The Silver Moon Captive

Chapter 4: The Silver Thread

On the fifth day, the silver thread crossed my wrist joint.

I watched it push from two centimeters above the wrist bone to the middle of my forearm. It took the entire night. Not at a visible speed — you set a candle on the table, look down at your arm, you'll see nothing.

But if you sleep and wake up, it's inched forward. Like a plant growing slow and blind in the dark. It won't let you see it move. It only lets you see that it's moved.

I stopped wrapping the cloth strip around it. Pointless.

The silver glow was already bleeding through. The only difference between wrapped and unwrapped was "people guessing I'm hiding something" versus "people seeing it outright." I chose the second one. Saves fabric, at least.

Sebastian comes once every morning. Not to see me — or so he says. He comes to check the mark.

"Any changes."

"It's grown."

"How much."

I measure it out with my fingers on my arm. He squints for a moment, then pulls a rolled parchment from inside his robes and opens it.

The parchment has a sketch of a wrist on it — my wrist, drawn with absolutely no accuracy, proportions all wrong, but the crescent position is correct. He marks a new short line above the crescent.

He's drawing my mark.

"You're recording it."

"I'm recording the Mate Bond." He corrects me. The charcoal in his hand scratches another line. His handwriting is neat. Too neat for a king — precise, careful, like a scribe, not a man who signs execution orders.

"Have you ever recorded another bond before."

"No."

"Then how do you know —"

"I don't. That's why I'm recording."

He rolls up the parchment, tucks it back into his robes, and does exactly what he's done every one of these days — stands three paces away, hands clasped behind his back, and asks if I feel unwell. I say no. He nods once. Then he leaves.

Same routine every day. Measure the mark. Ask about my health. Nod. Leave.

The whole thing takes less than three minutes. But after he's gone, the silver moon mark's temperature drops a little. Not much. Maybe from "warm cloth" to "tea that's no longer hot." I noticed. I wish I hadn't noticed. But I noticed.

Because his presence warms it. Not burning — warmth. Like pressing frozen hands against a closed door in winter, with a fire burning on the other side. The door is warm. The fire isn't on your side. You can only feel the door.

On the seventh day, I did the math. He comes once a day. Three minutes each time.

Three minutes a day, the gold moon mark on his wrist comes within range of the silver moon mark on mine. Three minutes of warmth. The other twenty-three hours and fifty-seven minutes? Tea-gone-cold temperature.

I hate that I'm keeping track.

Lord Magnus came on the eighth day.

He knocked. That's the difference — Isabella doesn't knock. The Head of Household doesn't knock. The guards don't knock. He knocked.

"Come in."

He pushed the door open the same way he'd knocked. Unhurried. Neither deferential nor arrogant.

Like walking into his own study. Graying hair cropped short and clean. Dark brown robes, no adornment. His face wore that particular expression of the very old: seen too much, so most things don't qualify as surprising anymore.

"Lady Eira North," he said. "First time meeting. Magnus Wain."

He used *North*. My family name. Sebastian hadn't mentioned my family name in front of anyone — or he had, and this lord looked it up himself. I guessed the latter.

"Lord Magnus." I rose and inclined my head — exactly enough, the precise angle a Northern royal princess would give a foreign earl. Two years in the stables didn't make me forget how to incline my head.

The corner of his mouth moved — not a smile. Acknowledgment. He saw the contradiction between my breeding and my position.

"You don't look like a stable hand."

"I spent two years in the stables. I am a stable hand."

"Fair," he said, and sat down on the only chair in the room. No one had invited him. He hadn't asked. This was a man accustomed to being allowed.

"His Majesty has already given me your mark records," he said, straight to business.

My stomach tightened. "He gave you —"

"Not everything. He gave me the mark growth chart from day one to today, plus your physical condition reports. He needs someone to analyze the Mate Bond academically. I happen to be the only person in this court who's studied wolf bloodline theory."

