The Rejected Moon Princess

Episode 6

Seraphine had barely finished saying his name when he answered.

I stared at him. His face gave me almost nothing except for one second, before he closed it off, where something moved behind his eyes that looked a lot like pain. The kind people carry quietly because they have been carrying it long enough that it has learned to keep still.

His hand closed into a fist at his side. He caught himself doing it like that was something he had practiced too.

I frowned. "What... no?"

He didn't answer me. He turned to Seraphine instead. "You should never have brought her through the Moon Gate."

Seraphine's expression didn't change. "I didn't have another choice."

"You always have a choice."

"This time, I didn't." He looked away toward the mountains, like he needed somewhere else to put his eyes on for a moment. When he looked back, whatever he'd been about to say had been put away somewhere.

"The Council has already felt it." Every wolf in the square went still at the exact same moment, just still like they'd all heard the same thing and were waiting to find out what it meant.

The pendant warmed against my skin. My stomach dropped. "Felt what?"

Neither of them answered.

The old woman gathered the wolf cub quietly and looked at me one more time before she left. Her eyes were wet. "May the Moon protect you, child." Then she was gone, and the crowd slowly started moving again around the space where she'd been standing.

People got up from their knees not because they were ready to. Because they understood they'd been let go. Within a few minutes, the market was almost normal again with voices, children, someone arguing over the price of something. But every few seconds someone looked at me.

I'd spent my whole life wanting people to notice me.

Now I wanted to disappear.

Seraphine stepped closer. "Come."

I didn't move. "You knew this would happen."

She hesitated just long enough to answer the question before she spoke. "I hoped it wouldn't."

"You hoped." My voice came out sharper than I meant it to. "You brought me here without telling me anything, and you hoped."

"I was trying to protect you."

"There it is again." I laughed, though nothing was funny. "Protect. Danger. Trust me." I folded my arms. "Do you have anything else?"

"She deserves the truth." I looked up.

Kael hadn't moved. He hadn't said a word through any of it but just stood there watching the way you watched something you already knew wasn't going to go well. Now he was looking at Seraphine with an expression that wasn't cruel and wasn't soft. Just honest.

"I know," Seraphine said.

"No." His voice didn't change. "You owe her enough truth to choose."

I looked at him differently then. He wasn't performing anything. Wasn't using the crowd or the moment to make himself look like something. If anything, he sounded tired of watching someone make the same mistake.

I hadn't expected that from him.

"My name is Lyra." The words came out before I'd decided to say them.

His eyes moved to mine. "Yes."

"You know things about me," I said. "You don't know me."

He held my gaze for a moment. Then he dipped his head slightly. "Kael."

Just that. No title. No explanation of who he was or why it should matter. Just a name, the same way he gave everything — without making a thing of it.

"I'm Lyra." I said anyway. Because it was mine, and I wanted to be the one to say it.

He looked away. The same as always, like looking at me directly for too long cost something he wasn't ready to spend.

I kept adding things like that to a list I didn't know I was keeping.

"You're not very talkative."

Something moved at the corner of his mouth. Gone almost before it got there.

"No."

The way he said it, I got the feeling he wasn't really talking to me.

Then the horn sounded.

Once. Twice. Three times.

The market changed immediately. Children were grabbed and pulled indoors. People moved fast like they knew what that sound meant and weren't going to wait around.

A little boy broke away from the crowd. Four years old maybe, no older. He went the wrong way completely, straight toward the edge of a stone fountain, and nobody noticed because everyone was moving too fast.

I caught the back of his coat before his foot slipped all the way off the wet edge, he stumbled into me instead of the water. Stared up at me for a second, completely shocked. Then burst into tears.

"Hey," I spoke calmly. "You're okay."

His mother found him about ten seconds later. She pulled him into her arms and then looked at me and started to lower herself to one knee.

"Please don't." It came out faster than I meant. "I just caught him."

"You are our..."

"I just caught him." She held my gaze. Then nodded once and took her son and went.

When I stood up, Kael was watching me. He looked away. But not quite fast enough, and not quite clean enough, and I noticed both things.

The guards around the square dropped to one knee at the same time. Kael's attention went to the palace.

"They've called an emergency assembly."

Seraphine closed her eyes. "So soon."

"They already know."

"They shouldn't."

"The Moon Gate announced her."

My stomach tightened. "What assembly?"

"The Royal Council," Seraphine said.

"What do they want?" No answer. I was getting very tired of no answer.

A young guard came into the square barely older than me, still catching his breath, nearly dropping his bag before he remembered to bow.

"Alpha Kael." Kael nodded. "The Council requests your immediate presence." He swallowed. "They also request..." His eyes shifted to me. "...the Princess."

The word landed somewhere beside me, like it was meant for someone else.

"I think you've got the wrong person."

"No." He lowered his head further. "The summons bears your name." He pulled a scroll from his bag. Silver wax, a crescent moon, pressed into the seal. His hands were shaking slightly when he held it out.

I looked at Seraphine. "What is this?"

All the color had left her face. "A royal summons."

"What happens if I don't go?" Nobody answered, that was enough of an answer.

Kael stepped forward.

The guards beside him moved back without being told. Not because they were afraid of him. Because they were used to him being the most capable person anywhere he stood, and bodies learn things like that without being asked.

He stopped a few feet from me.

"For what it's worth...." His voice was quieter than usual.

I looked at him. "What?"

"I'm sorry."

"For what?" His eyes stayed on mine for a moment. Something moved through them that I didn't have a name for. Then he looked away.

"You'll understand soon enough." He walked to his horse before I could ask anything else. No second look. He mounted in one clean movement and the stallion carried him out of the square and out of sight.

I watched until I couldn't see him anymore. He had looked at me like I was a problem. Then apologized like I was someone who'd been wronged.

I stood there longer than I should have after he was gone. Something had settled in my chest that hadn't been there this morning. I couldn't name it. It felt a little like something being taken from you before you realized you'd wanted it.

I pushed it down.

Problem or victim. I still didn't know which one he'd meant.

Seraphine put her hand on my shoulder. "We should go."

I didn't argue. Because somewhere this morning the gate clicked shut, the black car, a woman saying my name like she'd been saving it, something had shifted. And whatever was waiting inside that palace, I had the feeling it was bigger than anything I'd walked away from.

The car moved slowly toward the castle. I looked down at the scroll in my hands.

The seal cracked on its own. Not from heat. From the inside, like something pushing out.

Words appeared slowly across the page, one letter at a time, like whoever was writing them was choosing carefully.

The throne recognizes its firstborn.

The ink disappeared, but I waited.

Then a second line came, slower than the first. Like it had thought about whether to say it at all.

But the kingdom does not.