“Were you here during the first Bloodmoon?” I ask.
Marb’s smile flickers. Just once.
“Yes.”
“How did it start? What’s the curse?”
She exhales. “That isn’t my story to tell.” Then, gently but firmly, she nudges me toward the bed. “Sleep now, Fireling. You’ll need to be fully recovered tomorrow if you want to make a good impression on the king,” she says, patting my hand. Oh, and one last thing: Don’t leave your room.”
And then she’s gone, vanishing in a swirl of silver dust.
Chapter 8
Noctyras
Itry to rest. Really, I do. When the bed doesn’t lull me to sleep, I stretch out on the velvet settee beside the fire instead.
The room is quiet. Too quiet. The fire is burning low in the hearth. The embers breathe gently, like a sleeping beast waiting to be stoked. I let my eyes close, just for a moment, trying to focus on the rhythm of my breathing, trying to forget where I am. The silence is crushing.
The dragon’s deafening roarand rattling growls still echo in my memory. I hear them even now, low and guttural, as if the memory is hiding just beneath my skin. This place, whatever it is, doesn’t want me to forget.
I open my eyes and decide to stretch my legs, stepping out onto the balcony. The mist beyond the rail curls and clings to thehorizon like it’s alive, shrouding whatever lies beyond the thick, luminous fog.
I glance back at the door, then at the lantern on the bedside table. I shouldn’t leave, I know that, but something about the stillness in this place just feels so…staged. As if the quiet was arranged, curated, like a scene in a play, just waiting for the actors to step in and ruin it. I put on a dressing down and grab the lantern. At my touch, it glows softly to life, steady and warm.
At the door, I hesitate, remembering Marb’s warning. But every instinct screams for me to explore my new prison. My fingers brush the handle, and it turns without resistance, creaking open with a sigh.
The corridor breathes with muted starlight filtered through ivy-veiled arches. Dust swirls like powdered bone in the lamplight, and the air smells faintly of old paper and iron. Beneath my slippers, the stone is cool and cracked, covered in rugs frayed into ghosts of their former selves.
I move through the keep like an intruder in someone else’s memory. A chandelier dangles overhead, half its crystals missing. A mirror has split clean down the middle, dividing my reflection into two versions of the same girl—one that runs, one that stays.
Something glows ahead—a faint red flicker just beyond the next archway.
My lantern stutters in response, its flame dipping, then flaring again. The light ahead shifts, wavering as if caught by wind or mist. It moves—not hovering, not waiting—just drifting forward, then slipping out of sight.
I follow it.
The glow reappears near a stairwell half-hidden behind a collapsed tapestry. The steps are wide and worn, their centers eroded by centuries of use. Moss creeps along the edges.Scattered petals dot the stone, crushed and darkened as though someone passed this way not long ago.
I pause at the base, exhaling slowly.
“Yes,” I mutter. “Let’s follow the mysterious light through a cursed castle in the middle of the night. Brilliant.”
Turn back,something whispers inside me.
Then I hear it.
Not the light. Not a sound, exactly.
A voice.
Soft. Familiar.
Selene, my daughter… come closer.
My grip tightens on the lantern. My throat closes.
No. That’s impossible. Grief has a way of wearing familiar voices. That’s all this is. A memory echoing where it doesn’t belong.
