Chapter 39: The Message in the Blood
1071 Words
Luna bled for three days after the battle.
Not from wounds.
From the bond.
Each night, as she lay in Kael’s arms, she felt something under her ribs unraveling—something she couldn’t name but had carried since the night Riven first howled beneath a violet sky.
She didn’t speak of it.
Because the pain wasn’t grief.
It was change.
The shard she carried pulsed with heat every dawn.
Kael placed it on the table beside their bed.
No one else could touch it.
One warrior tried.
His hand blistered instantly.
Another wolf came close and vomited after one step.
Only Luna—and Kael, once, briefly—could withstand it.
By the fourth morning, it whispered.
Only once.
Only to her.
“Mother.”
She rose without a word.
Wrapped her cloak over her shoulders.
Took the shard.
And walked into the woods.
Kael followed twenty steps behind.
He didn’t call her name.
Didn’t ask where she was going.
Because he knew.
Wherever she was going—
It was back.
The path she chose was old.
A trail once walked by exiles and dead gods.
No maps marked it anymore.
No wolves hunted along it.
But she knew every tree.
Every twist.
Because it ran beside the river where she had once dreamed of death before Riven gave her life again.
By dusk, she reached the standing stones.
Ancient.
Cracked.
Carved with runes no one dared speak anymore.
She stood in the center.
Unwrapped the shard.
Held it to the sky.
Nothing happened at first.
Then the air shifted.
The light bent.
And from between the stones—a gate opened.
Not like the Bone Gate.
This one was smaller.
Simpler.
Personal.
A boy stepped out.
Not Riven.
But his echo.
A memory wrapped in flesh and fog.
His eyes glowed faintly.
His voice was Riven’s.
But younger.
Softer.
“I left it here for you,” he said.
Luna’s voice caught. “Why?”
“Because you need to remember.”
“Remember what?”
“That love doesn’t mean control.”
The echo vanished.
The gate closed.
And the shard cracked down the middle.
Inside?
A drop of blood.
Luna caught it on her fingertip.
Pressed it into her tongue.
And she remembered.
Not just the night he was born.
Not the night she screamed beneath the bone moon.
She remembered a different night.
One she had forgotten.
Or been made to forget.
A room.
Stone walls.
A crib.
And a mirror hanging over the child’s head.
Riven. Small. Silent. Staring up at the mirror.
And in the reflection?
Not herself.
But the Queen.
Smiling.
Whispering.
“He will break them all for me.”
Luna gasped.
Fell to her knees.
Kael caught her.
“Luna—”
She gripped his arm, eyes wide.
“She left something in him.”
Kael’s jaw locked.
“We thought we burned her.”
“We didn’t.”
They returned to the village that night.
The shard shattered in Luna’s palm just before they crossed the ward line.
Kael scattered the dust into the fire.
And the flames turned blue.
That night, every wolf in the village dreamed the same thing.
A tree.
Split down the center.
Its roots bleeding into a river of fire.
And at its base, Riven.
Eyes closed.
Hands outstretched.
And carved into his palm—
The Queen’s mark.
At sunrise, Luna stood before the stone tower they’d rebuilt in Riven’s name.
She hadn’t slept.
The Queen’s whisper still coiled behind her eyes like a thorn inside her skull.
She pressed her palm to the carved wood door.
Felt it burn.
The tower recognized her.
But now, something inside her pulsed in reply.
A mark.
Not visible.
But buried in blood.
Kael found her hours later, still standing there.
“Say it,” he said softly.
Luna’s voice didn’t shake.
“She’s still tethered to him.”
“You think she’s guiding him?”
“No,” Luna said. “She’s watching.”
They summoned the seer.
The oldest one.
The only one who had been born before the Queen’s war and survived it.
She arrived cloaked in threadbare white, blind in one eye, her body trembling with every step—but her voice steady as fire.
She placed her hands on Luna’s shoulders.
And whispered, “You must cut the tether.”
Luna’s breath hitched. “How?”
“With blood. His, and yours.”
Kael stepped forward. “He’s not here.”
The seer turned to him slowly.
“Then she must go where he is.”
The ritual was forbidden.
Old magic.
Older than the packs.
But Luna didn’t hesitate.
She offered her blood freely.
Five drops on the stone.
Then one breath, held beneath the wolf moon.
And her soul slipped.
She didn’t travel in body.
She traveled in bond.
Through the tether.
Into the blood.
She landed hard.
In a field of mirrors.
Each one reflects a version of Riven.
Sleeping.
Fighting.
Crying.
Smiling.
And in the center?
The real one.
Kneeling.
Palms pressed into the soil.
Whispering a language that cracked the wind.
Luna stepped forward.
He looked up.
His eyes were not his.
They were hers.
Silver.
Filled with storms.
“Mother,” he said.
“Why did you follow me?”
“I never stopped,” she whispered.
He stood slowly.
Walked to her.
And placed his hand on her chest.
“It hurts here,” he said. “Like something is trying to break out.”
Luna wrapped her arms around him.
Held him.
Tight.
“Let me take it.”
He stepped back.
Shook his head.
“It has to be burned.”
The world around them flared.
The mirrors shattered.
And the Queen stepped through.
Half-formed.
Half-dead.
But grinning.
“You could never leave alone well enough,” she said to Luna.
Luna raised her hands.
But Riven stopped her.
“No,” he said. “She doesn’t get to speak anymore.”
And then he reached into his own chest.
Pulled something out.
A shard.
Black.
Shining.
Alive.
He crushed it in his fist.
The Queen screamed.
Fell backward.
And burned.
The mirrors melted.
The sky cleared.
And Luna opened her eyes—
Back in the tower.
Sweating.
Breathing.
Crying.
Kael caught her.
“What did you do?”
She looked at him.
Smiled.
And said:
“I think he saved me this time.”
- Writer
