Chapter 20 20
Narnia's POV
“There it is.” The Regal Moon Pack’s land looked just the way I remembered. The same crude wooden and stone buildings. The same central open space where the pack met for all their rituals and judgements. The same stifling fear and violence, barely held at bay.
But I wasn’t that girl who had gone away from here.
Thane and the other wolves caused me to traverse the forest trails, my wrists tied, their company a prison surrounding me. Other members of the pack stepped out from their homes as we walked, attracted by the noise. I saw faces I recognized. Wolves I had grown up around. Servants I had worked alongside.
The majority glared at me with a mixture of hatred and pity. Some looked puzzled — as if they hadn’t thought to see me alive. But no one could speak up for me. No one asked questions why they were bringing me back a prisoner.
They were afraid. I could smell it on them. Fear of Alpha Corvin, fear of the backlash if I even step a foot out of line, fear that I might be next.
We arrived at that clearing in the center just as the sun was going down. The whole pack was there in a circle around the room. At the top, Alpha Corvin was sitting on his throne of carved wood and bone that he only used for when he had to accept court from a guest.
Beside him sat Lysandra.
The Luna's crown, the twisted silver she that wore on her head to show she was the Alpha's second of choice. Dressed in fine fabric, her hair prettily plaited, her body painted with the marks of leadership. She looked like a queen.
Behind her, arms crossed, was George.
My chest ached at his appearance. He was taller than when I had last seen him, broader through the chest and shoulders, with his boyish face reshaped into a man's. He bore the marks of a warrior on his arms, scar tissue wrought in combat. He sounded strong and capable, and he would not look me in the eye.
"Welcome home, Kotiera," Alpha Corvin called across the clearing. His smile was icy, no hint of warmth or familial love in it. "We have been expecting you."
My head spinning, Thane shoved me harshly ahead and I tripped, but managed to keep my balance by wildly pinwheeling my arms out. I pulled myself up and tried ro stand straight even though these had been mmy tormentors.
“I am here to respond to your accusations,” I spoke my voice remained steady despite the fear that lurched in my gut. “To defend myself from lies and let my name be cleared.
Corvin laughed, and the sound was grating enough to make a few pack members wince.
"Defend yourself? You are a child and you stand here to be tried for treason. There is a difference."
He motioned, and a second wolf came forward, holding out a scroll. The formal recitation of the charges was made in a dry voice.
“Narnia Voss, you are hereby charged with treason to the Regal Moon Pack. Of consorting with the enemy. About how you let the Guild in on pack secrets and got dozens of our warriors killed. What is your response to these charges?”
"Not guilty," I said immediately. "I never betrayed the pack. Guild soldiers took me, after Lysandra informed them I was her. She used me as a stepping stone to get herself out. Everything I’ve suffered is because of her lies.”
The assembled wolves murmured in tome. Some looked shocked, others skeptical. Corvin simply smiled wider.
"That's a heavy thing to say about your Luna," he continued. "Do you have proof?"
“I have the truth,” I responded. "Let Lysandra testify. Let her say that to my face, where everyone can hear.”
Corvin waved to Lysandra, who rose with all the elegance of a dancer. You could see the distance the dancers could feel between her and themselves, as she shuffled with quiet dignity to the middle of the clearing -- all Luna in her poise. When she was done, her voice sounded clear and persuasive.
“I am ashamed of my uncle, but I put this in pellet form…” Her voice trailed off as she thought how she was speaking against her own cousin. "But I must tell the truth. With the approach of the Guild soldiers, Narnia offered to accompany them. She saw an opening and she seized it.”
“That’s a lie,” I said through gnashed teeth.
“Lysandra ignored me. She confided in me at our backsie shed that she was sick of the pack, sick of people looking down on her. She noted that she wanted a better life. And when she caught the eye of the Hunter King, she knew this was it. She wooed him, made him think she was unique, and won herself a place in his court.”
The lies slipped from her tongue so easily, so naturally, I could see some of the pack members starting to believe her.
“She said she loved him,” Lysandra went on, her voice breaking on the word as though from emotion. She told me she’d rather be human than a wolf. And when I asked her to reconsider, for the sake of her family and people, she laughed at me. “Since we were all under her now,” she said.
"None of that is true!" I shouted. “You let me die in that fortress. You stole George, the man who was going to be mine, and you’re a coward to lie about it!”
George winced at that, casting the first look in my direction. I caught a glimmer of doubt in his eyes for just an instant. But Lysandra touched his arm, and he was all steel once more.
“That’s enough,” Corvin said, his voice slicing through the racket. "We know that the Luna has testified. We also have eyewitnesses who saw Narnia thrive in the human fortress, obeying all of its rules and serving the Hunter King without complaint. The evidence is clear."
