Chapter 39 WHEN BLOOD WROTE HER NAME
The castle did not sleep after the sky tilted.
It pretended to.
Torches were dimmed.
Doors closed.
Wolves lay down on cots and furs and mattresses.
But no one really slept.
They waited.
For the moon to move back.
For the whispers to return.
For the next heart to fail.
Aria did not lie to herself.
She wasn’t going to sleep.
Not with her blood humming like this.
Her veins felt too full—like something inside them had become aware of its own weight and was now pushing against her from the inside.
Not to get out.
To get her attention.
She left her chamber without lighting a candle.
The hallway outside was shadowed, washed in faint blue-grey light from narrow slits in the wall. The moon still hung slightly off-center in the sky — a watching eye that had never learned what blinking meant.
Her feet knew where she was going before she admitted it.
Not to Roman.
Not to the barracks.
Not to the ruined tower in her mind.
The archives.
The forbidden ones.
She reached the heavy door at the end of the quiet hall and found it unlocked.
Of course it was.
Seris never locked anything she was interested in. It slowed her down.
Inside, the war library was a familiar chaos — scrolls stacked in teetering piles, bound volumes jammed into shelves, papers covered in cramped handwriting spread like battlefield maps across tables.
Seris sat cross-legged on a desk, ink on her cheek, hair falling out of a knot, three books open around her in a triangle.
“You’re late,” she said, without looking up.
Aria closed the door behind her.
“You knew I was coming?”
“I knew someone was,” Seris said. “You walk heavier than Roman when you’re angry. Thought I’d get you first.”
Aria arched a brow. “You can tell us apart by how we stomp?”
“Absolutely,” Seris said.
She finally looked up.
Her gaze flicked over Aria’s wrist, up to her eyes, then to the faint tension in her jaw.
“How bad is it?” she asked.
Aria exhaled, slow.
“He showed us more,” she said.
“The Caller?” Seris asked.
“Yes.”
Seris’s eyes lit up in the worst possible way.
“New information?” she asked, too eager.
“He says the first Luna wasn’t chosen,” Aria said bluntly.
Seris went still.
“She was stolen,” Aria continued. “A prisoner. Dragged from a pack that didn’t kneel and burned into a story that made the North feel better about what it did.”
Seris slid off the desk.
“This,” she said, “is why I never go to bed.”
She grabbed one of the books, thrust it at Aria.
Aria eyed the cracked spine.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Fabrications,” Seris said. “Legends. Half-truths scribes wrote after the fact to smooth over the parts of history everyone hated.”
“You collect those?” Aria asked.
Seris smiled thinly.
“Lies are sometimes more useful than facts,” she said. “They tell you what people were afraid to admit.”
Aria opened the book.
The first page was an elaborate illustration — a woman in a white dress standing under a red moon, arms lifted, face serene. Wolves knelt around her in a circle, heads bowed, eyes closed.
The caption beneath read:
First of the Chosen. Luna of the Crimson Dawn. Bride of the Moon.
Aria wanted to tear the page out.
She wanted to burn it.
She didn’t.
She flipped to the later chapters, where the lines between myth and memory blurred.
Seris spoke while she read.
“There are at least four versions of her story,” Seris said. “In one, she’s a peasant girl the moon raises up as a gift. In another, she’s a priest’s daughter. In the third, she’s a noble from a valley pack. The fourth just calls her ‘taken from afar.’”
Aria’s blood prickled.
“Taken,” she repeated.
Seris nodded.
“Not asked. Not blessed.” Her voice hardened. “Taken.”
Aria’s fingers tightened on the book.
“Do we know from where?” she asked.
“Not officially,” Seris said.
Aria lifted her gaze.
“Unofficially?”
Seris hesitated.
“That’s harder,” she said slowly. “Most of the records from that time are ‘lost.’”
“Lost,” Aria echoed. “Or burned.”
“Yes,” Seris said. “Conveniently around the time the first Luna ‘ascended.’”
Aria flipped another page.
This one showed the first Luna again — this time with a crown, wolves bowing not to the moon, but to her.
The text called her Blessed.
The way you might call a weapon honored.
Her stomach twisted.
“She was taken from a pack that didn’t kneel,” Aria said quietly.
