Chapter Ten: Blood knows Blood
2507 Words
The firelight danced across Lyra’s face, but her eyes were ice.
Martha paced before her, each step measured, deadly.
The rogue camp had gathered in a wide circle. Cassian, still bandaged from the ambush. Cina, arms folded, her expression a storm. Even Sera hovered near the edge, her lip curled in a silent snarl.
Lyra was bound at the wrists, kneeling before them all. The same girl who had once braided Rochelle’s hair and whispered childhood dreams into the night.
Now she wore a traitor’s rope around her throat.
“Tell me everything,” Martha said, voice low.
Lyra smiled, bloodied but unrepentant.
“You shouldn’t have come back. You were loved. You were mourned. Why did you have to ruin that?”
Martha’s voice sharpened. “You gave Morgana our location.”
“She found me before the fire,” Lyra said. “Before your so-called resurrection. She promised protection… and purpose. Said she was fixing what fate broke.”
“You helped poison me,” Martha accused.
“I gave her information. Nothing more,” Lyra hissed. “The cup, the timing, that was all Morgana and the Elder.”
Cina stepped forward. “And you stood by. You let a Luna die.”
Lyra’s lip curled. “She was weak.”
Martha crouched in front of her, so close their noses nearly touched.
“I’m not weak anymore,” she said.
And Lyra for the first time looked afraid.
Pearce stood near the treeline, arms crossed, gaze locked on the camp.
He’d remained after the ambush. No one had welcomed him.
Some stared with thinly-veiled suspicion. Others glared outright.
He didn’t blame them.
He’d hunted these wolves once.
Now he stood among them, unarmed, uncertain.
Cassian limped over, fresh gauze on his shoulder.
“You planning on staying?” he asked.
Pearce didn’t answer right away. “I don’t know.”
Cassian gave a short laugh. “You better figure it out. Fast. Because they’re ready to tear you apart.”
Pearce met his gaze. “Would you blame them?”
“No.”
Cassian turned to leave, then added over his shoulder, “But that doesn’t mean I won’t gut you if you hurt her again.”
Martha stood over Lyra’s restrained form long into the night.
Once, this girl had been like a sister. The last tie to her former life.
Now that tie was fraying.
“What did Morgana promise you?” she asked again.
Lyra looked up, eyes burning.
“A new beginning. A world where I wouldn’t be forgotten. Where I wasn’t just a shadow behind a Luna who never saw me.”
Martha clenched her fists. “You could have told me you felt that way.”
“You never would’ve listened.”
“I would have.”
Silence.
Lyra’s expression twisted.
“I never meant for you to die,” she whispered.
Martha stared at her. “But you didn’t stop it either.”
She stepped back, her decision forming with painful clarity.
“Put her in the lower caves,” she told Cina. “No visitors. Not until I decide.”
Cina hesitated. “And when you do?”
Martha didn’t answer.
That night, in her tent, Martha reread the prophecy scroll.
She lit the special flame with herbs Cina had given her. The fire flickered, then glowed deep blue.
She traced her finger across the final lines:
“Her name will return in blood, her fate written in fire.
The twin flame will choose: ruin or rise.
And only when blood faces blood shall the shadow fall.”
The twin flame.
Pearce?
No, that wasn’t right. The Moon Goddess never made prophecy so obvious.
She read it again. Then again.
And it hit her like ice water.
It wasn’t about love.
It was about lineage.
Cina burst into the tent as if summoned.
“You need to see this.”
In the prisoner cave, Lyra was gone.
The guards were dead. Their throats sliced with something curved not claws. Not blades. Something ancient.
And drawn in blood on the stone wall was a single phrase:
“Blood knows blood.”
Cina swore. “She was broken out.”
“No,” Martha said, breath short. “She was taken.”
“By who?”
Martha didn’t answer.
She had a sick feeling curling in her gut. Something old. Something darker than Morgana.
Something that remembered her soul even across death.
At Moonclaw, Morgana stood in the sacred chamber, the very place where Rochelle had once been blessed as Luna.
She no longer wore her court gown. Now her robes were bone-white, embroidered with symbols no one living could translate.
Before her, a basin filled with black liquid bubbled.
She held a lock of Lyra’s hair, freshly cut.
Behind her, two shadows moved.
One was Elder Thane, silent, cowed, and unsure why he still followed her.
The other was not of this world.
It had no face, only the outline of a long cloak and eyes that glowed like furnace coals.
Morgana dropped the hair into the basin.
“She’s ready,” she whispered. “Her blood matches. She can host the mirror.”
The shadow spoke without sound.
“Then the ritual begins at next moonrise. One twin shall rise. The other must fall.”
Morgana smiled.
“Then let Rochelle come. I’ll show her what rebirth really looks like.”
At the rogue camp, Pearce approached Martha’s tent.
She didn’t look surprised to see him. Just tired.
He sat across from her, hesitant.
“I saw the prophecy,” he said. “It isn’t about us.”
“No,” Martha said. “It never was.”
They sat in silence for a long time.
Then Pearce asked, “Why did you let me stay?”
She looked at him.
“Because part of me hoped there was something worth saving in you.”
He nodded.
“And now?”
“I’m still deciding.”
He stood slowly. “Then let me earn it. Not as your mate. Not as your Alpha. Just as a man who failed you.”
She watched him go.
She didn’t say what her heart whispered in the silence:
“Then stop failing me.”
The next morning, Martha gathered the entire camp.
She stood on the raised stone near the fire, her voice cutting through the crisp dawn.
“Morgana is preparing something,” she said. “Something worse than anything we’ve seen. The prophecy is being twisted. Blood is being used to resurrect the past in a way that should never be allowed.”
“She has Lyra,” Cina added.
“She’s going to try and bind her to my soul,” Martha said. “She wants to create a mirror, someone who shares my lineage but serves her.”
Cassian frowned. “That kind of ritual hasn’t been done in a thousand years.”
“Exactly,” Martha said. “It’s dark magic that requires more than blood. It requires intent.”
“And a death,” Cina said quietly. “A life for a life.”
Martha looked around.
“If we wait, Morgana will rise stronger than ever. We can’t afford to keep hiding. We strike first.”
The camp murmured.
Cassian stepped forward. “We stand with you.”
Sera lifted her bow. “Let’s burn the moon down.”
Even Pearce stepped into the circle.
“I’ll lead the south flank.”
Martha nodded.
“Then it’s decided.”
They would march on Moonclaw.
And this time, they weren’t returning for peace.
They were returning for truth.
For vengeance.
For the soul of their people.
That night, beneath a full silver moon, Morgana stood in the sacred circle, arms raised.
Lyra knelt in the center, dazed, her blood drawn in a ring around her.
The ancient shadow whispered words only Morgana could hear.
“Let her soul be halved. Let her become what was lost.”
And far in the distance, as Martha prepared for war, she felt a sting in her chest.
A tether.
Someone had touched her soul.
And the battle had already begun.
- Writer
