Chapter 8: Blood on the Door
834 Words
The ride back to the castle passed in a blur Aria would later struggle to remember clearly — cold wind, the pounding rhythm of hooves, Kael's shoulders rigid with fury in front of her, Wren's white-knuckled grip on the saddle behind. All she could think of was Ophelia's face that morning, soft with worry, alive with thirty years of quiet devotion.
The rejected one already knows too much. Silence her before the mark finishes waking.
They hadn't meant Ophelia. They'd meant the Oracle. But Aria couldn't shake the cold certainty settling in her gut — if the Oracle had died for what she might have revealed, Ophelia wasn't safe either. No one who'd ever helped Aria was safe.
The castle rose out of the dark like something out of a nightmare, torches burning too bright against a sky gone starless with clouds. Warriors lined the courtyard, tense and silent, and the moment Kael dismounted, the Beta Commander — a scarred, grim-faced man named Dorian — stepped forward with a report that made his jaw visibly tighten.
"No signs of forced entry, my King. Whoever did this had access to her private chambers. The lock wasn't broken. It was opened."
"Someone with a key," Kael said, low and dangerous.
"Or someone she trusted enough to let inside," Dorian said quietly, "which narrows the list considerably. Fewer than a dozen souls in this castle have ever been welcome in the Oracle's chambers after dark."
Aria felt Kael go very still beside her.
"Take me to her," Aria said before she could think better of it.
Kael turned, something flickering across his face — protest, maybe, or protectiveness — but whatever he saw in her expression made him swallow it. "This isn't something you should have to see."
"She died because of me," Aria said, voice steadier than she felt. "I owe her more than staying safely outside the door."
He didn't argue further. He simply nodded once and led her inside.
The Oracle's chambers smelled of cold candle wax and something coppery underneath it that made Aria's stomach turn the moment they crossed the threshold. The old woman lay near the base of a shattered mirror, her ceremonial robes dark and ruined, her face frozen in an expression Aria recognized instantly — not fear.
Recognition.
"She knew whoever did this," Aria whispered. "Look at her face. She wasn't afraid until it was already too late."
Kael crouched beside the body, expression carved from stone, though Aria caught the faint tremor in his hands. "The Oracle served my grandfather's court. She has advised three generations of Blackthorn Alphas. Whoever did this didn't just kill her." His jaw clenched. "They erased sixty years of memory the moment they slit her throat."
Wren, hovering pale-faced near the doorway, suddenly made a small strangled sound. "Aria. Look."
Above the shattered mirror, scrawled in something dark that Aria refused to let herself identify, was a second message — smaller, hastier than the one carved into the door, as though whoever wrote it had been running out of time.
She was never meant to be a Queen. Only a Vessel.
The word hit Aria like a physical blow. Vessel. Not heir. Not queen. Something to be used, emptied, discarded once its purpose was served.
"What does that mean?" she breathed, though some cold, ancient part of her already suspected — the Ancient's voice at the river, calling her little queen with such terrible hunger, as though the title itself were something it intended to devour rather than honor.
Kael rose slowly, his gray eyes darker than she'd ever seen them. "It means whoever forged that prophecy, whoever murdered the one person who might have told you the truth — they don't want you dead yet." His voice roughened with something between fury and dread. "They want you awake first. They want whatever's inside you fully surfaced before they take it from you."
A commotion rose from the hallway outside — raised voices, a scuffle, boots pounding against stone — and a warrior burst through the door, breathless and grim.
"My King. We found something in the servants' passage behind the Oracle's chambers." He held out a trembling hand, and in his palm sat a single object that made Aria's blood run cold.
A hairpin, delicate and unmistakable, carved from pale gold in the shape of a crescent moon — the exact style worn only by ladies of noble rank.
Kael took it slowly, turning it over, and Aria watched every ounce of color drain from his face as recognition dawned.
"This belongs to Lyra Ashmoon," he said quietly, and then, quieter still, almost as if he couldn't quite believe his own words: "She was here. Tonight. In the one place she had no reason to be."
Before anyone could respond, the castle bell began to toll — not the slow, mournful ring of grief, but the sharp, frantic clang reserved for only one purpose in Blackthorn history.
An attack was already underway.
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