Chapter 17: The history lesson

Elara came to my room again the next day, and this time she did not sit on the edge of the bed or stand by the window or look at me with those sad grey eyes that made me feel like a wounded animal being studied from a distance.

She pulled the wooden chair from the corner of the room and set it beside the fire, and she motioned for me to sit across from her on the floor. The chair was old, older than anything I had ever seen, with carved arms and a faded cushion that had once been red but was now the color of dried blood.

"I am going to teach you something," she said. "Not about the king, or the bond, or the court. I am going to teach you about this land. About the war, about the treaty, and about the sacrifices."

I did not move. I sat against the headboard with my back to the wall and my knees pulled to my chest, and I watched her arrange the chair and settle into it like she was preparing for a long conversation.

The firelight caught the silver in her hair, and her shadow stretched long across the floor, and I realized that she was not asking me to participate. She was telling me to listen. She was telling me that the time for hiding was over.

"The war lasted fifty years," she said. "Fifty years of blood and fire and death on both sides. Humans fought Lycans, and Lycans fought humans, and the land between the territories became a graveyard where nothing grew and nothing lived. The rivers ran red, the forests burned, and the villages that had once been full of life became nothing but ash and memory."

I had heard stories about the war when I was a child. Everyone had. The humans in the southern territories told tales of Lycan atrocities, of villages burned and families slaughtered and children taken in the night.

The Lycans had their own stories, I was sure, though I had never heard them. But hearing Elara speak about it was different. She had been there. She had lived through it, and she had watched it happen with her own eyes, and I could see the weight of those memories pressing down on her shoulders like a physical thing.

"The Lycans won," she continued. "We had strength, speed, and numbers. The humans had courage, yes, but courage is not enough when you are fighting creatures who can tear you apart with their bare hands. After fifty years, the humans surrendered. They had no choice. They were starving, and their armies were broken, and their children were dying."

She paused, and her grey eyes drifted to the fire, and I saw something flicker across her face that I could not read. Regret, maybe. Or sorrow. Or the kind of weariness that came from carrying memories that weighed more than bones. Her hands were folded in her lap, and I noticed that they were shaking, just a little, the way hands shake when they have seen too much.

"The treaty was signed in this castle," she said. "The Northern Lands belonged to the Lycans. The southern territories belonged to the humans. And every season, the Lycan King would demand a sacrifice of a human to be sent north. It was a gift to remind the humans of their place, and lines they should never cross."

My stomach turned. The bread and honey I had eaten earlier rose in my throat, and I swallowed hard to keep it down. "That is not a treaty. That is a threat."

Elara looked at me, and her grey eyes were sharp, but not unkind. "Yes," she said. "That is exactly what it was. The humans had no power to refuse, because they had no army left to fight. They had no choice but to send their people north, year after year, season after season, watching them disappear into the ice and never come back."

She leaned back in her chair, and the old wood creaked under her weight, and she looked at me like she was trying to decide how much to say, or how much I could handle, or perhaps how much would break me. The fire crackled between us, sending sparks up the chimney, and the shadows on the walls danced like ghosts.

"You are not the first human to come here," she said. "You are not even the hundredth. Humans have been sent to this castle for generations, and almost all of them have died here."

My heart pounded in my chest so hard that I could feel it in my throat. "Almost all?"

Elara nodded slowly. "Leticia survived. There were others, centuries ago, who found ways to make themselves useful, to become invisible, to give the court no reason to notice them. But most of them died. Most of them suffered first. The court was cruel in ways that I still cannot speak of, even after all these years."

I thought about the nobles who lined the courtyard when I arrived, laughing and spitting and throwing bread at my face like I was an animal in a cage. I thought about the way they looked at me, like I was not a person but a thing, something to be used and broken and thrown away. I thought about the noble who had grabbed my arm in the hallway, his fingers digging into my skin hard enough to leave bruises, and I wondered how many other humans had felt his hands on them before me.

"What happened to them?" I asked. My voice was smaller than I wanted it to be, barely loud enough to reach across the room.

Elara's face went cold. The warmth drained from her eyes, and her lips pressed together into a thin line, and I saw something in her expression that I had never seen before. Fear. Not of me, but of the memories. Of the things she had witnessed and been unable to stop.

"You do not want to know," she said.

"Tell me anyway."

She was quiet for a long moment. The fire crackled. The wind howled outside, rattling the window in its frame. And I sat there on the floor with my back against the headboard and my heart in my throat, waiting for her to speak, and waiting for her to tell me the truth that I knew I needed to hear.

"Another time," she said finally. "You are not ready."

I wanted to argue. I wanted to tell her that I had been ready my whole life, that I had survived things she could not imagine, that I had been beaten and chained and sold to monsters and I was still here, still breathing, and still asking questions. But the words would not come, my throat was dry, and my hands were shaking, and I knew that she was right.

I was not ready.

But I needed to be.

"You are the first sacrifice the king has not killed," Elara said. Her voice was softer now, almost gentle, and she leaned forward in her chair so that her face was closer to mine. "Do you understand what that means?"

I shook my head. I did not understand anything anymore. Every time I thought I had figured out this place, this castle, and this king, something new came along to prove me wrong.

"It means the bond is real," she said. "It means the Moon Goddess chose you for a reason, even if you do not know what that reason is. And it means that the king is trying to be something he has never been before. He is trying to be good, Sergio. He is trying to care. And that is more than any other human who has walked through these doors has ever gotten."

She stood up, walked to the door, and her hand rested on the handle, and she looked back at me one last time. The firelight caught the silver in her hair, and I realized that she was tired in a way that had nothing to do with sleep.

"He is not the same man who watched the court tear those other humans apart," she said. "He is changing. You are changing him, and that is the only reason you are still alive."

She left before I could say anything else.

I sat there against the headboard with my back to the wall and my eyes on the door, and I thought about what she had said. The war. The treaty. The sacrifices who had come before me and died so that the court could amuse itself. I thought about Leticia, who had survived by becoming nothing, who had made herself so small that no one remembered she existed.

I thought about Leandro, who had watched it happen and done nothing. I thought about the bond, which had made him care about a human for the first time in three hundred years. I thought about the note in my pocket, the word "Stay," and the breakfast he had left by my bed.

I could agree with Elara now that he was changing.

I did not know if that was enough to save me, but it was the only hope I had.