Moonbound Secrets

Episode 5

The following morning was gray, the sky concealed in an opaque veil of clouds which would not disperse. Nothing was pleasant inside the fortress walls, not even light streaming over the training yards. It seemed the sun was loath to come up.

Lyra was sitting on the verge of her bed, fidgeting, her body weary with broken sleep. The voice in the darkness had pursued her into her fantasies, and had stuck to the picture of red-streaked moons and nails ripping through the darkness. Her skin was cold, her head swam.

As the door opened she flinched. One of the she-wolves that came in was young, and bore a tray of bread and broth. She looked down on Lyra with open contempt, and laid it aside. The door banged behind her and Lyra was left to herself.

Her appetite was gone. She wanted answers, not food.

Noon fell, and the fortress was lit up with a frenzy of nervous stirring. Groups of wolves were huddled together in the courtyard, their voices low and wild, and their eyes flickering at the forest beyond the gates. Lyra crept out of her room and faded into the shadows of the cold stone corridors, her ears full of catching snippets of the conversation as she hung about the edge of the storming storm.

“…the blood moon approaches…”

We will lose another one, I tell you, we will...

And the Alpha led her hither, and now the curse awakens.

The whispers grew so thick till she was against the cold stone wall in the council chamber. The door was left ajar to allow the words to ooze through.

There was a clash of voices in and out.

And it shall again. The blood moon is three days off. The curse never falters.”

The voice of Darius came behind with its abruptness and authority. Superstition. We have lived through it, we will. Fear has no seat in my pack.

Surviving, the other voice bawled. We’ve endured, Alpha. One member is never free, and the symptoms are already starting. She is because she is evidence of it:--the voice did drop, low and venomous.

There was a silence, oppressive and repressive.

Her heart beat drilled into the ears of Lyra. They were speaking about her.

The voice of the elder followed, slow and confident. The curse was a blooded one long before you reigned, Darius. It preys upon us all blood moons, and here it has come back to us. Mark me--one wolf shall be killed under the burning crimson light. And should the girl really be tied to it...

The words died away into some sinister silence.

Lyra’s breath caught. Her chest was sore, and she wanted to run, to scream, to insist. But fear pinned her in place. She hung on to the wall, and scarce dared to breathe, till the council broke up.

Her hands were shaking so that she was able to turn around to retreat only after it was too late. She had to get away before anybody realized she was there--before Darius...

Then a howl cut through the air. Long, mournful.

And in the fortress the sound passed fear, And the wolves thereof came in every direction. Lyra obeyed instinctively, her feet quickening and quickening, until she appeared in the courtyard, where the pack had crouched in a close circle.

The body lay in the dirt.

A young wolf, his chest ripped open as though by invisible claws. His fur was divided into black veins, and shone in dying glimpses in patterns that throbbed and flickered like embers on his deathbed.

Gasps filled the air. Risings of the curse of the omen were like smoke.

Lyra’s vision swam. She pitched forward until she lay on her knees over the body. Her chest skin was tugging at her, something that she could not stop. She touched--wary, shaky--and, the instant her fingertips touched the corpse fur, a little light flashed up through her skin.

A tingle of energy rolled over her hand, scintillated on her flesh. The very same glow-veins had set themselves across the body of the dead wolf, and burned an hour longer, then died away.

The tranquility fell on the courtyard.

Fear. Hatred. Dozens of eyes on her. Certainty.

“She touched him,” a wolf hissed.

A scolding voice came up, a reproving one. “It’s her. She’s the curse.”

Lyra swayed away, trembling, her glowing hand a betrayal to her, but she folded her legs in over her.

And at the back of her, Darius was low and dangerous. “Enough.”

Even his dominance could not choke the truth that was in the air.

The curse had found its ship.

And they all thought that it was her.