CH15 The Door Between Us
1192 Words
The second door unlocked by itself.
The sound was small.
A click.
Nothing more.
Yet every living thing in the east watch chamber went still.
Veyra’s blade came up. Aric moved before she did, crossing the room in two strides to stand between me and the door that led to his chamber.
The wolf-shadow rose at his feet.
My mother’s reflection remained in the black glass behind me.
Silent.
Weeping.
Then she vanished.
The birth band cooled around my wrist as if satisfied it had been heard.
“Do not open it,” Veyra said.
Aric did not look away from the door. “I did not.”
“That is what concerns me.”
House Varyn riders waited at the lower gate. The Temple wanted custody of me. Isolde’s claim had become a weapon before dawn. And now the only unlocked thing in the room was the door that placed me one wall from Aric.
The beast’s price had teeth.
I stepped toward him.
Aric lifted one hand without turning. “Stay behind me.”
“No.”
His shoulders tightened.
Veyra muttered, “Moon save me from both of you.”
I stopped beside him, not behind. The mark in my palm warmed. His body remained rigid, but I felt the effort it cost him not to push me back.
Progress, maybe.
Or exhaustion.
The door opened inward.
No hand touched it.
Cold air slipped through first.
Then a voice came from the dark room beyond.
“Lunar Alpha.”
Not my mother.
Not the beast.
Soren.
Veyra’s eyes narrowed. “That is impossible.”
Aric’s face turned lethal. “He is not in my chamber.”
The voice spoke again.
“Lunar Alpha, the council requires the girl for blood proof.”
My skin tightened.
Aric reached for the door.
I caught his sleeve.
He froze.
“You told me not to trust voices.”
His jaw flexed.
“Then listen to yourself.”
For one heartbeat, his eyes softened with something too quick to name.
Then the thing wearing Soren’s voice laughed.
The sound deepened.
Cracked.
Became Cassian.
“Kaia.”
My breath stopped.
The dark room beyond the door suddenly smelled of cold kitchens, old stone, and shame.
Cassian’s voice slid out again.
“Did you think a new name would make you wanted?”
The words found old wounds with perfect aim.
Not because I believed them.
Because some part of me had been trained to.
It knew where to cut.
The wolf-shadow growled.
Aric stepped toward the darkness.
I grabbed his wrist.
The mark flared.
His power surged against mine, winter and blood, but he stopped.
“Do not fight my battles for ghosts,” I said.
“That voice should not touch you.”
“It already did. For twenty years.”
The room went silent.
Even Veyra looked away.
I faced the open door.
My pulse shook, but my voice did not. “Cassian Vale is not my father.”
The darkness answered in his voice. “I fed you.”
“You starved me.”
“I sheltered you.”
“You hid me because you were bound.”
“I gave you my name.”
“You made it a cage.”
The birth band heated again.
Silver light spread along my wrist and down my fingers.
The darkness shifted.
Cassian’s voice vanished.
Selene’s took its place.
Soft.
Sweet.
Cruel.
“Do you think he wants you, Kaia? He wants the crown under your skin. Men do not choose empty girls.”
For a moment, I saw her in the Moonstone Pit, moonpearls scattered like tiny bones, staring at Aric’s wolf kneeling before me.
That old hurt rose.
Then died.
“Empty things are easy to own,” I said. “I am done being easy.”
The black room shuddered.
A scream tore through it, layered with every voice it had stolen.
Veyra stepped closer. “The ward is testing her.”
“No,” Aric said. “It is learning her.”
The difference mattered.
I felt it.
The dark inside his chamber was not simply repeating fear. It was trying keys. Father. Sister. Shame. Want. Each voice searched for a lock.
My lock.
I lifted my marked palm.
The crescent burned silver-white. “You will not use my wounds as doors.”
The darkness pulled back.
For one second, the chamber beyond appeared.
I saw Aric’s room: black walls, a narrow bed untouched, weapons laid with brutal order, and chains built into the stone behind a curtain.
Real chains.
Not memory.
My gaze went to them.
So did his.
The door began to close.
I stepped forward.
Aric caught my arm. “Kaia.”
“What are those?”
“Old precautions.”
“Against whom?”
His silence answered.
Himself.
The door slammed shut before I could ask more.
Veyra exhaled slowly. “That was not a normal ward.”
“No,” Aric said.
I looked at him. “It came from your room.”
“It came through my room.”
“Because of the chains?”
His eyes went cold again.
Not at me.
At himself.
Before he could answer, a horn sounded below the keep.
Once.
Then twice.
Veyra moved to the black glass. “Varyn riders are at the inner gate.”
A second horn followed.
Lower.
Older.
Aric cursed.
“What is that?” I asked.
Veyra’s face hardened. “Temple horn.”
The birth band burned.
The black moon outside flickered, and my reflection returned in the glass. This time, I saw no mother behind me.
Me.
Pale.
Blood-marked.
Crowned in silver light I had not asked for.
Aric turned to Veyra. “Lock the outer door.”
The latch moved before she touched it.
Not locking us in.
Locking the world out.
Then footsteps sounded beyond the corridor.
Many.
Measured.
Not warriors rushing.
Priests arriving.
A woman’s voice rang through the stone, calm and merciless.
“By right of the Veiled Moon and temple law, surrender the heir.”
Aric’s wolf-shadow pressed against the floor, ready to rise.
Aric looked at me.
No command this time.
No order.
Only the question he did not ask.
I walked to the black glass and looked down at the courtyard below. Silver-robed figures stood beside House Varyn riders. At their front was Priestess Mara from Silver Hollow.
The woman who had watched my blood wake the Moonstone.
The woman who had warned Aric I was hidden from his bloodline.
She raised her veiled face toward my window.
Then she lifted something in both hands.
A silver bowl.
Aric saw it first.
“No,” he said, and the word was not Alpha command.
It was fear.
My palm split open without a blade.
The pain was brief.
The insult was not.
Something had reached through distance and taken what I had refused to give.
Blood fell onto the floor.
The bowl below filled.
Veyra went pale. “Forced proof.”
Aric’s eyes turned silver. “Illegal proof.”
Mara’s voice reached me through the glass.
“Blood proof has already begun.”
- Writer