"What witnesses?" I demanded.
But no witnesses came forward. Because they did not exist. This was a farce, a show trial with an inevitable judgment.
And I recognized with a sinking certainty that Corvin had orchestrated this from the start. He never meant to let me speak for myself. He simply wanted the pleasure of making it look official before he killed me.
"The verdict Is In," Corvin rose from his throne. "narnia Voss is treasonous. "The sentence is death, inmediately to be executed.”
Terror and rage battled within me. Inside the mate bond, I felt Elias’s panic spike, felt him join me. I wanted to send him a warning, some message telling him to stay away, but there was too little of a tether across the distance.
Wolves reached out to grab me, ready to pull me towards whatever execution Corvin had decided. I steeled myself for battle; I would lunge and claw through as many of them as my body could tear before they overran me.
Then the world exploded.
From the east edge of the clearing, fire broke out in the forest. Not a natural fire but something chemical and wrong, that moved faster than any flame would. Howls broke from within pack members near the perimeter of the edge. And then I heard them.
Human voices. Barking orders in the Guild's marching song. The clash of weapons. The brittle smack from the silver-bullet pistols.
The Guild had arrived.
Chaos erupted instantly. Pack members fled, making a dash for weapons and attempting to muster a defense. But the assault had been coordinated and withering. Soldiers in guild chain flooded the clearing from all sides, long silver weapons glinting gold in the fire's dancing light.
Alpha Corvin was barking orders, attempting to rally his warriors. In all her panic, Lysandra ran for the Alpha’s lodge and her crown fell from her face. George was rooted to the spot as he watched the mayhem starting around him.
I don't know who it was, however someone cut my ropes as I perched above. I spun and saw Thane standing behind me, his knife still gripped in his hand.
“I never bought into Lysandra’s bullshit,” he insisted. "But I couldn't speak against the Alpha without proof. I regret that cowardice.”
"Why are you helping me now?" I asked.
“Because you deserve the truth,” Thane said. “Your father was no traitor, Narnia. He was a hero. He found out Corvin sold your mother to the Guild, for letting them know where they could find Selene and take her prisoner. When Romulus challenged him, Corvin slew him and used lies to conceal his misdeed. Everything you were told was wrong.”
The words hit me like punches. My father was a hero? Corvin betrayed my mother?
"Why?" I asked, my voice breaking. "Why would he do that?"
“Because he was afraid of Selene’s power and what it meant to you,” Thane replied. “Because he was weak and jealous, and prepared to kill his own blood to preserve his position. Now run, Narnia. Get out of here before..."
He did not finish. He took a silver bullet in the chest and did not speak again. I screamed and fell to my knees next to him, but he was already dead.
Around me, the battle intensified. The Guild soldiers were slicing up pack wolves with gruesome efficiency. I watched wolves that I knew my whole life being shot to the ground as their bodies fell among the blazes.
Yet they were my people after all, for whatever they had done to me. Still my blood.
I couldn’t just flee and let them die.
I got up to my feet, trying to take Eira back and summoning my wolf. It was easy now to make the change; body and bone reforming themselves in a matter of seconds from man to wolf. I was smaller than any of the wolves in the pack, but I shone with that silver-white light that told me I was my mother’s daughter.
I dashed at the closest Guild soldier; I flared my light so brightly he screamed. His blade, silver in color, clatters to the floor as his skin bubbles. Then I went to the next, wielding my privilege as a weapon.
But there were too many. For every fighter I shorted out, there were three more right behind him. The pack was being slaughtered.
And then the Alpha’s lodge blew up.
The ship exploded into flames and debris flew everywhere as whatever it was went off. I changed back into human form and gaped in disbelief at the smoldering ruins.
A form appeared through the smoke and fire. Huge and silvery, with eyes that flamed gold. Elias when he's in his full wolf form, shredding through Guild soldiers and pack wolves trying to get to me.
And after him came the other wolves. Dozens of them — from packs I knew. The little packs that the Guild said Elias had smashed. But they were not destroyed. They were here. And they were fighting with him.
The battle shifted instantly. When previously one-sided slaughter turned into a real war. The Wolves and the Wolf King facing off against the Guilds.
Elias was by my side then, standing between me and the soldiers moving in on our location. Through the bond, I felt his delight, his happiness, his fierce determination to keep me safe.
“You have arrived,” I said, tears coursing down my face.
His answer was plain in the link between us. Always. I will always come for you.
As a pair, we spun toward the tumult. The battle ground had turned into a field of fire drenched in blood. Guild soldiers clashed with hordes of wolves. Corvin was gone, ran as soon as the battle began.
But we were not safe yet. The battle was far from over.
And in the thick of the smoke and the fire, I was sure that the Archon even now watched, ready to make his move.