LUNA POV Word spreads before breakfast even ends.
I find Ember in the courtyard, sitting alone on the low stone wall near the fountain, and for the first time since I met her, there’s nothing sharp or hostile in her expression at all.
Just fear, raw and unguarded, her green eyes rimmed red like she’s been crying and trying hard not to.
Her arms are wrapped tight around her knees, and the confident, competitive girl who threw me down onto the training field on my first day looks impossibly small right now, folded in on herself against the cold morning air.
“Her name’s Willow,” Ember says, her voice thin, none of its usual bite left in it.
“She’s my friend.
We’ve bunked together since we were cubs.
Since before either of us even Awakened.” She wraps her arms tighter around herself, staring at some fixed point in the middle distance.
“This is exactly like what happened to Maren.
She’s still in the infirmary, you know.
Weeks later, and her mark still hasn’t come back all the way.
Sage says she might never get all of it back.” Her voice cracks.
“Same method.
Same place.
And now Willow.” I sit down beside her on the cold stone, careful not to crowd her, and for a long moment neither of us says anything at all.
“They’ll find her,” I say, though I don’t know if it’s true, and judging by the way Ember’s jaw tightens, she doesn’t believe it either.
“You found Maren,” she says finally, turning to look at me properly for the first time.
“You and Sage and the Twins.
You went down there and you found her before the healers even knew where to look.” “We got lucky.” “Maybe.” Ember’s eyes hold mine, something sharp and desperate underneath the grief.
“Or maybe you’re the only one who actually knows where to start looking.” I don’t have anything comforting to offer her, because she’s right, and we both know it.
I know exactly where to start looking.
I’ve known since the night the runes cracked under my palm and something on the other side of that door drew breath for the first time in longer than anyone can measure.
The whisper starts up again that same night, faint at first, then steadily louder, curling behind my ribs the way it always does right before it wants something from me.
I lie in bed feeling it tug and tug, and for the first time I actually understand the pattern instead of just fearing it.
It’s never once led me anywhere Kael wasn’t already tangled up in.
I don’t follow it this time.
I’ve learned enough by now to know following it alone gets people hurt.
Instead, I go find Kael.
I catch him near the training grounds just as the sun sets, the sky bleeding orange and purple behind the mountain ridge, and this time I don’t let him walk away from me before I’ve said everything I need to say.
I plant myself directly in his path, and something in my expression must tell him this isn’t a conversation he gets to avoid, because he stops instead of brushing past me the way he’s done all week.
I tell him everything.
The pull that led me down there in the first place.
The sealed door covered edge to edge in cracking runes.
The low, enormous breath I heard on the other side of it, vast and ancient and only just waking up.
His face goes grey, the color draining out of it so fast I instinctively reach out before I catch myself.
“The gateway,” he says, quiet and stricken, like the words cost him more than he wants to admit.
“Someone’s been opening it.” “You knew about it,” I say, not really a question anymore.
“I suspected.” He drags a hand down his face, some of his usual composure finally cracking under the weight of it, and for the first time since I’ve known him, he looks genuinely afraid instead of just guarded.
“There are old stories, passed down through the Emberwolf families mostly, about a sealed passage to the Underworld dormant beneath this school.
Something Fenris himself is bound behind.
Everyone treats it like folklore, something you tell cubs to keep them from wandering the Undercroft after dark.
I thought they were just stories, Luna.
I told myself they were just stories, right up until you told me what you found.” “The shadow wolf I fought.” My pulse picks up as the pieces start sliding into place, cold and certain.
“It came from down there.
It has to have.” “It has to be connected.” His amber eyes lock onto mine, sharp now, urgent in a way that makes the hair on my arms rise.
“Two cubs missing within weeks of each other, both drained of their magic almost entirely, both taken from somewhere close enough to the Undercroft that it can’t be coincidence.
Something is coming through the cracks in that seal.
And it isn’t doing it alone.
Seals like that don’t just crack on their own after a thousand years of holding.
Something helped it along.” The full weight of that settles cold and heavy in my chest, spreading outward until my whole body feels weighed down by it.
“Someone inside Hollowcrest is letting it in,” I say, the words feeling dangerous just to speak out loud.
