Fated to Die together

The Bloodmoon Court

The journey to the Bloodmoon Court took four days.

I know this because I counted them. Not the hours, hours felt too small for what I was crossing — but the days, marked by the light changing outside the carriage window and then disappearing altogether as we moved deeper into the Lycan territories. The two pack guards who escorted me did not speak unless I asked them something directly, and even then their answers were short.

I asked one of them, on the second day, what the court was like.

He looked at the floor of the carriage for a moment.

“Cold,” he said. Then he went back to staring out the window.

I stopped asking questions after that.

The forest that surrounded the Bloodmoon Court was not like any forest I had grown up near. The trees were different.

My wolf went quiet inside me around the third hour inside that forest. Not frightened, exactly. More like she understood, instinctively, that this was a place where you did not make unnecessary noise.

I understood it too.

-----

The court appeared at the end of a long stone road as the last light of the fourth day was fading.

I had expected something that looked like a fortress. But What I saw instead was almost worse than that — because the Bloodmoon Court was beautiful. It rose from the treeline in dark stone towers and long arching windows, its shape more like a cathedral than a castle, the kind of building that looked like someone had designed it long ago when they still believed in the kind of things cathedrals are built for. There was a grandness to it that the years had not quite erased.

But neither had they left it whole.

The dark mark — the curse — was visible even from the road. Not the way it was visible on the king’s skin, which I would only understand later. But in the way the stone itself had taken on a faint shadow that had nothing to do with the failing light. In the way the windows were dark even where candles must have been burning.

The carriage stopped. The door opened.

I picked up my single bag and stepped out.

-----

His name was Lord Veylan Ashcroft, and he was the most elegant person I had ever seen in my life.

He was waiting at the top of the entrance steps when I climbed them — silver-haired, straight-backed, dressed in deep grey. He had the face of someone who had been handsome for so long it had become a tool rather than a feature, and when he smiled at me it was warm in every technical sense without being warm in any real one.

“Lady Seraphine.” He inclined his head. Not a bow, A careful acknowledgment. “Welcome to the Bloodmoon Court. I am High Chancellor Veylan Ashcroft. I will be your primary point of guidance during your… transition.”

I noticed the pause before “transition”. The word he had not used was “imprisonment.”

“Thank you,” I said.

He turned and led me inside.

The interior of the palace was warmer than the outside but not by as much as it should have been. The ceilings were high and the corridors were wide and there were candles burning in sconces along every wall.

Veylan walked and talked at the same time, which told me he was a man who did not believe in wasting motion.

“Your rooms are in the east wing,” he said. “You will find everything you need there. Meals are brought at fixed hours. The western corridors are not for your use at this time. The lower library is available to you. The upper library is not.” He paused at a junction and turned left without hesitation, as though the palace spoke to him in a language he had long since memorized. “You will not be required to attend court functions until after the ceremony. After that, your presence will be required at formal assemblies, of which there are four per year.”

“The ceremony,” I said.

“Three days from now.”

I let a moment pass. “And the king. When do I meet him?”

Something crossed Veylan’s face. Barely a flicker, gone so fast I almost convinced myself I had imagined it. “His Majesty will receive you this evening. In approximately one hour.” He glanced at me sideways as we walked. “I would advise, Lady Seraphine, that you do not ask him questions about the curse. He will tell you what he believes you need to know.”

The way he said believes sat in my chest like a small cold stone.

“Is there something I need to know that he won’t tell me?” I asked.

Veylan smiled again — that technically warm, actually empty smile. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.” He stopped in front of a door and opened it. “Your rooms. An hour, Lady Seraphine. Someone will come for you.”

He left before I could say anything else.

-----

I did not unpack.

I sat on the edge of the bed — which was large and made up in dark linen. I looked at my single bag on the floor and thought about what I was doing here. Not in terms of the treaty or the decree. I had made my peace with those on the carriage ride, somewhere around the second day when the anger burned out and left something quieter in its place.

I mean what I was doing in a broader sense. Whether I was a person who walked into a cursed king’s throne room in a dress I had packed in three minutes, or whether I was someone else. Whether any version of me existed that could do this without losing something essential.

I decided the answer was yes. I had already lost the things I couldn’t afford to lose — my father, my fated mate, my place in my pack. What was left was mine to protect. And mine to risk.

I stood up. Washed my face. Changed into the cleanest thing I had brought.

The knock came exactly an hour later.

-----

The guard opened the doors.

I walked in.

The room was vast and dim. At the far end, elevated by three steps, was a throne and in front of the window, with his back to me, was the Lycan King.

He was bigger than I had prepared for. He stood still and The fire caught the edge of him — the line of a jaw, one hand resting loose at his side — and the dark mark on his neck was visible even from the door.

I walked toward him.

I stopped at what felt like a reasonable distance — close enough not to be rude, far enough to leave myself room to think — and I waited.

He did not turn immediately.

The silence stretched. The fire crackled. Somewhere in the walls of the old palace something settled with a sound like a slow breath. I held still and kept my face even and thought: “ he is testing whether I will break first.” So I did not break. I had spent twenty-two years not breaking in rooms where people expected me to. I could manage this one.

Then he turned.

His face was — not what I expected, and I could not immediately explain why. I had expected something that matched the legend. Something designed by fear and distance and four hundred years of people telling each other monster stories. What I saw instead was a man. A man who was clearly something more than that, but a man underneath it, with a face that held the specific exhaustion of someone who has not been allowed to rest for longer than should be survivable. His eyes were gold, lit by the firelight, and they moved over me.

The dark mark on his neck pulsed.

Once.

His eyes did not leave my face.

The silence lasted three more seconds. Then he spoke, in a voice that was deep and very quiet and that I would hear again and again for the rest of my life in moments I did not expect.

“So,” Caelum Draveth said. “You are the one the oracle has been waiting for.”