Chapter 166 Hundred and sixty nine

Chapter 166 Hundred and sixty nine
“Tell me the truth, Maren… how many more nights must I stand here waiting for a ghost?” Sienna’s voice carried through the throne hall with a softness sharpened by years of unspoken ache. She stood at the balcony carved into the stone wall, overlooking the moonlit courtyard where silver lanterns swayed with the breeze. Maren hesitated behind her, the rustle of her cloak the only sign she was still there, because she knew better than to answer quickly. Sienna never asked questions idly. Not anymore. Not since the night the portal swallowed Ryder and left her with nothing but the echo of his name drifting across the ruins.

Maren finally said, “Your Majesty… a decade is not so long for a queen touched by the divine.” Her tone was steady, respectful, but heavy with the kind of fear that came from loving a ruler too much to wound her with honesty. Sienna did not turn. She kept her hands braced on the railing, fingers curled tight enough to pale her knuckles, her posture regal and tall yet shadowed by exhaustion. “And what does the divine care for time,” she murmured, “when it steals the very thing that made time feel like life?”

The hall behind her flickered with warm torchlight, casting elongated shapes across the marble floor. Servants moved in hushed steps, each careful not to disturb their queen’s private vigil. They knew this hour well: the moment when Sienna dismissed her guards and advisors, stood alone beneath the moon, and let herself look unbearably human. A queen forged in fire, crowned in silver, and worshiped more fiercely than any ruler before her, yet still the woman who had once held Ryder’s face between her hands and whispered that she would never let him go.

“Sienna,” Maren tried again, her voice gentler now. “You have rebuilt a kingdom. The packs trust you. The realm flourishes because of you. The people see the Silver Queen, the one who brought peace. They do not see a woman who waits.”

“That is because I no longer allow anyone to look that closely,” Sienna replied, turning the words like a blade against herself. Her eyes drifted up to the sky where the moon hung low and full, serene and distant, as if it had forgotten it once belonged to gods cruel enough to bend two lovers into weapons. Her gaze held steady on the pale glow as she added, “The world may have forgotten him. I have not.”

Maren stepped forward as though to reach for her, but she stopped short. Sienna sensed the hesitation and offered a faint, weary smile. “You fear touching me,” she said softly, not accusing, just aware. “Even after all these years.”

Maren’s breath caught. “Your Majesty… you are power itself. Sometimes I think touching you would be like touching lightning.”

Sienna turned finally, her silver-lined eyes meeting Maren’s. “Then you have forgotten what lightning feels like,” she said. “It burns, yes. But it also wakes the sky.” Her expression softened as she added, “I’m not asking you to save me, Maren. I’m asking you to stand beside me without trembling.”

The commander exhaled slowly, composed herself, and bowed her head. “Always. But you must rest. Tomorrow is the Ceremony of the Crescent. The pack leaders expect you to speak with strength.”

“Strength.” Sienna almost laughed, the sound low and brittle. “They worship the strength they see. But they will never understand the strength it takes to speak when your heart has not beaten in ten years.”

Maren opened her mouth, closed it again, then said quietly, “It does still beat.”

Sienna held her gaze. “Only because it cannot decide whether it belongs to me or the man I lost.”

Maren felt the chamber tighten around them, as though the walls listened, but she lifted her chin. “Then keep it beating, Sienna. For him, if not for yourself.”

Sienna inhaled sharply, the argument she might have offered dissolving under the weight of something older than grief. She turned back to the balcony, but her voice found shape again. “Do you ever worry,” she whispered, “that if he truly were gone, I would have felt it? Truly felt it, not just feared it?”

Maren hesitated. “I believe… you would know. Your bond was not ordinary.”

“No,” Sienna replied, her eyes fixed on the moon. “It was curse and salvation tangled together. Ryder always said the bond felt like a chain he would gladly wear if it meant staying beside me.”

“And you broke it,” Maren said softly.

Sienna’s jaw tightened. “I had to. The goddess left me no choice.” Her eyes shimmered, not with tears but with fury disguised as memory. “But I never severed my love. That remains.”

For a moment, neither of them spoke. The courtyard below seemed to breathe in silence, the wind rustling the leaves like whispered omens. Then Sienna asked, “Did you bring the reports from the eastern border?”

“Yes.” Maren reached into her cloak but paused. “But I must warn you first , they speak of shadows. Moving shadows.”

Sienna’s breath caught in her chest. For the first time in years, she turned sharply. “Shadows? You mean the creatures from the southern mountain, or, ”

“No,” Maren said carefully. “Not creatures. A figure. Tall, lean, silent. Appearing at night, scattering raiders, never leaving a body behind but preventing every attack.” She pulled the scroll free and handed it over. “They say he walks like he remembers the land. And the wolves claim he smells like a memory.”