Neither of us says anything else for a long moment, the horror of that thought sitting too large between us for words to make it smaller.
I think of Seraphina steering Theron’s investigation away from the Undercroft every single time it drifted too close.
I think of the too-tight grip on my shoulder at the Moonpool.
I don’t say her name out loud, not yet, but I can tell by the careful way Kael watches me that the same suspicion is already taking root in him too.
Caspian comes to my room that night, and I don’t ask him to leave.
The bond has been singing all evening, louder and more insistent than I’ve ever felt it, a golden thread pulled taut and humming with something that feels dangerously close to alarm.
Tonight, standing in my doorway with his dark eyes searching my face, damp hair falling across his forehead like he ran the whole way here, I understand exactly what it means.
He doesn’t say much at first.
He just crosses the room and pulls me into his arms, and I let him, resting my cheek against his chest, his heartbeat steady and warm beneath my ear, a small, solid anchor in a night that feels like it’s unraveling at the edges faster than I can hold it together.
“I won’t let anything happen to you,” he murmurs into my hair, his voice low and certain, his arms tightening slightly around me like he could physically keep every threat in this school at bay.
He means it.
I can feel that he means it, the truth of it radiating through the bond as clearly as the words themselves, warm and unwavering.
He means every single word, every syllable of it true down to the bone, and he’s still walking straight from my room back to a tower where he reports everything he learns about me to the very woman causing all of this.
My phone rings, shattering the quiet.
Jace.
I pull back from Caspian and answer it, my heart already hammering before Jace even speaks.
“I’m coming to you,” he says, no greeting, no preamble, just that, his voice tight and strained in a way I’ve never heard from him before.
“Don’t.” My voice cracks around the word.
“Jace, you can’t, it’s not safe here, there’s people going missing, there’s something underneath this whole school that.” “I’m coming, Luna.” His voice shakes, raw and exhausted in a way that scares me more than anything he’s actually saying.
“The visions won’t stop.
I can’t eat.
I can’t sleep.
Every time I close my eyes I see you, and you’re in danger, and I can’t just sit here in Tennessee pretending that doesn’t mean something anymore.
My mom thinks I’m sick.
Nana Mae’s the only one who believes me, and even she’s scared for me now.
I’m coming, whether you tell me to or not.” “Jace, please, just wait, let me figure out what’s actually happening first.” “I’ve waited long enough.” Something in his tone softens, just slightly, underneath the exhaustion.
“I love you.
I’m not letting whatever this is take you without me at least trying to stand next to you when it happens.” He hangs up before I can argue any further, the line going dead in my hand.
I stand there staring at the dark screen of my phone, doing the math without meaning to.
It’s a nine hour drive from Little River if he doesn’t stop, longer if he does, and Jace has never been the type to wait until morning once he’s decided something.
That means tomorrow.
Maybe even tonight, if he’s already halfway to the truck with a bag thrown over his shoulder.
And he’ll be driving straight into an Academy locked down tight enough that even wolves are being stopped at the gate, with no mark, no magic, and no idea what’s actually hunting the halls he’s about to walk into.
I should tell someone.
Sage, or Rowan, or even Kael, anyone who could help me figure out how to get a human boy safely through wards built to keep humans out entirely.
But some small, cornered part of me isn’t ready to say his name out loud to anyone else here yet, not until I understand exactly what I’m bringing him into.
My chest goes tight with fear and guilt tangled together so completely I can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.
Fear for Jace, walking straight into a danger he doesn’t understand and can’t defend himself against.
Guilt for the fact that some small, treacherous part of me lit up at the thought of seeing him, even now, even here, even with everything else pulling at me from every direction.
Caspian watches me from across the room, still and quiet, and through the bond I feel him catch every piece of it, the pull toward Jace, the guilt over feeling anything for anyone else while standing in another boy’s arms, the love I still carry that hasn’t gone anywhere no matter how much distance or destiny stands between us.
He doesn’t say a word.
But something in his chest cracks, quiet and unseen, and I feel that too, a small, sharp fracture traveling down the golden thread between us, and neither of us says anything about it at all.