CH18 The Summoning Bowl
1179 Words
“Come down, little moon.”
Aric’s voice came from the eye inside the bowl.
The real Aric went utterly still beside me.
His wolf-shadow rose from the floor, black fur bristling with silver fire, but Aric did not move. He looked at the thing wearing his voice as if he had heard it before in darker rooms.
“Do not answer,” he said.
The eye in the black blood blinked.
His voice came again, softer this time. “Kaia.”
The sound touched something low in my chest.
Not because I believed it was him.
Because wanting could be tricked before the mind caught up.
I looked at Aric. Blood still marked his mouth. His hand hovered near mine without taking it, because enemies waited to call touch a crime.
The bowl had copied his voice.
It had not copied his restraint.
“You are not him,” I said.
The eye brightened.
“I can be what you answer.”
Veyra struck the temple ward again. “Soren, open the door.”
From the corridor, Soren’s voice came sharp. “I am trying.”
Silver lines crawled over the outer door, weaving tighter. The ward was no longer sealing us away from the Temple.
It was sealing the summons in with us.
Below, Mara stood frozen with the bowl lifted in both hands. Priests backed away. House Varyn riders lowered spears as if steel could defend them from stolen blood.
Isolde watched without smiling.
“Tell me what that thing is,” I said.
Soren answered through the door. “A summoning bowl. Old Temple law. Used when an heir refuses custody.”
Aric’s gaze did not leave the bowl. “Dead Temple law.”
The eye inside my stolen blood widened at the word dead.
Mara’s hands shook.
“This is not what I called,” she said.
The bowl spoke again in Aric’s voice. “Come down, little moon. Come to me before he chooses chains.”
My breath caught.
Aric closed his eyes once.
The words had struck him too.
I remembered his chamber. Real chains behind the curtain. Old precautions, he had called them. Against himself.
The bowl knew wounds.
Mine.
His.
It fed on the space between them.
I stepped closer to Aric.
Not touching.
One breath away.
The wolf-shadow steadied at his feet.
The bowl hissed.
“It hates this,” I said.
“It wants you to answer.”
“Then I will not.”
Below, Mara forced one hand away from the bowl as if peeling skin from metal. “Lunar Alpha,” she called, voice cracking. “Break the vessel.”
House Varyn riders turned on her.
One seized her wrist.
Another pressed a blade to her side.
Isolde’s voice floated up. “Careful, Priestess. You invoked temple law. Do not lose courage because it heard you.”
For the first time since the Moonstone Pit, I saw Mara clearly.
Not master.
Servant.
Maybe prisoner.
The eye in the bowl rolled toward Isolde.
She went silent.
Then it looked back at me.
This time, it spoke in Seren’s voice.
“Daughter.”
Pain opened in me so fast I almost answered.
Aric’s hand moved.
Stopped.
The restraint cost him. I saw it in his wrist, in the way his jaw locked until blood welled again at his lip.
I saved myself before he had to.
“My mother told me to trust what protects my choice,” I said. “You are stealing it.”
The voice changed.
Cassian. “Ungrateful girl.”
Selene. “Empty thing.”
Soren. “Useful blood.”
Then Aric again.
“Mine.”
The last word struck the room like a hand around my throat.
Aric flinched.
I turned to him.
His face was stone, but his eyes were not.
“Say something,” I whispered.
His voice came low. “You are not mine because blood says so.”
The bowl shrieked.
Silver cracks burst across its rim.
Aric looked at me, and everything else seemed to fall away for one dangerous second.
“If I ever say that word to you,” he said, “it will be because you gave me the right.”
The mark in my palm burned so bright the bandage turned to ash.
I could not breathe.
The wolf-shadow lowered its head, calmer now.
Soren shouted from the corridor. “Whatever you are doing, continue. It is weakening the seal.”
“I am doing nothing,” I said.
Aric’s gaze held mine. “You are refusing to be owned.”
The birth band flared.
The temple ward cracked down the center.
The bowl tried one final voice.
Mine.
“Come down,” it whispered. “If you do not, they will make him pay the remainder.”
The words pierced clean.
I looked at Aric.
He had told me there was a remainder. The beast had demanded truth before dawn. Isolde had asked what Seren begged him to do.
If the beast used me, Aric would break the chain from his side.
Die.
The bowl knew it.
So did I.
Aric saw understanding reach my face. “No.”
I stepped toward the glass.
He moved with me, close enough for the beast to hear my heart, far enough not to touch.
The bowl opened its silver mouth.
I lifted my burned palm.
“You have my blood,” I said. “Not my obedience.”
“My blood does not summon me.”
The birth band answered with a sharp pulse.
“It returns.”
The black blood in the bowl rose like smoke, then snapped upward.
Mara screamed as the stolen blood tore free of the vessel and struck the glass. It spread across the surface in black veins, searching for my palm.
I pressed my hand to the inside of the glass.
Against my own reflection.
The blood on the other side met me through the barrier.
Cold flooded my arm.
The room vanished.
For one heartbeat, I stood in a place of black water under a moon with no face.
Something ancient moved beneath it.
Not wolf.
Not temple.
Older.
It opened one silver eye.
Then it spoke without any stolen voice.
HEIR FOUND.
I ripped my hand away.
The black glass cleared.
The bowl below split in two.
Mara collapsed to her knees.
The temple ward on our door shattered.
Soren pushed inside, white-haired and breathless.
Behind him came three Draven guards.
None of them looked at Aric first.
They looked at me.
Then every silver sconce in the chamber went out.
The black moon outside brightened.
Soren’s face went slack with horror.
“What did you answer?” Aric asked.
My voice came out thin. “Nothing.”
The birth band tightened.
Across the broken glass, words appeared in moonless dark.
THE HEIR HAS BEEN FOUND.
Below, every priest fell to their knees.
Not in worship.
In terror.
Mara lifted her veiled face and whispered the name of what I had woken.
“The First Moon.”
- Writer
