The Lycan King’s Forbidden Craving

The Moon’s Hunger

Chapter Five: The Moon's Hunger

Elara's POV

The sun dropped too quickly.

I spent hours in the library, pulling out every book on curses and the Moon Goddess that I could get my hands on. Mira brought me food which I didn't even touch. My eyes were burning from reading books written centuries ago by candlelight, but I couldn't stop. There had to be a solution somewhere among these thousands of pages.

As darkness fell and the full moon began to rise, I'd learned nothing useful.

Everything the books said was the same. Moon Goddess curses were permanent. They could only be reversed by the Goddess herself, and she wasn't sympathetic. A few books spoke of rituals or sacrifices that might invalidate a curse, but nothing could break one flat out.

I shut yet another useless book and rubbed my tired eyes. Maybe Rael had been right. Maybe it was all for nothing.

A howl echoed through the castle, a deep and anguished one. It had issued from far beneath, from the dungeons where Rael had gone to escape. The howl made every hair on my body stand on end. That was no ordinary wolf's howl. It sounded like something in pain, something that was trying to fight against its very nature.

I stood up from the desk and walked to the window. The moon glowed huge and bright in the black sky, casting silvery light over everything. Beautiful and terrible, just like the King himself.

Another howl, closer this time. Or maybe only louder.

I pressed my hand into the coldness of the glass and experienced that pull once more. The otherworldly rope on my heart pulled at me. It was tighter tonight, almost painful. As if whatever was within me yearned to go to him.

"Don't be a fool," I said to myself. "He warned you away for a reason."

But my legs moved to the door anyway.

I found Mira pacing nervously along the corridor. As soon as she saw me, her eyes widened with fear. "You shouldn't be here. The King himself instructed you to stay in your room when it is full moon."

"I can hear him. He's screaming as if he's in pain."

"He hurts. He's always hurting during the full moon. That's the curse's doing." Mira pulled on my arm gently. "Please, Elara. Go to your room. If he gets loose and catches you, he'll be unable to control himself."

"Has he ever gotten loose before?"

Mira didn't respond.

I pulled my arm out of her grasp. "I have to see him. Just for a minute. I have to know whether or not there's something I can do."

"There isn't. The only thing you can do is live." But from her voice, Mira relaxed her expression. "You care about him, don't you? Even after all of this."

Did I? I barely knew him. He was a monster who had murdered so many. Who had murdered seven of me in previous lives. I should hate him.

But when I thought of him imprisoned in those jails, suffering from a curse that he never once deserved, longing alone for three centuries, my heart ached.

"I don't know how I feel," I admitted. "But I'm not going to sit in my room while he languishes."

Mira raised an eyebrow. "You're as stubborn as Selene was. Fine. I'll leave you at the door to the dungeon. But I am not walking in. That's as far as I'll go."

We ran through the castle, down strange staircases. Air grew cooler with each step deeper we went. Torches lit down the walls of stone, their dancing shadows casting flickers about the room. I felt the age of this castle, the weight of centuries upon it.

Last but not least, we reached a massive iron door. It was locked by three independent bolts and had strange symbols hanging on it that gave out a soft radiation in the darkness. Protection runes, I realized. They were for trapping something dangerous inside.

Mira stopped a few feet from the door. "This is as far as I go."

I moved silently towards the door. Up close, I could hear sounds from the other side. Clinking chains. Wheezing breathing. And then.

"Elara."

My name, spoken in a voice that was on the verge of being non-human. Breathless and grating, as if every word hurt them.

"I'm here," I said, palming the chilly iron.

"You don't belong here. I said you were to stay away." I could hear the battle in his voice even through the door. He was battling to contain himself, struggling with the beast inside.

"I was just making sure you were all right."

A harsh laugh echoed from the other room. "I am a lot of things, but okay isn't one of them. Get out, Elara. Before I do something we both regret."

"Describe to me how it feels. The curse."

