“How long until they reach us?” Jodan asks, already moving toward the hollow’s weapons cache, urgency sharpening every word.
“Less than an hour,” Riven’s mother says grimly.
“That horn carries across the entire valley.
Every faction with a stake in tonight’s chaos just received the same invitation.”
“Then we move now,” Rosalind says, pushing herself upright despite the visible exhaustion the severance ritual has left carved into her features.
“My riders can escort you further north, toward territory the exiled houses have held quietly for generations.
It won’t be comfortable, but it will be defensible.”
“We’re not simply running north and hoping for the best,” my father says.
“Not when Elowen still holds every advantage of legitimacy the Council can offer her.”
“Then what do you suggest?” the Queen asks, voice tight with exhaustion.
She’s said almost nothing since we fled the chapel, grief over her sister’s betrayal still etched plainly across her face, but something in her posture has hardened in the last hour, resolve slowly replacing shock.
Before my father can answer, one of Riven’s mother’s scouts stumbles into the hollow, breathless, having clearly run the entire distance back from wherever she’d been posted.
“Report,” Riven’s mother orders sharply.
“The chapel,” the scout gasps.
“We found it.
Empty, mostly, Elowen’s forces withdrew sometime after the horn’s first sounding.
But there’s a message.
Left for the True Luna specifically.”
My stomach drops.
“What kind of message?”
The scout hesitates, glancing toward Riven’s mother for permission before continuing.
“A woman,” she says carefully.
“Alive, but held.
Elowen’s people left word that she’ll remain that way only if April surrenders herself before dawn, at the ruins of the old coronation hall, three miles east of here.”
“My aunt,” I breathe, relief and terror crashing through me in the same instant.
“She’s alive.”
“For now,” the scout says.
“The message was explicit about the terms.
April, alone, unescorted, before the sun rises.
Any attempt to bring allies, any attempt to negotiate, and the terms will not be honored.”
“That’s not a negotiation,” Riven snarls.
“That’s a trap dressed up as mercy.”
“Obviously,” Lucien says, though his voice carries none of his usual sharp wit, only exhaustion and dread.
“The question is whether it’s a trap April can survive walking into, or one specifically designed to guarantee she can’t.”
“I have to go,” I say, the words leaving my mouth before I’ve fully thought them through.
“Absolutely not,” Jodan says immediately, closing the distance between us.
“April, this is exactly the outcome Elowen has been engineering since before tonight even began.
Walking into her hands alone accomplishes nothing except handing her everything she’s spent twenty years working toward.”
“She has my aunt,” I say, my voice shaking despite every effort to steady it.
“The woman who tried to protect me even after trying to steal from me.
The woman who stayed behind in that chapel so the rest of us could escape.
I am not leaving her to die because the terms are inconvenient.”
“No one’s suggesting we abandon her,” Eryx says gently, moving to stand beside Jodan, his voice carrying the same quiet steadiness that’s grounded me through every crisis tonight has thrown at us.
“But surrendering yourself isn’t rescue, April.
It’s simply trading one hostage for another, except this time, the hostage happens to be the exact person every faction in this kingdom is currently fighting over.”
“Then what do you propose?” I demand, frustration and fear tangling together until I can barely separate them.
We don’t have time to plan something elaborate before dawn.
I don’t have any other options.”
“You have us,” Wren says quietly, stepping forward.
“That’s not nothing, April.
You have a unified bond, a guardian who’s already proven he answers to you rather than to Elowen, an alliance with the exiled houses, and a boy who spent seventeen years listening through prison walls, learning exactly the kind of information that might help us walk into a trap on our own terms instead of hers.”
The boy, still quiet, nods slowly.
“I know the coronation hall,” he says.
“Or at least, I know what I overheard about it, back when the guards thought I was too broken to be listening.
It’s not simply a ruin.
It’s warded, heavily, built specifically to contain and control gatherings of royal bloodline magic.
Elowen wouldn’t have chosen that location by accident.”
“Meaning what?” I ask.
“Meaning if she gets you inside those walls, whatever wards still function there could strip your connection to the bond entirely,” the boy says grimly.
“Not sever it the way Rosalind severed her own, but suppress it, long enough for Elowen to force whatever ceremony she’s planning without any of us able to intervene.”
The hollow falls into tense silence.
“Then we don’t let her get me inside,” I say slowly, an idea beginning to form, fragile and uncertain but the only thing resembling a plan any of us have managed to produce.
“We use the terms against her.
She wants me alone, unescorted, before dawn.
Fine.
I’ll walk toward that hall exactly as instructed.”
“April—” Jodan starts.
“Let me finish,” I say, meeting his eyes, steadier now than I’ve felt since the chapel’s doors first splintered open.
“I walk in visibly alone.
