Chapter 45 THE NIGHT THE PAST REFUSED TO STAY QUIET
Sleep did not take her gently that night.
It grabbed her.
One moment Aria was lying on her side, staring at the lines in the ceiling and listening to the quiet crackle of the dying fire in her room.
The next—
Dark.
Not the castle’s dark.
Not her own mind’s.
Another’s.
She knew before she saw anything.
This wasn’t a memory.
Not hers.
Not the Caller’s.
Not the tower’s.
This was a wound.
She stood on packed earth, cold seeping up through her bare feet.
Trees ringed the clearing—tall, black silhouettes etched against a sky strangled with clouds. No moon. No stars. No kind sky at all.
She knew this forest.
Not with her mind.
With her blood.
Her heart began to pound.
She looked down.
Small hands.
Smaller than hers.
Scarred knuckles.
Dirt under the nails.
A girl’s body.
Not her.
Her.
The first Luna.
Aria tried to move.
Tried to pull free.
The vision held tighter.
Voices.
Low, arguing, at the edge of the clearing.
“She doesn’t understand—”
“She doesn’t need to understand. She just needs to obey.”
“Obedience isn’t the same as faith.”
“Faith doesn’t change the sky. Altars do.”
The girl—this younger version of something Aria had inherited but never wanted—stood in the center of the clearing, shoulders squared, jaw clenched.
She was not kneeling.
Her wolf was close under her skin, restless, confused.
These were her own people.
Her pack.
The ones who hunted with her, ate with her, laughed with her.
And they were handing her over.
Not to strangers.
To wolves who wore the moon on their collars like a brand.
The priests.
Aria felt the girl’s confusion, her anger, her sick sense of betrayal.
You said we didn’t kneel, the girl whispered in her own head.
You said we were different. You said we didn’t bow like the others.
A hand caught her arm.
Her mother’s.
Not rough.
But firm.
“Don’t fight,” her mother whispered. “If you fight, they call it blasphemy. If you go quiet, maybe the sky will see you.”
“The sky doesn’t see anyone,” the girl said.
Her own voice shocked her.
Steady.
Hard.
Old.
The woman flinched.
Tears glistened in her eyes.
“I know,” she breathed.
Then she let go.
Aria felt something crack—not here, in her own chest, under her ribs.
This was wrong.
This was a history she’d always been told in pretty pieces.
The chosen girl.
The holy call.
The noble sacrifice.
Not this.
Not a child holding her own rage in with grit teeth while her pack looked away.
Priests stepped into the clearing.
Robes brushing the ground.
Symbols glittering at their throats.
Crowns of woven silver wire circling their foreheads.
One of them held a bowl of something dark.
Blood.
The girl did not flinch.
“Your bloodline is honored,” the High Priest said solemnly. “The moon chose you from among many. Your name will live forever.”
She spat at his feet.
“My pack chose fear,” she said. “Not the moon.”
Her voice shook, but she didn’t look away.
The crowd murmured.
Someone hissed her name.
The Priest’s eyes cooled.
“Take her,” he said.
Hands grabbed her arms.
Not gently.
She twisted once, twice, tested the grip.
She could break it.
She knew she could.
If she shifted—
If she clawed—
But every exit in the clearing was blocked by her own people.
Not the priests.
Them.
Her.
Family.
Her mother’s hands were shaking.
Her father stared at the ground.
No one met her eyes.
They dragged her toward a ring of stones, each etched with old runes, each filled with dried herbs and ash and things that once had names and now were just char.
Aria wanted to scream.
She wanted to reach into this vision and rip the girl out.
She couldn’t.
She was locked in.
Watching from behind a pair of eyes that were not hers.
Feeling everything.
“I won’t kneel,” the girl said.
“You don’t have to kneel,” the Priest said. “You only have to burn.”
The words landed like a slap.
Aria felt the girl’s wolf snarl.
“You think I’m going to beg you?” she said. “You think I’m going to ask some cold sky to love me while you light the match?”
The Priest remained calm.
“We don’t sacrifice you to the sky,” he said. “We send you into it.”
He lifted the bowl of blood.
“For all our sakes.”
The chant began.
Low.
Growing.
Not all believed.
Aria could feel it—pockets of doubt in the crowd, flickers of guilt, shards of shame.
But they all…
Did it anyway.
The bowl was pressed to the girl’s lips.
She clenched her teeth.
Hands forced her jaw open.
The blood burned going down.
Hot.
Wrong.
Filling her with someone else’s choices.
Aria wanted to move.
She couldn’t.
She wanted to close her eyes.
She couldn’t.
This was what had been written out.
This was what had been called “blessing.”
The first Luna stood in the center of the stones, blood on her tongue, rage in her chest, and looked up at a sky that did not blink.
“No,” she whispered.
Not a plea.
A refusal.
It didn’t matter.
The chant rose.
The heat started.
Not at her feet.
Inside her ribs.
Like someone had turned her heart into tinder and struck a flint.
She screamed.
Not in fear.
In fury.
The fire licked at her veins, hungry, building, turning her body into a conduit.
A tool.
She felt something above lean closer.
Not love.
Not mercy.
Attention.
The moon.
Flat.
Distant.
Watching.
The girl spat blood on the stones.
“If you want me,” she snarled at the sky, “you come down here yourself.”
For a heartbeat—
It did.
Aria saw it.
Not in the sky.
In her own chest.
Something white-hot and bright slammed down, not on her body, but through it, turning her into a spear aimed at the earth.
The priests gasped.
The pack fell to their knees.
The girl stayed standing.
Her body was burning.
Her soul was screaming.
But some part of her—
The part Aria recognized entirely too well—
Stood.
Refused.