Silence. Then: "Such as being torn from the inside out. Such as all of the cells in my body screaming for something I know is evil. The hunger is not physical. It is spiritual. It hungers for souls, for human essence, for the things that make a person who he or she is. And the worse part is that I recall every soul I have ever killed. Every face. Every scream. Three centuries of death in my head."

Tears stung at my eyes. "I'm so sorry."

"Don't feel sorry for me. I do deserve this curse. I earned it in blood and violence."

"You were hurting and angry. You made a bad choice, but that doesn't mean you should torture forever."

"Doesn't it?" He talked in a whisper almost loud enough to be heard. "I can smell you behind this door. Your blood is like a song to me. If I were not trapped at the moment, I'd drain you dry without hesitation. That is what the curse has done for me. That is what I am."

"No. That is what the curse would have you be. But you are fighting it. You locked yourself down here to protect me. That means you're still human then, Rael. That you're still the man that loved Selene. The curse has not entirely won you over."

There was a crash from the other side of the door, as if he had thrown something at the wall. "You do not understand. Every time you come back, every life, I hope this time will be different. This time I'll be strong enough to fight it. But I never am. I always fail. I always kill you."

"Then we'll break the curse before that can occur."

"How? We don't even know how it was created."

I thought of Selene's journal, the deception, the manipulation. "What if the curse wasn't about punishment at all? What if the Moon Goddess was trying to give you a chance to fix what you broke?"

"What do you mean?"

"Selene died believing you hated her. You lived believing she had betrayed you. But neither of you was right. You both were pawns in someone else's game. Maybe the curse is keeping us together still because the only way to break it is to do what you couldn't do three hundred years ago, which is trust the other person."

There was silence between us. I stood waiting, my hand still on the iron door, my heart pounding.

Then Rael talked. "If you're mistaken, you'll perish."

"If I'm correct, both of us will be free."

A new scream tore through the air, and I could hear the chains creaking. The curse was fighting back, trying to get him to break the bonds and hunt. I knew I was supposed to leave, give him space to deal with the hunger without my scent driving him mad.

But instead, I did something crazy.

I started singing.

It was an old hymn my mother used to sing when I was frightened. A simple, calming one, meant to soothe and reassure. I had no idea if it would work, but I had to try.

Nothing changed at first. Sounds of fighting still came muffled from beyond the door. But slowly, more and more slowly, the aggressive noises ceased. The chains stopped clanking. The gasping breathing evened out.

I sang on until my voice grew hoarse.

When finally I stopped, there was quiet on the other side of the door.

"Rael?" I whispered.

"I'm here. Still fighting. But your song pierces the hunger like nothing else ever has." He hesitated. "Thank you."

"I'll sit here with you. Through the night if you'd like me to."

"You don't have to do that."

"I know. But I want to."

So I rested against the icy stone floor, back against the metal door. Mira had disappeared somewhere, probably to leave us be. I was alone in the dungeon hallway with only the massive door between me and a cursed monster.

And yet somehow, I felt safer than I'd been in days.

I talked to him through the door for hours. I told him of my life in the village, of working as a healer, of my mother and the joys I'd known before this. He heard her without interruption, sometimes inserting short pieces of his own past. Not the unpleasant parts, but recollections from before the curse. A youth spent running through forests. A father who taught him honor. A kingdom that had once flourished under his reign.

We talked until my voice was gone and weariness pulled at my bones.

"Elara," Rael whispered softly. "Rest now. The worst is past. I will be safe now until dawn."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. Your coming did more for me than I can tell. But rest."

I stood up slowly, my legs stiff from sitting on cold stone for so long. "I'll return tomorrow. We'll settle this between us. I promise."

"I think so."

Those three words meant more to me than all the other things he'd said.

I went back alone via the empty castle to my room and flopped on the bed still wearing my gown. My last thought in sleep was of silver eyes, damned impossibilities, and thin line between man and monster.