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Before the Queen: 29

Author: Bella-Anne
last update Petsa ng paglalathala: 2025-05-11 00:00:23

Lira (POV)

I don’t remember falling. Just the snow—blinding, bitter—biting into my face and legs as the Gate of Teeth slammed shut behind us.

Kael is already moving. Not stumbling. Not gasping like the prisoner behind him.

He lands like a beast thrown from the mouth of a god. Steam pours from his shredded leathers. His shoulders roll back. His eyes are already scanning the Wilds like they belong to him.

They don’t.

Nothing belongs to anyone out here except the cold.

The prisoner lands harder. O
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  • Bloodied Ashes   Legacy in Flame: 2

    Lira (POV)Lily gasps behind me.We all stop.Mirella has one hand braced against Lily’s shoulder. The ash and salt over the crescent mark have begun to gray at the edges.“How close?” Kael asks.Mirella does not look at him. “Close enough.”Lily’s face has gone white. “It turned.”“Can you walk?” I ask.She nods too quickly.I step toward her before I think better of it, then stop short.She sees the stop.Something raw moves across her face.I force my hand back to my side. “Keep walking.”It sounds harsh.It is not.Her mouth trembles once, then firms. “I can.”We move faster.The next turn brings blood.Not much. A smear along the stone, dark and fresh enough to shine in Serin’s lantern. Beside it, a shard of mirror has been wedged into a crack in the wall. It catches our light and throws back a thin, broken version of my face.Kael crouches. He does not touch the shard.“Draven,” he says.“Marking the path?” one scout asks.“Waking it,” Mirella says.The passage seems to tighten

  • Bloodied Ashes   Legacy in Flame: 1

    Lira (POV)The first Pit calls without a voice.I feel it while the pack begins to move around us, while scouts scatter into the dark and Mirella seals the last ash mark over Lily’s shoulder. It does not hum. It does not pull.It knows.That is worse.My scar stays quiet beneath my shirt, white and dead where the old command used to live. Lower, under my palm, Ashen shifts once. Small. Restless. Then still.Kael sees my hand move. Of course he does.“You’re staying near the center,” he says.“I’m going where the path leads.”His jaw tightens. “That wasn’t an argument.”“It sounded like one.”“It was instruction.”“That’s worse.”A flash of something almost like a smile touches his mouth. It does not last. The firelight catches the blood drying on his sleeve, the dirt on his cheek, the tension he keeps locked in his shoulders because if he lets it move, it might become rage.Mirella steps away from Lily and wipes her fingers on a strip of cloth. The ash and salt around Lily’s mark have

  • Bloodied Ashes   Rooted in Flame: 17

    Kael (POV) Mirella steps forward. “Show me.” For half a second, Lily looks like she might refuse. Not because she wants to hide it. Because showing the place he touched means letting everyone see one more way she was made into proof of him. Then she pulls her collar aside. There is no glowing wound. No dramatic mark. No symbol burning black beneath the skin. Only a faint crescent near her shoulder, pale enough to pass for an old scar if you did not know to hate it. That makes it worse. It was meant to hide. Mirella’s face hardens. She touches two fingers beside it. Lily gasps. The pack shifts. My hand tightens on my blade until the leather bites my palm. Mirella pulls back. “Claim work.” Serin curses under his breath. Lira’s voice is thin. “Can he use it?” Mirella does not answer fast enough. That is the answer. Lily’s hand drops back to her belly. “I don’t know how deep it goes,” she says. “And I don’t know if it reaches him.” Him. She does not have to say the chil

  • Bloodied Ashes   Rooted in Flame: 16

    Kael (POV)Lily stands in the firelight with one hand over her belly.No one moves toward her.No one moves away either.The pack holds in that ugly middle place where pity and blame look too much alike. Some wolves stare at her like she is a wound that learned to walk. Others look at the ground because her face reminds them of everything Draven touched while they survived around it.I watch Lira watch her.She does not soften. She does not sharpen either. She only waits, pale and bloodied beside me, her bandaged hand curled near her side.Lily swallows.“I need to speak,” she says again.A growl rises from somewhere in the crowd.Lira turns her head.That is all.The sound dies.No command. No threat. Just a look, and every wolf there remembers that breaking thrones does not make her harmless.Lily’s fingers tighten against her dress. “Not for myself.”Mirella gives a humorless breath. “That’s usually how people begin when they’re about to ask for themselves anyway.”Lily takes the h

  • Bloodied Ashes   Rooted in Flame: 15

    Kael (POV)That lands.Not gently.Nothing lands gently tonight.Lira looks toward the archway, where the pack waits with too many eyes and not enough breath. I know she hears what I do. The shift in them. The quickening. Fear turning its face toward awe because awe feels safer than uncertainty.One woman drops to her knees in the mud.I see it through the arch.Hands clasped at her chest. Head bowed.Then another lowers his head.Not all of them.Enough.Lira goes still.“No,” she says.Quiet.Too quiet for them.Not for me.I step into the firelight.“Stand.”A few heads jerk up.I don’t shout. I don’t need to. Every wolf there knows my voice when it means something will bleed if ignored.The woman in the mud trembles but does not rise.“She didn’t break a throne so you could build another one out of gratitude.”That reaches them.Shame moves through the crowd in uneven ripples. Some stand at once, almost stumbling in their hurry. Others hesitate, and that hesitation is its own woun

  • Bloodied Ashes   Rooted in Flame: 14

    Kael (POV)The footsteps gather outside before Lira’s fingers have fully left mine.I feel the loss of that small touch more than I should. Her hand pulls back. Mine stays where it is for half a breath, empty and useless over my knee.Then the whispers start.Not loud. Not brave enough for that. They move along the broken wall and through the archway in pieces.“She broke it.”“I heard the glass.”“Did he die?”“No one saw him fall.”“The mark’s gone.”“No. I saw light.”“Is she queen now?”Lira’s face closes.Not fear.Refusal.I stand before the last word can settle too deeply inside the room. My arm pulls where she wrapped it. The wound protests, hot and mean under the cloth, but I ignore it.The pack waits beyond the arch. I can see shapes in the firelight, shoulders tight, faces pale, eyes fixed on the inside of the watch post like they expect something sacred to crawl out.That worries me more than panic would.Panic runs.Awe kneels.“Stay back,” I say.A few wolves shift. No o

  • Bloodied Ashes   Rooted in Flame: 2

    Kael (POV)She walked past me, quiet and measured, her hand hovering low over her stomach like it had started meaning something without her permission. She didn’t look at me when she passed, and I didn’t follow her with my eyes. I followed her presence instead. That quiet weight she carried now, st

  • Bloodied Ashes   Rooted in Flame: 1

    Lira (POV)I hadn’t named it yet. The thought. The shape of what might be growing. But my body had already started acting like it knew. And I hadn’t told it no.We kept walking.The trail curved beneath us in quiet loops, lined with bark-heavy trees that creaked in the wind. Every so often, a branc

  • Bloodied Ashes   Scars and Sovereigns: 13

    Lira (POV)I stood slowly, more aware of the weight behind my hips, the tightness along one side where everything inside me had started to shift. I didn’t rush. I didn’t need to.Kael hadn’t moved. His gaze followed as I crossed the edge of the bank and rejoined the soft track of moss that wound th

  • Bloodied Ashes   Scars and Sovereigns: 12

    Lira (POV)The fire had burned low in the night. Only a ring of ash remained, soft and gray against the moss. The fog had rolled in while we slept, thick enough to bead along my eyelashes and cling to the collar of my coat. I didn’t open my eyes right away. Something low inside me had already begun

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