The fire tried to go up.
She pointed it down.
The stones exploded.
The earth cracked.
The wolves screamed.
The priests realized—
Too late—
That they had called down something they could not aim.
The vision shattered.
Not cleanly.
It tore apart inside Aria like a piece of glass breaking.
She came back to herself all at once.
She was on the floor.
Her back against the wall.
Her lungs dragging in air like she’d been underwater.
Roman was there.
On his knees.
Hands on her shoulders.
His face pale, eyes wild, scars burning faintly.
“Aria.”
Her name.
Again.
Again.
Like an anchor.
She blinked.
The room came back into focus.
Her chamber.
Not the forest.
Not the clearing.
Not the altar.
“Did I—” she gasped. “Was I—”
“You screamed,” he said.
His voice was hoarse.
“Then you stopped. Then you… went somewhere.”
She swallowed.
“There,” she whispered.
He knew what she meant.
“Did he do it?” Roman asked.
“The Caller?”
She shook her head.
“No,” she said.
“This wasn’t his.”
Her hands were shaking.
She realized he was gripping her wrists.
Not tightly.
But firmly.
Like he’d had to hold her down at some point.
There were half-moon marks on his arms where she’d dug her nails in.
She flinched.
“Did I hurt you?”
His lips quirked.
“You were busy,” he said softly.
She tasted blood.
Her own.
She’d bitten her lip.
Badly.
“Tell me,” he said.
She didn’t want to.
She didn’t want to put it into words because words made things real.
But the bond hummed.
He could feel her trying to hold it in.
And it hurt him.
Literally.
A faint ache along the line of his ribs where her emotion pressed.
She exhaled.
Slow.
“They didn’t lie about the fire,” she whispered. “They lied about everything before it.”
He waited.
She told him.
About the clearing.
About the pack that didn’t kneel.
About the girl who refused to kneel too.
About the mother with shaking hands and the father who stared at the ground.
About the priests.
About the blood.
About the way the moon didn’t choose her.
They did.
About how, when the fire came, she tried to throw it back.
Not at the sky.
At them.
When she spoke of that—
Of the moment the fire slammed down and the girl forced it into the earth—
Roman’s hand tightened on her wrist.
“You felt that?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“So did I,” he said.
She looked up sharply.
“You saw it?”
“No,” he said. “But when you screamed, there was a moment—just one—when it felt like something tried to come through you and hit me.”
He swallowed.
“I pushed it away.”
Her gut clenched.
“You what?”
His jaw flexed.
“Instinct,” he said. “You were gone. I was still here. Something came through the bond and I—” He made a vague motion with his hand. “—threw it off. I didn’t have time to think about where.”
Her blood ran cold.
“Roman,” she whispered. “That fire… it wasn’t just memory. It was looking for somewhere else to land.”
He realized it too.
They stared at each other.
“If you hadn’t blocked it,” she said slowly, “it might have… anchored here.”
“In you,” he said.
“Or in the castle,” she said.
“Or both,” he replied.
The idea made her stomach twist.
“That’s what the tower was built for,” she whispered. “To catch what they called. To give it a place to sit.”
“And someone tried to use you like that,” he said. “Again.”
“Not someone,” she said.
She thought of the girl.
The first Luna.
Her refusal.
Her rage.
“My bloodline,” she whispered. “It remembers trying to throw it back. It remembers failing.”
Roman’s face hardened.
“They didn’t let her choose,” he said quietly. “They dressed it up as destiny and called it obedience when she stopped fighting because there was nothing left to burn.”
Aria’s hands clenched.
“I saw her,” she said. “She wasn’t holy. She wasn’t serene. She was furious. She knew exactly what they were doing. She just couldn’t stop it.”
Roman’s gaze darkened.
“She didn’t have anyone standing beside her,” he said.
No equal.
No bond.
No storm to shove fire sideways when it tried to go through her.
Just priests.
And silence.
He exhaled slowly.
“We are not repeating that,” he said.
She almost laughed.
“Have you noticed,” she murmured, “that everyone says that right before history repeats itself?”
He didn’t smile.
“Then we don’t just say it,” he said. “We bleed for it. We break for it. We move before the fire does.”
Her chest ached.
“Move where?” she asked. “We can’t outrun this. It found me in my sleep.”
He shook his head.
“We don’t run,” he said.
“We position.”
The word felt like a blade being drawn.
He stood slowly, then reached down.
She took his hand and let him pull her up.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“Stop pretending they’re confused,” he said.
She knew who he meant.
Not the Caller.
Not the tower.
The wolves.
The council.
The priests.
The ones who kept saying we don’t know while holding keys to doors she’d never been allowed to see.
“Roman,” she said carefully.
He looked at her.
“You can’t fight all of them,” she whispered.
“You’re wrong,” he said softly.
“I can.”
He stepped back.
His scars glowed faintly under his skin.
“This doesn’t end with you burning quietly because they made it sound holy,” he said. “Not while I have a pack. A court. A voice. A body.”
“And if they try?” she asked.
His answer was not nice.
“Then the second fire does what the first should have,” he said.
Her heart pounded.
“Burn them,” she murmured.
He did not deny it.
The bond thrummed between them.
Not soft.
Not romantic.
Something stronger.
A shared promise:
If we burn, it will not be alone.
And it will not be quiet.
Outside, the sky was dull and heavy.
The moon was not visible.
But the air felt like it was listening.
Waiting.
Not just for prophecy.
For an answer.
And for once—
Aria didn’t feel like a question.
She felt like a blade being sharpened.
Not to be thrown by priests.
Not to be sanctified by lies.
To be wielded—
By herself.
With him.
Against anyone who tried to write her into an ending she didn’t choose.