Seris nodded. “That’s what he said?”
“Yes,” Aria murmured. “So they burned her home. Then wrote later that the moon ‘called’ her to make it easier to sleep.”
Seris watched her closely.
“And you think that’s connected to you,” she said.
Aria laughed softly.
It sounded nothing like amusement.
“Everything is connected to me, apparently,” she said. “The priests. The moon. The Caller. The tower. The first Luna. My mother. Your king. Everyone wants a piece.”
She shut the book.
The sound was sharp.
Seris didn’t flinch.
“What if I told you,” Seris said softly, “that there’s a bloodline mentioned in one of the older texts? One that vanished after the first Luna.”
Aria’s pulse pounded.
“Vanished how?” she asked.
“Not dead,” Seris said. “Erased.”
She turned, rummaged through a stack of scrolls, pulling one free with the bad grace of someone who cared more for information than tidiness.
She unrolled it on the desk.
The ink was faded, the script older, more jagged.
She pointed at a line halfway down.
Aria squinted.
It was in an older tongue, but the names…
She recognized one.
“Nightwolf,” she whispered.
Her own last name.
Seris nodded slowly.
“The Nightwolf line isn’t just an old northern family,” Seris said. “It’s one of the ancient packs. One of the first moon-bound bloodlines. Not the first Luna’s, but close enough to terrify anyone who wanted to keep power neat and central.”
Aria’s throat went dry.
“They took the first Luna from another pack,” Seris said. “And then a rival line that might have contested what they made of her… conveniently gets ‘absorbed.’ Dispersed. Married out. Forgotten.”
“But my family remembers,” Aria whispered.
“Yes,” Seris said. “In pieces. In scraps. In instincts. In the way you were raised to never trust anyone who smiled too much when they said the word chosen.”
Aria pressed her palms to the edge of the table.
“If they stole her,” she said slowly, “if they burned a girl and wrote it as worship — then my bloodline…”
She couldn’t finish.
Seris did it for her.
“Your bloodline,” she said softly, “comes from the pack that refused to kneel.”
Aria squeezed her eyes shut.
The room swayed.
“The moon didn’t choose you because it loves you,” Seris went on. “It chose you because your line remembers how to say no.”
Aria laughed once, harsh and thin.
“Then it should have left me where I was,” she said. “I was saying no just fine on my own.”
Seris’s voice softened.
“You think you weren’t already marked?” she asked.
Aria opened her eyes.
“What do you mean?” she whispered.
Seris tapped the scroll.
“This mentions a child hidden,” she said. “After the first Luna’s death. Not hers. Another’s. A Nightwolf child, smuggled out before the priests could tie her name to the altar. It says: ‘We hide her so they cannot write her into their sky.’”
Aria’s heart clenched.
“Not all of us wanted this,” Seris added quietly. “Not all of us wanted any of this.”
Aria stared at the ink until the letters blurred.
“I was never a surprise,” she whispered. “Not to them. Not to the prophecy. Not to him.”
Seris shook her head.
“No,” she said. “You were an inevitability.”
Aria’s chest ached.
“Good,” she said.
Seris blinked.
“Good?” she echoed.
Aria straightened.
Her voice was hoarse.
“If I was always going to end up here,” she said, “then at least I can stop pretending I could have ran far enough.”
She lifted her head.
Her eyes were bright again.
“I’m done hiding from what they wrote,” she said. “Now I want to know how to tear the pen out of their hands.”
Seris’s lips curled, fierce and small.
“Now you sound like your bloodline,” she said.
“Stubborn?” Aria asked.
“Defiant,” Seris corrected.
The door opened.
Roman stepped inside without knocking.
He froze when he saw the scroll, the book, the way Aria was standing.
Seris took one look at his face and moved, quietly gathering the mess of volumes.
“I’ll give you two the room,” she said. “Try not to rewrite history again without telling me.”
She slipped out.
The door shut.
Roman didn’t come closer.
“What did you learn?” he asked.
Aria’s fingers were still on the edge of the table.
She didn’t look at him yet.
“That the first Luna was a prisoner,” she said.
He nodded once. “We learned that from him.”
“That they lied about it being holy,” she added.
“Expected,” he said.
