Chapter 10
930 Words
The torches from the trial still smoldered in her memory when she returned to the packhouse. She thought foolishly that perhaps she would be given a night’s rest, or at least a moment’s breath.
Instead, she was handed a bucket and a brush.
“The blood doesn’t wash itself,” Calder said flatly, gesturing to the courtyard stones still stained red.
Lyra’s raw hands trembled as she dropped to her knees and began to scrub. The coppery scent clung to her nose, turning her stomach.
The pack had gone inside to feast and drink in celebration of Rowan’s approaching ascension, leaving her alone with the task of erasing the evidence of her own trial.
By the time dawn bled across the sky, her knees were shredded, and her palms blistered worse than the burns from the Flame of Truth.
When she stumbled inside, she found Miriam waiting at the threshold.
“Well,” Miriam said smoothly, her perfume cutting through the stink of sweat and blood, “you survived. Impressive.”
Lyra’s lips were too cracked to reply. She bowed her head and tried to step past.
But Miriam’s hand shot out, nails pressing sharply into her chin, tilting her face upward.
“Don’t mistake vindication for forgiveness,” she whispered, eyes gleaming. “The Council may have cleared you, but the pack will not forget. And I will make sure they remember.”
Lyra’s throat tightened, but she forced her voice to stay even. “Then what was the point of the trial?”
Miriam’s smile widened. “Spectacle. Order. Fear. It reminded everyone who commands them now.”
She released her chin with a flick, as if discarding something foul. “Now, go. The latrines need scrubbing.”
At school, things were no better.
“Back from the grave,” Jax sneered the moment she walked into class. He kicked the leg of her desk so hard it rattled. “Thought we’d be rid of you.”
Corin smirked from the seat beside him. “The goddess must have a cruel sense of humor.”
Laughter rippled across the room. Reyna didn’t laugh this time, she only leaned forward on her desk, resting her chin on her manicured hand. “Maybe she survived because the goddess wants us to do the work ourselves,” she said sweetly, her words cutting sharper than claws.
Lyra’s fists clenched, but she said nothing. Silence had become her shield, even when it felt like it was strangling her.
By night, her new duties multiplied. No longer confined to chores, Miriam created rotations.
Each week, Lyra was paraded to a different corner of pack life: tending the kennels until her arms ached from hauling meat, mending clothes with her needle-pricked fingers, or standing guard at the gates through icy nights with no cloak to warm her.
The wolves who passed her on their way in and out of the territory would sneer, toss insults, or spit at her boots. Some refused to look at her at all, as if she were less than a shadow.
And worse still, when Lyra collapsed from exhaustion one night, Miriam appeared at her side with a cup of steaming water.
“Drink,” Miriam said.
Lyra hesitated.
Miriam’s smile held no warmth. “I don’t poison. Not yet.”
Her throat parched, Lyra drank. The water was plain, bitter with herbs, but it sat wrong in her stomach. Hours later, she doubled over with cramps, curled on her bunk, sweat soaking her thin blanket.
She realized then that it wasn’t the water itself. It was the power Miriam wanted to prove: she could give or take, feed or starve, heal or hurt.
And Lyra was hers to torment.
Still, Lyra endured.
Some nights, she whispered into her thin pillow, voice ragged and cracked, “I didn’t kill them. I didn’t.”
But no one answered. Her wolf was still silent, buried deep, as if even her soul had turned its back on her.
The new cruelty came without warning.
On the seventh night after the trial, a bell clanged through the corridors. Lyra stumbled from her bunk, heart hammering. Warriors filled the yard, torches in their fists, faces grim.
Calder seized her by the arm and shoved her forward.
“On your knees.”
Confused, trembling, she obeyed.
Miriam stepped forward, her pale gown glowing in the firelight. “Tonight,” she declared, her voice carrying across the gathered pack, “we test not just her innocence, but her usefulness.”
A ripple of murmurs swept the crowd.
“What do you mean?” someone asked.
Miriam smiled thinly. “A wolf who cannot serve the pack is a wolf who burdens it. Tonight, she will prove her worth.”
She snapped her fingers.
Two warriors dragged out a cage. Inside, a young wolf pup whimpered, paw pressed to its side where a wound bled sluggishly.
Lyra’s heart lurched.
Miriam’s gaze sharpened. “Heal it. Prove you are not cursed. Prove the goddess did not waste her mercy on you.”
Gasps and murmurs rose. Someone shouted, “She has no gift!”
“Then she will fail,” Miriam replied smoothly. “And we will all see the truth.”
Lyra’s stomach dropped. She had no healing gift. No power had stirred in her since her wolf went silent.
And now, the pack circled closer, waiting, watching, hungry for her to fail.
She swallowed hard, staring at the bleeding pup, its small whimpers breaking her heart.
Her hands shook as she reached for the bars.
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