Chapter Three – The Bone Orchard

I didn’t sleep that night.

Even after I left the balcony. Even after I returned to the kitchens, scrubbed the last of the blood from my hands, and sank into the thin mattress in the servants’ hall, my skin still prickled with awareness.

He had seen me.

Not just looked—seen. And worse, he hadn’t looked away.

It could’ve meant nothing. A flicker. A stray glance.

But I’d lived too long in silence to mistake being ignored for being noticed.

And now, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

The next morning, I was assigned to the Bone Orchard.

It was a punishment, even if Tessa didn’t say it. The Bone Orchard was where the Hollow buried the unworthy—the ones who died in trials, or in disgrace, or without a name strong enough to be sung to the moon. The ground there was cursed, some said. Nothing grew except white thistle and thorn trees. The crows never left.

“You’ll clear the weeds,” Tessa said as she handed me a rusted sickle. “And keep your eyes down. No talking to spirits.”

I didn’t ask if she was serious.

I walked alone through the morning mist, my boots thin against the cold, the sickle wrapped in old cloth to keep it from biting my hand. The Bone Orchard sat just beyond the Hollow’s outer ring, fenced by iron and old laws.

The wind didn’t sound right there. It carried whispers. Names I didn’t know. Names no one dared speak aloud.

I pulled my scarf tighter and began to work.

Thistle bled white when you cut it. Its sap stuck to the blade like milk. I worked in silence, hacking at the thorn roots that choked the shallow mounds where bodies lay.

Each stone bore a single mark: not names, but symbols. Moon for the lost. Claw for the dishonored. A blank for the forgotten.

Somewhere beneath my feet lay the girls who had failed to become Luna. And not all had died by accident.

Some had bled too easily.

Some had refused to kneel.

Some had looked the Alpha in the eye.

I paused at one grave that bore a claw and a faint smear of something dark near its edge. Old blood, maybe. Or old fury.

“Did you look him in the eye, too?” I murmured.

The wind answered.

I worked until my hands blistered. Until the thorns stopped bleeding and the earth lay still. But just as I turned to leave, something moved at the edge of the trees.

A figure.

Tall. Silent. Watching.

I froze. My fingers curled tighter around the handle of the sickle.

But the figure didn’t move. Didn’t speak.

It stood with the stillness of something that didn’t need to make threats to be dangerous.

The Alpha.

It was him. I knew it in my bones.

We stared at each other across a dozen broken graves.

Then he turned and walked into the woods.

And once again, like a fool, I followed.

But I didn’t find him.

Instead, I found her.

A figure stood deeper in the forest, not the Alpha—too small, too still. She wore a cloak the color of grave ash, her face lost in shadow, her presence quiet and terrible, like an unanswered prayer.

I stopped short, instinct roaring in my veins. She made no sound, but I felt her watching me.

"Ilia," she said.

My name. Spoken like she owned it.

My heart stuttered. "How do you—?"

She lifted a hand. "The wind remembers. The roots whisper. The mark is not wrong."

I took a step back. "You’re mad."

"Not mad. Older."

She stepped forward, and I wanted to run, but my feet wouldn't move. She smelled like old earth and something electric beneath it—like lightning waiting to strike.

"You shouldn’t be here," I whispered.

She tilted her head. "Yet here you are. The thief who was never meant to steal. The girl who walks where even death won’t tread."

"I don’t know what you’re talking about."

She reached for my hand. I flinched.

"You will."

Her fingers closed around mine.

Heat exploded through my palm, crawling up my arm like fire made of stars. My vision blurred, then sharpened. I saw the Hollow on fire. I saw a crown made of bone. I saw the Alpha on his knees—and me, standing above him.

I gasped and yanked my hand away.

She was gone.

The wind stilled. The trees stood silent.

And the place where she touched me still burned.

As I stumbled back toward the Hollow, I knew one thing for certain:

I was not who I thought I was.

And the story they were trying to write for me?

I was going to burn it to the ground.