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A rut

Penulis: Author Calypso
last update Terakhir Diperbarui: 2025-06-28 23:33:00

ASHER

It’s been days since I ordered Althea’s family brought to the palace. I expected them to put up a fight, to argue, to plead ignorance, and that’s exactly what they did, just like I thought. Each one of them swore they didn’t know where she was. Faces pale, voices shaking, eyes darting around like scared mice. I didn’t believe a word. So I had them all locked up until I decide what to do with them. I can’t risk anything. Not now.

Maybe that makes me cruel. I don’t care. This is about survival, mine, my father’s, and the entire kingdom’s. I’ll deal with feelings later.

If only my head would let me think straight. Ever since that night I shifted, my skull’s felt like it’s being split open from the inside. A constant pounding that no amount of cold water or deep breaths can chase away. It’s been making me impatient, snappish. I’ve caught myself growling at servants who did nothing but step too close. At night, the pain is worse, crawling down my neck, burrowing deep into my spine. I
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  • The Mate Games   Varya’s diary entry 21

    Many decade ago…I heard it again today.His name.Carried on the wind.Not spoken aloud, not by Lira or the villagers or the trees, but in that strange way the world sometimes speaks when no one else is listening. A whisper, delicate and cold, brushing the back of my neck while I stood by the cliff’s edge watching the sea.I turned, half-expecting to see him standing there again, silent as ever. But the path behind me was empty. Just the trees, and the sound of distant wings overhead.And still, I felt it.His name.Like breath caught in a throat. Like a secret too heavy to carry.I don’t say it aloud. Not here. Not yet. It’s a tether I’m not ready to pull.Maybe because I fear what answering it might summon.Or maybe because saying it feels like permission. And I still don’t know what I’m giving permission for.Lira says there are rumors now. Whispers threading through the mountain towns and riverside camps. A boy—no, a young man—who walks alone beneath the moonlight. Who doesn’t sp

  • The Mate Games   Varya’s diary entry 20

    Many decades ago…He’s gone.But the cottage still remembers him.The blanket smells like smoke now. Not from the hearth, not from wood or coal—but something older. Wilder. The kind of smoke that comes after lightning touches bone. I keep catching whiffs of it in the corners of the room, when the wind shifts or when I pass the chair where he sat.I haven’t moved the flower.It sits in the center of the table, quiet, blue, untouched by time. It hasn’t wilted. I don’t know how. I don’t think I want to know. I only look at it when I’m certain I won’t cry.And even then, I usually do.He said he didn’t hate me.He didn’t say he loved me either.But there was something in the way he looked at that cup of water, the way he sat cross-legged like he used to—like the infant I once feared to hold—that told me… he hadn’t come just to see me fall apart.He came because he wanted to see who I was now.And maybe… who he might’ve been, if I’d chosen differently.That’s what haunts me most.Not what

  • The Mate Games   Varya’s diary entry 19

    Many decades ago…It was after midnight when the knock came.Not loud. Not hurried. Just… a sound.Three gentle taps. Like the wind brushing bone.And I knew.I don’t get many visitors.None, actually.Lira hasn’t come in two weeks. I told her not to. She didn’t argue. She never does when she knows I’m on the edge of something. And tonight—tonight was the edge.I didn’t move at first. I sat by the hearth, hands buried in the old blanket again, heart thudding like war drums beneath my ribs.Another knock. Softer this time.Not impatient. Not angry. Just… present.And still, I didn’t rise.I kept thinking, What if it isn’t him?But worse—What if it is?For all my writing, my dreaming, my hoping… I was not ready.Not truly.I thought I would be.But when the moment came, my body remembered every reason I had once run.The visions. The screams. The prophecies. The blood.I stared at the door like it might speak first.It didn’t.But something beyond it breathed.I rose slowly, every muscl

  • The Mate Games   Varya’s diary entry 17

    Many decades ago…It’s done.The ward is down.I took it apart piece by piece, fingers trembling, breath caught between fear and something far older, something I dare not name. It was harder than I expected, not because of the magic itself, but because the moment I began unbinding the stones, I felt it.A pulse.Not in the ground, but in me.Like something had been waiting. Watching. Holding its breath as I held mine.And when the last string of spell-thread snapped beneath my hand, the air shifted.As if the forest exhaled.As if something buried had stirred.I don’t know what I expected. Maybe silence. Maybe peace. Maybe guilt.What I got was wind.A sudden, harsh gust that tore through the trees and rattled the windows of my cottage. The flame of my candle flared blue. The walls moaned. Something inside the old stones howled with it—a sound I haven’t heard since the old wars.Old magic.Older than me. Older than kings and gods and seers.It lives here now.And I think… it knows my

  • The Mate Games   A division

    ALTHEAThe morning light is cold and thin, slipping through the heavy curtains like a blade. I sit at the edge of my bed, hands trembling as I replay Madeline’s words in my mind. The curse wasn’t her doing. It wasn’t the spite of some vindictive woman, but the desperate fear of a father, Aaron’s father himself. He had cursed Aaron, bound his power, hoping to keep it buried deep.And yet, the magic is breaking free.I don’t know if I’m more afraid of the curse or the truth.The palace feels different today. Thicker somehow — as if every stone, every shadow, is holding its breath, waiting for the next act of this cruel play to unfold. The council chambers are crowded when I arrive, voices already buzzing with tension. The air hums with secrets and suspicion.I can feel eyes on me the moment I step through the carved oak doors. Whispers dart between lords and ladies like restless bats. Some greet me with thin smiles, others with barely concealed hostility. A few dare not meet my gaze at

  • The Mate Games   Varya’s diary entry 17

    Many decades ago…I saw someone today. When I went out to get some air around the kingdom.Not in a dream. Not a vision. Not a flicker of shadow behind my thoughts.A real figure. A real boy.He was standing just beyond the tree line. Still. Watching.I nearly dropped the bag was carrying. My groceries spilled onto the floor, my milk spreading across the floor. My breath caught in my chest and stayed there, trembling like a bird. He didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Just stood there in the quiet, wearing a cloak too thin for the cold.And those eyes.Pale. Like frost on glass. Like moonlight stretched too far.It could have been him.But I don’t know.He was taller than I remember. Lean, but with that sharpness to his shoulders—like he hadn’t grown slow and soft but fast, sudden, stretched by something other than time. There was something unnatural about the way he stood. Balanced. Like he could leap forward or vanish into the wind at any second.I didn’t call out.I couldn’t.Because the mo

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