I Was His Luna Until He Forgot Me

Chapter 10:LYRA'S SECOND FACE

LYRA MORCANT

I was alone. That was the only reason I allowed myself to speak.

“It has to be here,” I murmured, running my fingers on the cracked book spines. Dust gathered under my nails. “It was here before. I catalogued this shelf myself.”

I knelt and pulled out a heavy book, scanning the page by the pale light cupped in my palm and found nothing useful but only the same family trees I had memorized as a child, back when I didn't know what any of the names meant.

“Where did you go?” I whispered to the empty space on the shelf.

My thoughts returned to the years that had brought me here. I was six when the council first came for me. Six years old when they marked me and tested me while the elders talked about unstable bloodlines and the need to be watchful. They spoke as if I wasn't a child. As if I were a mere tool that needed to be prepared.

They said I had been chosen. Chosen to carry the burden of the Vorath bloodline. I was supposed to watch over it, keep it stable, and be ready for the day its power appeared in the world and threatened to destroy everything the old tribunal had died protecting. I trained from childhood. It became as normal as learning to walk or speak. I never got the chance to choose. No one even asked if I wanted the responsibility of carrying an ancient bloodline's future on my tiny shoulders.

That council no longer existed. At least, I couldn't find any record of it. I had spent years searching documents and court records, but there was nothing; no names, official reports, or mention of the council at all. An entire organization should have left some trace behind. Yet it was as if they had never existed. Or someone had made sure no one could prove they ever had.

“You spent your whole life preparing for a role that might have never been yours,” I said to the empty shelf. My voice cracked on the final word. I would never have allowed that to happen in front of anyone else.

I hated Elara. I had known that since the first moment I saw the seal glowing on her arm. An old and possessive jealousy had stirred inside me then. For weeks, I convinced myself that my anger came from losing what should have belonged to me, from the singular honor of carrying the Vorath's bloodline. I trained, suffered and sacrificed everything to a destiny I had been forced to accept.

Now alone in the darkness, I could finally admit the uglier truth.

It wasn't that Elara had taken my birthright. It was that her existence made me question whether that birthright had ever been real.

What if the council that shaped my childhood hadn't been protecting something sacred? What if they had only been protecting themselves? What if they had used a frightened child to maintain control over a power they didn't understand?

Elara was an untrained orphan. Yet the seal had chosen her. She hadn't spent years training. She hadn't sacrificed her childhood. She hadn't bled for it as I had. So what had all my training been for?

What had those years really given me?

“What if none of it meant what they told you it meant?” The words tasted bitter in my mouth.

I moved to the next shelf and continued searching. My fingers found a slim collection of loose, unbound pages tucked behind a bigger book. I brought it out and opened the pages. It was the soul division text. I had read parts of it years ago under strict supervision and was forbidden from taking notes or discussing it with anyone outside the council chamber. I had assumed the text was lost when the council disappeared. Perhaps it had been burned or buried. Or maybe it was simply forgotten along with everything else that vanished from the official records.

But if the words were true...If a liminal crossing could really divide one soul into two, just as the text described, then everything happening around Kael Draven suddenly made terrible sense.

I folded the pages carefully and slid them into the inner pocket of my coat. Knowledge like this couldn't be left lying around where anyone could find it. In the wrong hands, these fragments could be dangerous. I rose and closed my fingers around the glowing orb. I was about to leave when I smelt it. A familiar scent. I knew it well from the weeks I had been near her in council meetings and around the court.

Elara.

Every muscle in my body went rigid. My hand stopped halfway to the door. She was here. I could perceive her smell strongly here. Which meant she had been here the whole time and had heard everything, every bitter word I had spoken while believing I was completely alone.

My first reaction was fury. That old resentment rose again at the thought of Elara hearing me expose every weakness I have never told anyone. My second reaction was shame. If our positions were reversed, and I had encountered her bared out her heart to an empty room, I would have wanted her to pretend I never heard a word.

I just faced the door. I wasn't going to act as if I hadn't sensed her and I wasn't going to deny what I had just confessed that my identity might have been a lie from the very beginning.

Slowly, I turned towards the place where her scent was strongest. “You can stop hiding now. I know you're there.”