The moon King's forbidden Queen

~~Isolde~~

My name is Isolde. I am twenty years old. And tonight, the Moon King is going to kill me.

Not because I committed a crime. Not because I stole. Not because I lied.

Because I was born with silver hair.

In the village of Ashford, silver hair is not a color. It is a curse. A prophecy. The old priestesses say that a girl born with silver hair under a blood moon will bring the end of the Moon King. Will kill him. Will shatter the kingdom.

My mother died giving birth to me. She had brown hair. My father had black hair. No one knows where my silver came from.

The priestesses tried to kill me at birth. My grandmother hid me. She told everyone I dyed my hair. She told me to wear a hood. Always.

Until today.

Today, the Moon King's wolves smelled me. Two giant wolves, one white with a red mark on its forehead, one grey with blue eyes, came into our village during the Blue Moon festival.

Everyone bowed. I bowed too, my hood up.

But the wind blew my hood down.

Silence.

A hundred people stared at my hair. Silver, glowing under the full moon. Like moonlight itself.

The white wolf growled. The grey wolf howled.

Then a man stepped out from behind them.

I had heard stories about the Moon King Riven. That he was seven feet tall. That he had claws. That he ate human hearts. That he hadn't smiled in ten years since his Queen died.

He was not seven feet tall. But he was tall enough that I had to crane my neck to look at him.

Silver hair, like mine, but wild and messy, like he had just come from battle. Eyes so blue they looked like ice. Skin pale. Lips... I shouldn't notice his lips when he's about to kill me, but I did. He wore a cape made of what looked like starlight and wolf fur, heavy, decorated with blue gems. On his shoulders, magic swirled. Real magic. Blue, crackling, like tiny lightning storms.

He looked at me. And I felt it.

A pull. Like something in my chest, behind my ribs, snapped and reached for him.

He felt it too. His eyes widened. Just a fraction. Then his face went cold again.

"Bring her," he said. His voice was low. Rough. Like he hadn't spoken in days.

Two guards grabbed me. My grandmother screamed. "No! She's just a girl! She's not the prophecy!"

The Moon King Riven didn't look at her. He was still staring at me.

"What is your name?" he asked.

"Isolde," I whispered.

"Isolde," he repeated, like tasting it. "Do you know what you are?"

"A curse," I said. Because that's what everyone told me I was.

He stepped closer. He smelled like snow and pine and blood. Dangerous.

"No," he said. "You are mine."

And then he picked me up. Like I weighed nothing. One arm under my knees, one around my back. Bridal style. In front of my entire village.

The wolves howled. The crowd gasped.

"Riven!" My grandmother shouted his name, no title. "She's innocent!"

He finally looked at her. "If she is innocent, she will live through the night. If she is the curse... she will die by my hand. As the law says."

What law? What living through the night?

He carried me to a horse. No, not a horse. A giant wolf. The white one. The one with the red mark.

He sat me in front of him. His chest against my back. His arms around me holding the reins. I could feel his heartbeat. Fast. Too fast for a king who was supposed to be emotionless.

We rode. The village disappeared. The forest passed in a blur. The castle in the distance grew bigger. It was made of black stone, but under the blue moon, it glowed. Like it was alive.

The castle. The Moon King's castle. No human had ever entered and come out alive.

I was shaking. From cold. From fear.

He noticed. He pulled his cape around me. The cape that smelled like him.

"Are you going to kill me now?" I asked, voice tiny.

He was quiet for a long time. The wolf beneath us ran, silent.

"If you were going to kill me," he said finally, "I would have done it in the village. In front of everyone. To prove a point."

"Then why?"

"Because," he said, his mouth close to my ear, "the Moon Goddess told me to bring you to her temple. Tonight. Under the Blue Moon. She wants to judge you herself."

The Moon Goddess. The goddess who supposedly hated silver-haired girls.

"And if she judges me guilty?"

His arms tightened around me. Just a little.

"Then I will do what I must."

"And if I'm innocent?"

This time, his pause was longer.

"Then you will never leave this castle again."

"What?" I twisted to look at him. Our faces were inches apart. His blue eyes, my... whatever color mine were. I had never really looked. Grey? Silver?

He didn't pull away.

"Because," he whispered, "you smell like my mate. And Moon Kings do not let their mates go. Even if they are forbidden."

Mate? The word echoed in my head. In our world, mates were sacred. A wolf finds one mate for life. To be a Moon King's mate...

"I'm not— I'm human," I stammered. "I can't be your mate."

He smiled. For the first time. And it was terrifying and beautiful.

"Isolde," he said. "Look at your forehead."

My forehead? What?

There was no mirror, but his wolves stopped. He lifted his hand, and blue magic swirled, forming a small mirror of ice in front of me.

I looked.

On my forehead, where I had a small red bindi since birth that my grandmother said was a birthmark, it was glowing. Bright red. Like a tiny constellation. Like... a crown.

The same shape as the crown on top of the castle, far away.

The Forbidden Queen's mark. The mark of the last Moon Priestess. The one who was supposed to be dead for a hundred years.

"No," I whispered.

"Yes," Riven said. And his voice was not cold anymore. It was possessive. Hungry.

The white wolf howled. The grey wolf howled.

And from the castle, a thousand wolves answered.

They were howling for me.

The forbidden queen they had been waiting for.

TO BE CONTINUED...