112

112

RAVEN

On either wrist the cold stone has bitten, as if ancient shackles lift me up the middle of a ritual circle. Glittering runes, sunk deep into the fortress floor, seethe with ill intent, casting their warped shadows throughout the hall. Every pulse sends a wave of weakness rushing through me, like something vital is being slowly sucked from my soul.

"Mother," I whisper, and my voice is almost lost amid the chanting that has been reverberating from the stone walls.

Lysandra is suspended twenty feet away, ensnared in glimmering magical chains that crackle with arcane electricity whenever she shifts. Her mane of white-streaked black hair is plastered with gore, and she slumps from exhaustion and agony, no longer the haughty creature she was. But when her amethyst eyes find mine, they still smolder with defiance.

“Be strong, my daughter,” she forces herself to say, and the strain of trying to enunciate properly is clear on her face. "Remember who you are."

Darian paces the summoning circle with a fluid hunter’s movement, red eyes flashing in anticipation. His silver hair streams back as he goes, and in his hands he holds an obsidian blade that, from my vantage, appears to drink light from the air around it.

“The Daughter of the Moon and the Luna of Nyxhowl,” he purrs, an ancient sorcerer’s ritual intonation. "Two blood lines, two fountains of power, united in purpose force."

“You’re out of your mind if you think I’m going to participate in whatever twisted ritual you have in mind,” I bark, shaking my chains for good measure.

“Workin’ together was never necessary, dear little wolf.” Darian points the blade to the moon above the hole in the ceiling. "The prophecy says the Moon's Daughter's power was brought to bear for great change. It didn’t say the power had to be on you."

The chanting increases, voices I cannot see adding to the sound from the shadows that encircle the chamber. The ancient tongue washes over me like ice water, and something hidden deep in my mind recognizes it, in a way I shouldn’t.

“By shadow and flame, by blood and bone,” Darian intones, his voice going all magical and stuff. “Isummon long unspoken to the powers to witness the claim!”

The runes on the floor flare brighter, and I feel my strength draining away faster. But with the weakness also comes something else — a stirring in my brain, as though memories that aren’t my own are rising to the surface.

"Let the strength of the Moon's Daughter pass to another more worthy," Darian says as he stands in front of my levitating body. "Loosen the shackles and let her fire be mine."

The words float into me, and everything becomes clear. The very structure of them and their origin and purpose and what they even mean. It’s not just ancient language — it’s primordial; the language of the era when moon-shapers were first produced stiff-limbed young wolves that could move beneath the smile of the moon.

“You are speaking the old tongue,” it finally occurs to me as my purple eyes widen in understanding. "The tongue of the alpha bitches."

Darian’s chanting catches for a second. "Impossible. That information died with the bloodlines hundreds of years ago.”

“No,” I say, the elements snapping together in my head. "It didn't die. It was kept, handed down in certain families, hidden in the open.”

The prisoner i freed from the Obsidian Spire's cells had instructed me in something other than prophecy. In our chats, he’d uttered words in what I believed was merely an old-fashioned dialect. But I see now he was priming something in me, tapping into knowledge that had lain dormant in the bloodline for centuries.

“The Moon’s Daughter, that’s not just a title,” I pressed on, my voice becoming more confident despite the magical drainage. "It's a bloodline. Immediate access to the moon goddess, who initially bestowed shape-shifting gifts upon the wolves.”

Darian's red eyes narrow with suspicion. “You talk about legends and myths.

"Do I?" I meet his gaze steadily. “Then why can I hear every word you’re saying? How is it I sense the very intention of the ritual in my blood?”

The truth hits me like a bolt of lightening. Nothing, not a power to be corrupted or stolen, but a power to be awakened. The ritual strips away the binds that kept my real heritage supressed, that locks the dormant goddess-blood in my veins from emerging into the light.

“Don’t want to impugn the prophecy,” is how I put it together. "You want to fulfill it. But not the way it was designed to be fulfilled.”

"Clever girl." Darian's lips smile coldly. "The prophecy says the Moon's Daughter will bring her peace - or ruin. It will be the latter that I will be using it for."

I sense Kael with our connection, nearer too, his will sizzling through me like a light house. But I feel something else too: A darkness is coming, a betrayal that will change everything, a hidden lie that will destroy the bond I have with a woman I first called sister.

I will use The Moon's Daughter, power, fueled with willing sacrifce," Darian goes on, nodding to my mother, "to help me tear apart the old pack structure and erect something new and better.

"Willing sacrifice?" I snarl. "My mother will never—"

“She will if it’s that or watching you slowly die. He lifts the obsidian blade to my throat. “Or maybe she’ll make the decision easier and offer herself.

I shut my eyes and delve inside of myself, to the power that seems to be preparing to blaze now that it’s awakened in my blood. The chains that bind me are thick, but they are chains designed to hold a mere wolf. Maybe I am anything but ordinary.

“You better not kill me, for you sake,” I whisper, opening my eyes to look into Darian’s eyes. "The ritual isn't done, you need me alive.

"True. “But I do not need you unbroken.” He drags the edge of the blade along my collarbone until I can feel a thin line of warm blood. "pain has a way of bringing the most resistant of wolves to heel.

The blood seeps into the ritual circle, glistening, and the symbols burn with fresh fire. But rather weaken me, the contact appears to strengthen the link I have with the primordial force whirling in my blood.

I understand now. The ritual is not simply a matter of stealing the power; it’s about first waking it up, and then redirecting it. And to come to life it needs me to do so willingly, or to have my blood freely offered.

“You’re a loser,” I say to Darian, and I drop my head with the subtlest limpness, like I’m getting beat, and he repeats it, “You’re a loser.” “You woke up something you have no control over.

“I woke up precisely what I wanted to wake up.”

"Did you?" I rock my weight back and forth, testing the chains. They’re not dissipated, but I can feel them acting on a will that’s not my own. “Or did you simply awaken something that has been dormant for centuries, only lying in wait for the opportunity to regain what had been taken from it?”

A noticeable chill drifts down on the cavern, and frost glazes over the stone walls. Darian's eyes widen in the first suggestion of doubt.

“The blood of the goddess doesn’t just give power,” I carry on, my voice lousy with new overtones that sound as though they’re shaking the stones of the keep itself. "It grants authority. The right of command, of leadership, of being what the future of all wolves would be like."

"No," Darian whispers, although he only clasps the knife harder.

"Is it?" He looks at me, and I smile, for the first time since I was seized. "Did you ever think to read about what happens when the daughter of the Moon awakens to her full power?"

Before he can respond, the chamber doors fly open. But, instead of Kael, a figure in dark robes enters, his face shrouded in deep hood.

“Enough,” the newcomer declares, his voice bearing the weight of a commander. “You’ve done your part, Darian, but your means are crass and your field of vision narrow.”

Darian whirls, obsidian blade up defensively. "Who dares—"

One hand rises from the figure, shadow magic encircling its fingertips. Black tentacles coil fetch Darien, raising him off the ground with unnatural force.

"I am Gareth Shadowmere", the man removes his hood and I am greeted by a face, shock and dismay playing accross my expressions. “But you know me councillor Thane.

Thane’s cold gaze meets mine across the chamber and his thin lips twist in a smile that freezes me to the marrow. "Hello, Raven. I hope you are ready for the true ritual to start.”
—