Wolf bloodline theory. My father waged wars. My mother managed treasuries. I'd never heard of this field. I had no idea whether it was real or just a title some court advisor used to dress himself up.

"What did you find."

"Not much. But enough to complicate things significantly." He pulled a small booklet from inside his coat — not parchment, actual bound paper, well-made, edges soft from repeated handling. "A silver moon Mate Bond mark has only appeared in known literature three times.

The shortest gap between occurrences was eighty years. The longest was nearly three hundred. Every single time, it was accompanied by the activation of an ancient prophecy."

My heart slammed against my ribs.

"What prophecy."

"I can't tell you."

"You can't —"

"It's not that I don't want to. It's that I don't know the full text." He opened the booklet, flipped to a certain page — tucked into the corner was a folded piece of parchment. He unfolded it.

It was a fragment. Torn edges. Burned corner. Only a few lines remained at the center:

*"...born from ashes, she rises..."*

*"...shall bind the Wolf King's heart..."*

*"...and sever the Iron Throne's roots..."*

Three lines. Every line's context burned away. The parchment edges were charred black.

"This is everything I could find," Magnus said. "The original is in the restricted section of the Royal Archives. I don't have clearance to enter a second time. But I can tell you one thing."

He folded the parchment away. His eyes — usually calm — held something now that I couldn't quite label as a warning. Not quite. But close.

"Sebastian knows he's in this prophecy. He doesn't know you're in it too."

"What do you mean."

"He's researching the Mate Bond to research his own illness. His Alpha Rage worsens every year. Every physician. Every bloodline scholar.

Every text he's dug through — they all point to the same thing. The bond may be the cure." Magnus stood, folding his hands into his sleeves. "He doesn't know the other end of this bond is tied to a prophecy. Not yet, anyway."

"Then why haven't you told him, if you know."

He looked at me. A long look. Long enough that I started counting my own heartbeats.

"Because I'm not his physician. I'm his advisor," he said. "A physician's job is to save the patient. An advisor's job is to give the king all options, and let the king choose. If I tell him about the prophecy now, he loses an option."

"Which option."

"Not telling you about the prophecy. To give you time."

Magnus walked to the door. He paused before pushing it open.

"The mark on your hand is growing. His is too. The rate at which a bond deepens isn't fixed — I checked all three silver moon bond records. There's one variable. Touch."

The door closed behind him.

He was telling me something. Not directly. But every word pointed in the same direction.

Every time Sebastian and I touch, the Mate Bond deepens. Don't touch, and the mark stays as it is. The more we touch, the faster it grows. And the faster it grows — either it saves him, or it destroys him.

I sat on the edge of the bed. The silver thread on my left arm glowed faintly in the candlelight. It had reached the midpoint of my forearm now.

Touch.

When his skin met mine, the mark had ignited like fire. He hadn't touched me since — he'd kept his promise. But his daily three-minute proximity still brought the warmth back.

That wasn't from touch. That was from nearness. If nearness alone did this, what would a real touch do.

I imagined the scene of him touching me again. Not forced. Not in Rage. Not both of us on our knees and shaking. The version where he reaches out deliberately, fully aware, knowing exactly what he's doing.

Then I ripped that image out of my head.

I can't think about this. He killed my brother.

He threw me into the stables. He is the reason the first thought in my head every morning is revenge. If he touches me, and the mark on my wrist erupts silver light a second time — is that the Mate Bond deepening, or am I letting something go.

The silver thread crept forward half a centimeter.

I couldn't say when exactly it had started moving. But I could say one thing for certain: it had been slowly spreading ever since Sebastian stood at my door tonight and said, "Tomorrow I'll find you a different Northern book."

One sentence.

One sentence, and the silver thread grew half a centimeter.

I buried my face in my hands.

Not from fear. From not knowing whether this thing on my wrist was my hatred, or something else entirely. I would rather it was hatred.