swallowed.
“…hands that shouldn’t have been helping?”
Liora looked away.
“The Caller tried to take you,” she said. “Not to kill you. To keep you. He thought if he could get you out, he could shape you before the North ever knew who you were.”
Aria’s stomach turned.
“He grabbed you once,” Liora said. “At the bottom of the tower. Your mother saw. She nearly killed him.”
Silence.
“Nearly,” Roman repeated.
Liora nodded.
“Nearly,” she said. “He lived. She didn’t.”
The wind cut through them.
Aria stared at the ruins.
“This place feels like it remembers us,” she whispered.
“It does,” Liora said. “The first time it burned, it tried to keep you safe.”
“The second time?” Roman asked.
Liora’s pale eyes darkened.
“Hasn’t happened yet,” she said.
“But it will.”
The words sank into the cold earth.
“What do you mean?” Kael asked warily.
Liora looked at Aria and Roman—standing together in the center of the ruined tower, blood-oath scars still fresh, power humming between them like a live wire.
“When the moon chooses twice,” she said slowly, “the crown will break.”
Her gaze shifted between them.
“Last time it chose her,” she whispered. “This time, it chose both.”
Aria’s veins glowed faintly.
Roman’s storm answered.
“We are not a broken crown,” Aria said.
“Not yet,” Liora agreed. “But he will try to break you.”
She tilted her head toward the open sky.
“The first fire took your mother,” she said. “The second one won’t go for towers.”
Her eyes met theirs.
“It will go for you.”