“That my bloodline came from the pack they tried to silence,” she finished.
He went still.
She finally turned.
“I’m not just some random girl,” she said. “I’m the girl they missed. The one they didn’t get the first time. The moon didn’t ‘find’ me. It came to claim what was taken from it when someone stole the first girl.”
Her voice shook.
“Do you understand what that means?” she demanded.
He met her gaze.
“Yes,” he said.
“It means you were never meant to kneel.”
Her throat burned.
She hadn’t expected that.
“I thought you’d say it means I’m dangerous,” she said.
“You are dangerous,” he replied. “You were dangerous the moment you shoved moonfire back into the sky and called it a bad idea. Knowing your bloodline doesn’t change that.”
Her laugh cracked.
“This doesn’t bother you?” she asked. “That I come from a pack that made it their whole personality to say no to everything sacred?”
He stepped closer.
“It bothers me that you thought you were alone in that,” he said.
She swallowed.
The bond between them hummed louder.
He was closer now.
Near enough that she could see how very tired he was behind his eyes.
“How much did you feel?” she asked quietly.
His jaw flexed.
“When?”
“When he pulled us,” she said. “When he showed us the child. The tower. The first Luna. My blood.”
His gaze deepened.
“All of it,” he said.
She looked away.
He didn’t let her.
“Aria,” he said.
Her name sounded almost like a command.
She looked back.
He stepped closer still.
“Do you know what I felt most?” he asked.
“Fear,” she said.
“Yours,” he replied.
She flinched.
He continued.
“And anger,” he said. “So much anger I nearly walked into the courtyard and dared the moon to strike me just to get it over with.”
“That sounds like you,” she muttered.
“But under that,” he said softly, “I felt something else.”
She waited.
“Resolve,” he said.
She stilled.
“You were afraid,” he said. “You were furious. But you weren’t breaking.”
He swallowed.
He looked both wrecked and relieved at once.
“Do you have any idea what it’s like to feel your Luna terrified and realize she’s not reaching for someone to save her,” he rasped, “she’s bracing to fight harder?”
She hadn’t thought of it that way.
She’d been too busy trying not to drown in her own emotions.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“Don’t you dare apologize,” he said.
He moved closer until there was barely a breath between them.
“You think I made that oath because I thought you were easy to carry?” he asked. “I made it because I knew you’d drag me forward when I wanted to give up. I knew you’d make me choose the harder thing.”
His voice dropped.
“And I knew,” he said, “that if someone like you ever learned what they did to the first girl… you’d never let them do it again. Not to you.”
Her eyes burned.
She didn’t realize a tear had slipped free until his thumb brushed it away.
His thumb.
On her cheek.
Soft.
Dangerous.
The bond flared—hard.
So hard she cut off a gasp.
He winced.
“This hurts,” he said.
“What?” she whispered.
“This,” he said roughly. “Feeling what you’re feeling. Fear. Rage. Grief. All of it like it’s under my own skin.”
She swallowed hard.
“Do you want me to—”
“No,” he said.
Immediate.
Raw.
He exhaled.
“I don’t want to be protected from this,” he said.
He tipped his forehead toward hers.
Not quite touching.
Close.
Too close.
“I want to carry it,” he whispered. “With you.”
Her chest felt too tight.
“Roman,” she said.
“Aria,” he replied.
Her name in his voice felt like another oath.
“This bond,” she murmured, “it’s going to kill us.”
“Maybe,” he said.
He did not flinch.
“But if it does, it won’t be because we were running.”
Silence.
Heavy.
Aware.
The moon still hung tilted outside.
The Caller still watched.
The prophecy still sat in her veins.
Her blood still remembered a pack that refused to kneel.
And now—
So did he.
She closed her eyes.
Not to shut him out.
To let him in.
Fear.
Rage.
Resolve.
Love—not yet, not named, but something close enough to burn.
He flinched once.
Then steadied.
“Tell me when it’s too much,” she whispered.
“I will,” he said.
He wouldn’t.
She knew that.
He knew she knew.
It didn’t matter.
For the first time since she’d stepped into this cursed castle, Aria didn’t feel like the only one holding something too heavy.
They were both under it now.
And the sky would have to go through both of them to claim what it thought it was owed.