The Moonsinger Chronicles: Ashbound Vow

POV: Elowen The wolf came out of the dark before I finished the last note of the ritual, and I felt its hunger before I ever saw its teeth. “Elowen, behind you!” someone shouted from the tree line, but I was already moving and already twisting away from the shape that tore through the ritual circle like it meant to swallow the moonlight whole. I threw my hands up, and the words of the Moonsong tangled in my throat instead of flowing the way they always had. “Not now,” I hissed at my own power, “please, not now.” The wolf lunged again, and I felt the twins shift low in my belly like a reminder of everything I had to protect that had nothing to do with pride or duty. “Move!” The same voice called,it was closer now, and I recognized it as Bram, one of the younger sentinels assigned to the border. I dropped low instead of running, because running was slower than I was willing to risk being, and I let the Moonsong pour out of me the way water pours from a cracked jug, too fast, too much,and it was impossible to control. Light burst from my palms in a color that I didn’t recognize, closer to silver fire than moonlight, and the wolf yelped and scrambled back like it had touched something that burned. “What was that?” Bram asked, skidding to a stop beside me with his blade already drawn, staring at my hands like I’d grown a second face. “I don’t know,” I admitted, breathing hard whilst watching the wolf vanish back into the trees instead of finishing what it started. “It’s never done that before.” “You’re bleeding,” he said, nodding toward my forearm, where a shallow claw mark had opened without my noticing. “It’s nothing,” I said, pressing my sleeve against it, though my hands were shaking in a way that had nothing to do with the cold. “Help me understand why a rogue got this close to the border, Bram. This close to Blackthorn territory, that shouldn’t happen.” “Patrols have been thin the last few nights,” he admitted, glancing away like the words cost him something. “Ramsey pulled several of us for something else and I don’t know what.” “Something else,” I repeated, and the words settled into my chest like a stone dropped into still water. “What kind of something else?” “I only follow orders, Elowen,” Bram said, apologetic, backing a step further from my searching look. “You’d have to ask him yourself.” “I intend to,” I said, and I meant it as more than a passing comment. He walked me partway home, insisting despite my protests that I shouldn’t be alone this far along, and I let him, mostly because arguing took more strength than I had left after the ritual’s backlash still hummed unpleasantly under my skin. “Get some rest,” Bram said at the edge of the property, then offered an awkward half bow before disappearing back toward the tree line. “I’ll try,” I told him, though we both knew it was a lie the moment I said it. The house was too quiet when I stepped inside, the kind of quiet that pressed against my ears instead of soothing them, and I paused in the doorway just to listen. “Ramsey?” I called, shrugging off my cloak, wincing as the movement pulled at the claw mark on my arm. No answer came, though I could feel it faintly, the pull of the bond that told me he was somewhere close, awake and alert. I followed that pull down the hall toward his study, and the closer I got, the more certain I became that something inside that room was wrong. Light spilled from beneath the door, and voices murmured on the other side, Ramsey’s low and familiar, and another I didn’t recognize at all, quieter, older, and careful in a way that made my skin prickle. “You cannot keep stalling him,” the unfamiliar voice said, muffled but clear enough to catch. “The Vow does not wait for convenience, Ramsey.” “I’m not stalling,” Ramsey said, sharper than I’d heard him in a long while, “I’m choosing how, not if. There’s a difference.” “Is there?” the voice asked, and something about the question made my stomach twist. I reached for the handle instead of knocking, some instinct in me wanting to see rather than announce myself, but the wood was warm under my palm in a way that felt deliberate, like the room itself had been sealed against me. “Ramsey,” I said instead, knocking twice, firm enough that he couldn’t pretend not to hear. The voices stopped instantly, both of them,it cut off so completely it was as if someone had thrown a hand over their mouths, and the sudden silence was louder than anything they had been saying before. “Ramsey,” I said again, my hand still pressed flat against the door, “I know you’re in there.” A long beat passed before the lock clicked, and the door opened just enough for him to fill the space with his body, blocking my view of the room behind him. “Elowen,” he said, and his voice was warm, easy, and entirely too composed for a man who had just gone silent behind a locked door. “You’re back early.” “You’re bleeding,” he added a half second later, his eyes catching the mark on my arm, concern flashing genuine and immediate across his face. “A rogue wolf got past the border,” I said, watching him instead of answering the question underneath my words. “Who were you talking to, Ramsey?” “Talking to?” he asked, and the pause before it was so small that I might have missed it if I hadn’t spent three years learning every shape his voice could take. “I heard two voices,” I said, pushing gently against the door, though he didn’t step back to let me through. “Yours, and someone else’s. Someone who mentioned the Vow.” “You must be exhausted,” he said instead of answering, reaching for my injured arm with a tenderness that made the lie underneath it even harder to bear. “Let me look at that.” “Ramsey,” I said, holding my ground and refusing to let him redirect me the way he so easily redirected everyone else. “Who was in this room with you?” He glanced back over his shoulder then, just for a second, just long enough for me to catch a glimpse past him into the study. It was empty. There was no chair pushed back, no second cloak and no sign that another living soul had stood in that room in the last hour, and yet I knew, with a certainty that settled cold and absolute in my chest, that I had not imagined that second voice. “There’s no one here but me,” Ramsey said gently, taking my hand as if that alone could end the conversation, his thumb tracing slow circles over my knuckles the way he always did when he wanted me to feel safe. “You’ve had a long night. Let’s get that arm cleaned up.” I let him lead me away from the study, because I didn’t yet know what else to do, but I felt the lie settle between us like a splinter beneath skin, small enough to ignore for now, deep enough that I already knew it would fester before it ever came out.