But the rest of you don’t have to be visible.
The guardian said he’s already watching me, that he doesn’t need summoning.
If he’s telling the truth, he can move without Elowen ever noticing, positioned close enough to intervene the moment those wards threaten to activate.”
“That’s an enormous risk to place on a creature we met less than an hour ago,” Selene’s mother says carefully.
“Everything tonight has been an enormous risk,” I say.
“At least this way, we’re choosing which risk to take, instead of simply reacting to whatever Elowen throws at us next.”
Rosalind studies me for a long moment, something like reluctant respect crossing her tired features.
“My riders can shadow the eastern approach without being seen,” she says.
“We know these woods considerably better than any of Elowen’s forces do.”
“And my people can secure the perimeter around the hall itself,” Riven’s mother adds, “provided we move immediately, before the mobilization horn draws every other faction to the same location.”
“I’m coming with the group shadowing the approach,” Riven says, voice leaving absolutely no room for argument.
“Whatever plan we settle on, I am not simply waiting in this hollow while April walks toward Elowen alone.”
“None of us are,” Jodan says, and the other three alphas nod in immediate, unified agreement, something steady and certain passing between all of them despite the fear still evident in every one of their faces.
“I want to come too,” Wren says.
“If Elowen’s forces are watching for a single, unescorted heir, they won’t necessarily be watching for two.
I could shadow April directly, close enough to help if the wards begin to activate before your guardian can intervene.”
“That’s suicidal,” the boy says, though something in his expression suggests he’s already considering volunteering for the same risk himself.
“Everything about tonight has been suicidal,” Wren says.
“I’d rather die trying to protect my sister than live having let her walk into that trap completely alone.”
The word sister lands somewhere warm and aching in my chest, the first time either of us has actually claimed the word aloud since discovering each other’s existence barely two hours ago, and for one brief moment, despite everything, something almost like hope flickers steady between us. This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
My father steps forward, his expression carefully composed despite the obvious tension radiating through his shoulders.
“I should be the one shadowing the approach,” he says.
“I know Elowen’s tactics better than anyone else in this hollow.
I served alongside her for years before I ever understood what she truly intended.”
“I don’t fully trust you yet,” I say honestly, meeting his eyes without flinching.
“But I trust that you want her stopped more than almost anyone else standing in this clearing tonight.
That’s enough, for now.”
Something flickers across his face, grief and gratitude tangled together, and he simply nods, accepting the qualified trust without argument.
“Then it’s decided,” Riven’s mother says, already moving toward her people, issuing quiet, efficient orders as she goes.
“We move within the hour.
April walks the visible path.
Everyone else moves through the trees, unseen, ready the moment things go wrong.”
“They will go wrong,” Lucien mutters.
“They always have tonight.”
“Then we’ll be ready when they do,” Eryx says firmly, though his hand finds mine, steady despite the tremor I can feel running through his fingers.
As the hollow erupts into quiet, organized motion, preparations beginning in earnest, I find myself standing alone for a brief moment near the entrance, staring east toward the direction the coronation hall waits, toward wherever my aunt is currently being held, toward a dawn that feels considerably closer than it did an hour ago.
Selene approaches quietly, falling into step beside me.
“You don’t have to pretend you’re not terrified,” she says softly.
“I’ve known you long enough to recognize what your face looks like when you’re barely holding it together.”
“I am terrified,” I admit.
“I just don’t see another option that doesn’t end with someone I love paying the price for my hesitation.”
Selene’s expression softens, though something troubled lingers behind her eyes.
“There’s something I haven’t told you yet,” she says quietly.
“Something my mother mentioned earlier, before the riders arrived, that I don’t think you fully processed given everything else happening at the time.”
“What is it?”
Selene glances back toward her mother, who’s watching us from across the hollow with an expression caught somewhere between guilt and resignation.
“The coronation hall,” Selene says slowly.
“It’s not simply warded against royal bloodline magic.
My mother helped build part of those wards herself, decades ago, back before any of tonight’s chaos existed.
Which means she knows exactly how to bypass them.”
“Then we bring her,” I say.
“She can help us.”
“She already agreed to,” Selene says.
“That’s not the part I’m worried about telling you.”
“Then what is?”
Selene’s voice drops lower, barely audible over the hollow’s quiet bustle of preparation.
“The wards weren’t designed to suppress bloodline magic randomly,” she says.
“They were designed to suppress one bloodline specifically.
My mother just told me whose.”
“Whose?” I ask, dread already pooling cold in my stomach before she even answers.
“Yours,” Selene says quietly.
“April, those wards were built the same year your mother died.
I don’t think Elowen chose that location by coincidence at all.
I think she’s been planning to bring you there specifically since long before tonight ever began.”