Selene’s pov
Now that I was in the king’s chambers, recovered thanks to my recipe, I found myself facing backlash ... backlash from the unaccomplished Luna, Tessa.
Lucian wanted me to advise him on what to eat and drink at all times, even though I wasn’t a doctor.
Tessa was really getting jealous. Why couldn’t this wolf leave me alone? Hadn’t she done enough already? She’d killed my two friends, and now she was coming for me.
"You’re trying to get close to Lucian, aren’t you?" she asked, pulling me aside after I left the king’s room.
"What do you mean by..." I looked at her in shock.
"Don’t try anything that’ll bite you in the ass later. You’re still young. Live your life," she said.
Thank you for the advice, but fuck you ... that’s what I wanted to say. All in my head. I wished I could voice it out loud, just once.
Instead, I nodded and walked away. Lucian’s room wasn’t the only place I went to in a day. I had a project I was working on too.
But I’d gotten stuck somewhere ... somewhere I needed guidance. The kind only Cipher could give, and he wasn’t around. I’d texted him, but he hadn’t responded. So I had no choice but to continue my research alone, hoping I’d stumble onto something useful.
That was when I found the book. It looked like a history text of Morvaine, coated in dust like it had been forgotten and abandoned on purpose. That was exactly the case. Ashlyn, the library’s custodian, had already gone home and left me there ... after spending so much time in that library, she’d trusted me with the key. She was such a sweetheart. Maybe it was also because of my management skills.
I kept reading. I wondered who had written it all down, only for it to end up nearly trashed, erased like it had never existed. How would the next generation know not to repeat the same mistakes if no one told them the truth?
The author started with facts everyone already knew. Morvaine was a kingdom made up of two territories ... Bloodmoon and Winterwood. Centuries ago, it had been named the most powerful kingdom in history, though it had long since lost its shine. There used to be a third territory, wiped out during a war with an enemy pack called Icefang.
Reading that, I felt a heavy sadness settle in me ... an entire district erased, not a single soul left standing.
The book explained why Bloodmoon and Winterwood had split. They’d once been one, no hostility between them, until an epidemic tore through the kingdom. It started killing people fast. The king did everything in his power to stop it, but nothing worked.
Every healer in the kingdom had reached their limit, and the sickness kept clearing out entire families. It made victims vomit blood until they died ... something like a violent flu. The writer called it the era of thick darkness.
Then things got worse. The king lost his Luna to the epidemic.
He was bitter, furious, and broken. The author wrote that he’d loved his Luna so deeply he almost took his own life just to follow her to the other side.
That was what led to the consultation of the Moon Goddess. The kingdom begged her for answers ... why was this happening to them? After days of prayer in the temple, she finally spoke.
She told them the kingdom had been contaminated ... that a wolf was spreading the sickness through Morvaine. She didn’t say if it was a man or a woman, only that someone was responsible. So they started hunting for the source.
The trail led to a female wolf. Her name had been scratched out of the book completely. I didn’t know why anyone would erase a name like that, but I kept reading anyway.
When they came for her, she swore she wasn’t the one. She showed no symptoms of the flu, and she was constantly crossing Morvaine’s borders for reasons unknown. She called it a misunderstanding, said someone was framing her because they wanted her dead. Who wanted her dead? The book never said.
They didn’t listen. They dragged her out and declared her the cause of everything.
No one went back to the Moon Goddess to confirm it. The king, blind with rage and grief, ordered her burned at the stake.
The crowd screamed "Burn her! Burn her! Burn her!" They threw stones. They spat on her.
They tied her to the stake. She cried the entire time, screaming her innocence, but no one listened. Her family stood beside her through it all. They doused her in fuel, and before they lit the match, they let her speak her last words.
"You kill me now, the battle will not end. The epidemic might, but the war will not. I curse all of Morvaine today ... you’ll never be one until I find justice. I’ll be reborn, and reborn again, until I do. When I come back, you won’t know it’s me. But I’ll get my reckoning. Fuck you all!"
Then they lit her up, and she burned to ash in her own screams.
The epidemic stopped after that ... just like she’d said it might. But another war began.
A decade later, Bloodmoon, Winterwood, and Icefang tore into each other, using everything they had to cause maximum damage. Bloodmoon eventually sought an alliance with a kingdom outside Morvaine’s borders, and together they wiped Icefang off the map completely.
When Winterwood saw how strong Bloodmoon had become, they pushed to go their separate ways. But Bloodmoon’s Beta insisted they stay under one banner ... Morvaine as a shared legacy, even if each territory answered to its own alpha.
That was how the split happened.
The author mentioned something about a part two. It looked like he’d written this one in hiding, since it wasn’t shelved with the rest of the library’s collection. Part two was nowhere to be found. Whoever buried this history clearly didn’t want it in anyone’s hands. But I’d found it anyway, even with pieces still missing.
I hid the book back in the library, somewhere even Ashlyn wouldn’t find it if I didn’t want her to.
What was the wolf’s name ... the one killed unjustly? And why did her death end the flu if she wasn’t even the one spreading it? Who was her family? Why did someone want her dead in the first place?
I decided I’d have to work up the courage to ask Ms. Ashlyn. I hoped she’d give me answers. It was worth a try.
I headed back to the chambers. The king was already asleep. So was Tessa. But on my way, I ran into Kael.
"Where are you coming from?" he asked.
His voice startled me ... it was like he’d appeared out of nowhere.
"I’ve been at the library," I told him.
"It’s late. Go get some rest," he said.
I slipped into my room and lay down, but sleep wouldn’t come. That upsetting history stayed with me, looping through my mind, refusing to let go.