Chapter 4 Untitled Chapter

Lara’s perfume hits before her words do. It coils around me, thick and cloying, something sweet twisted into something sharp enough to cut, and I have to fight the instinct to recoil as she stands too close, her presence pressing in like a blade held just shy of skin.

I keep my head bowed. I keep my hands moving. I pretend I don’t feel the way her gaze drags over me, slow and deliberate, like she’s peeling back layers I spent years building.

My heart doesn’t listen. It slams hard against my ribs, uneven, loud enough I’m sure she can hear it, smell it, taste the fear I refuse to show.

“Where did you train?” she asks lightly, like this is nothing, like we’re not standing in a room that suddenly feels too small, too tight.

“South,” I answer without hesitation, voice steady, empty. “Near the lower valleys.”

A lie. One of many. Her hum is soft. Considering.

“And your pack?”

Gone. Dead. Buried under ash and memory and blood I will never forget.

“Scattered,” I say instead, keeping it vague, keeping it distant. “War tends to do that.”

Her smile doesn’t change. But something in her eyes sharpens. She knows. Not everything. But enough to be dangerous.

Every question she asks tightens the invisible noose around my throat, every answer another thread in the web I’ve been spinning for five years, one wrong move away from snapping.

Rowan. Rhea. The way his power surged this morning, wild and uncontained. The way Rhea’s voice shook in my head, fear bleeding through the bond like a warning I can’t ignore.

The moon is bleeding again. Nima’s voice overlaps it, older, heavier, carved from prophecy and things I tried not to believe.

It will call them. It will reveal them. And when it does, there will be nowhere left to hide.

I swallow hard, forcing my focus back to the bandage in my hands, to the slow wrap of cloth around a wound that feels simpler than anything else in this cursed place.

“Your technique is… unusual,” Lara continues, softer now, almost curious, but there’s something underneath it, something testing. “Not quite court-trained.”

“I learned what I could,” I reply, tying off the bandage with careful precision, refusing to look up again, refusing to give her anything more than she already has.

Silence stretches. Heavy. Watching. Waiting. Then….

“That will be all, Lady Lara.”

Darius. Relief hits sharp and sudden, but I don’t show it as he steps into the space between us with easy confidence, his presence a buffer I didn’t know I needed until now.

“Your presence is requested in the east wing,” he adds smoothly, offering her a polite incline of his head that somehow manages to be both respectful and firm.

Lara’s attention shifts to him, slow and assessing, but there’s a flicker of irritation there too, faint and fleeting. Interrupted. Denied.

“Of course,” she murmurs, though her gaze slides back to me one last time, lingering just long enough to make my skin prickle.

She steps closer.Too close. I feel the brush of her breath against the edge of my veil as she leans in, her voice dropping to something meant only for me.

“Careful, little healer.”

My fingers tighten involuntarily.

“Some things that come back from the forest…” Her lips curve, soft and cruel. “…should have stayed buried.”

A cold spreads through me. Fast. Deep. By the time she pulls back, the smile is back in place, perfect and untouchable as she turns and lets Darius guide her away like nothing just happened.

Like she didn’t just reach into my past and touch something she has no right to know. The room breathes again when she’s gone. I don’t.

My hands shake. Subtle. Barely there. But enough that I have to stop for a second, press my palm flat against the cot beside me, ground myself in something solid before I lose control in a room full of people who cannot see me break.

She knows something. Or she suspects. Either way, it’s too much. Too soon. I finish the last dressing on instinct alone, my mind already racing ahead, mapping exits, risks, timelines.

We need to leave. Tonight. Before she digs deeper. Before Kael. No. Don’t think of his name. Don’t think about the way he looked at me. Don’t think about the way the bond is starting to wake up again, stretching, testing, searching.

I shove it all down. Again. I have gotten very good at that. Night falls slower here than it used to.

Or maybe it just feels that way because every second stretches tight with tension, every shadow a potential threat, every sound a reminder that we are not as hidden as I thought we were.

The courtyard is quieter than the infirmary, shadows pooling in the corners, moonlight spilling across stone that still remembers too much.

I move through it like I did five years ago. Careful. Silent. Invisible. Rowan is supposed to be with Nima. Hidden. Safe.

But I feel him before I see him. That same pull. That same dangerous flicker of power that answers something in me before I can shut it down.

“Rowan,” I hiss under my breath as I step into the far edge of the courtyard.

He’s there. Of course he is. Standing too close to the open space, his small frame outlined in silver light, drawn to this place like it’s calling him by a name he doesn’t understand yet.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” I whisper, dropping to my knees in front of him, my hands already reaching, already pulling him close.

He comes easily, arms wrapped around my neck, pressing into me like he’s been holding something all day and finally has somewhere to put it.

“I felt it again,” he murmurs into my shoulder. “That man.”

My chest tightens. Of course he did.

“You have to stay away from him,” I say softly, firm despite the way my heart is starting to race again. “You can’t let him see you like that.”

“Why?” he asks, pulling back just enough to look at me, confusion and stubbornness warring in his eyes.

Because he’s your father. Because he will take you from me. Because the world will never let you exist the way you are.

None of the answers I can give him are the truth.

“Because it’s not safe,” I settle on, brushing my hand through his hair, memorizing the feel of him like I do every time fear claws its way up my spine. “For either of us.”

He doesn’t like that. I can see it in the set of his jaw, in the way his fingers curl tighter into my tunic. But before he can argue

“Mist.”

The voice cuts through the dark. Everything in me goes still. Slowly, I rise, my hand still wrapped around Rowan’s as I turn toward the sound I have been trying to avoid since the moment I stepped back into this place.

Kael steps into the moonlight like he belongs to it. Like it was made for him.

His eyes find mine instantly, sharp and burning with something that is no longer just suspicion, no longer just curiosity. Recognition is closer now.Too close.

“Mist,” he repeats, quieter this time, and the way he says it like it doesn’t fit, like it tastes wrong sends a chill down my spine.

The bond reacts instantly. Violent. Alive. It howls between us, a raw, furious pull that slams into me without warning, dragging at every part of me I have tried to lock away, demanding I answer, demanding I step closer, demanding

No. I tighten my grip on Rowan’s hand. Anchor. Reality. Mine.

Kael’s gaze drops. Not to our hands. To him. To the child standing at my side, half-shadow, half-light, eyes too bright, posture too still.

Something shifts in Kael’s expression. Not recognition. Not yet. But something close. Something instinctive. Dangerous.

Rowan feels it too. I know the exact second it happens the moment the air changes, the moment his small body goes rigid beside me, the moment something ancient and protective rises up in him like it’s been waiting for this exact threat.

“Rowan,” I start, low and urgent.

Too late. His hand slips from mine. The space between him and Kael feels like a blade drawn tight. And then, he steps forward. Look straight at him. And growls.

“You hurt my mother.”