Sienna stared at the rolled parchment without opening it. Her fingers trembled, but only slightly. “And no one has seen his face?”

“No,” Maren admitted. “He keeps to the dark.”

For the first time in many years, Sienna felt her pulse trip in her throat. She tried to steady her breath, but the possibility clawed at her like nails dragging along stone. “A protector,” she murmured. “A ghost in the dark. Why now?”

Maren’s voice dropped. “Some say he searches for someone.”

Sienna closed her eyes. Just the thought of it, of him, of a presence she could not name without breaking, made her chest ache with a familiar, dangerous longing. “Maren,” she said, her voice thin as silk, “if you are wrong, I will forgive you. If you are right… I do not know who I will become.”

Maren bowed her head. “I only report what is brought to me.”

“And what do you believe?” Sienna asked.

Maren inhaled deeply. “I believe nothing in this realm moves without reason. And I believe no shadow protects a kingdom for ten nights straight unless it has something to guard.”

Sienna exhaled slowly, her grip tightening around the scroll. “I feared this,” she admitted. “Not his return. But the hope of his return.”

“Hope is not your enemy,” Maren said gently.

“It is when it tries to resurrect a wound I buried a decade ago.”

“You did not bury it,” Maren replied quietly. “You built your throne on it.”

Sienna flinched at the accuracy of it. She stepped away from the balcony, letting the moonlight fall behind her, her footsteps slow as she crossed the hall. Every movement draped her in quiet command, yet it was clear that her strength was not endless. The hall bent to her presence, not the other way around. She moved as a ruler shaped by loss but unbroken by it.

When she reached the steps leading down from the throne platform, she paused. “Maren,” she said softly, “I want the border reinforced. Quietly. No alarms, no torches. If these shadows are not what the wolves believe, I will not risk another decade of war.”

“And if they are what the wolves believe?” Maren asked.

Sienna’s breath stilled. Her lashes lowered, her voice dropping to a whisper that felt too fragile for the hall to hold. “Then keep the guards close. If it is him… I do not want him harmed.”

Maren nodded. “As you command.”

Sienna moved toward the throne, her hand brushing the carved armrest as though steadying herself on a world she once thought she understood. She sank onto the seat slowly, the silvered moonmark on her wrist glowing faintly. The goddess’s curse, the bond’s aftertaste, Ryder’s absence , it all lived there in a sigil that pulsed like a slow, painful heartbeat.

She opened the scroll finally. Her eyes scanned the words. Her breath caught on one line.

He moves like a man who forgot how to die.

The hall spun for a moment. Because Ryder had died once. And twice. And nearly a third time in her arms. Because death had chased him since the day Lunaris marked him as her executioner. Because he had always fought harder to live when Sienna asked him to stay.

Maren watched her carefully. “What do you see?”

Sienna folded the scroll slowly. “A lie,” she whispered. Then her voice broke. “Or a miracle.”

She rose from the throne, the movement abrupt, her breath unsteady now. “Prepare my horse.”

Maren’s eyes widened. “You mean to ride tonight?”

“Yes.”

“It is dangerous.”

“So is waiting.” Sienna stepped past her, each stride quickening as though pulled by a gravity she refused to name. “I have waited ten years. I will not survive eleven.”

“Sienna, ”

The queen turned, her gaze fierce, haunted, luminous with something too raw to hide. “If it is him, Maren… I have to know.”

“And if it isn’t?”

Sienna swallowed hard. “Then let the moon take the last of my hope tonight. I cannot carry hope and grief in the same breath any longer.”

Maren bowed slowly, resigned to the inevitable. “I will prepare your horse.”

Sienna watched her leave, then pressed a hand to her chest as if steadying the shiver under her skin. The throne hall felt colder now, emptier, the silence too loud in her ears. She looked up at the moon again, her heart pounding with a wild, fragile rhythm she had not felt in years.

“Ryder,” she whispered into the empty hall. “If you are out there… if you are truly out there…”

Her voice cracked.

“Let me find you before I lose myself.”

The torches flickered violently, as though something unseen passed through the hall.

She stood still, breath trembling, heart racing, eyes burning , and for the first time in a decade, Sienna felt a pull deep in her soul.

A tether.

A whisper of a bond she thought dead.

A presence brushing against her mind like a shadow learning how to breathe again.

And though she did not hear words, something inside her shifted.

Something answered.

Something alive.

She drew a sharp breath, the tremor running down her spine, and stepped backward as the air thickened, the hall dimming like a storm gathering in silence.

Because she knew that feeling.

She knew it better than her own heartbeat.

She knew him.

And the realm held its breath as Sienna whispered the name she had not spoken aloud in ten long years.

“Ryder.”