Teilen

Chapter 10

AngelCat
A letter written by Seraphine Voss eventually reached me.

It had not been addressed to me. A neutral courier intercepted it on the road to the Voss clan's northern estate and delivered it to Eamon under the council's evidence order. Seraphine had written to her uncle, asking him to hold the war-wolf regiments together. The first pages recalled how she and Kael Blackthorn had met in the north, how they had crawled from a mound of corpses, and how, when an obsidian arrow pierced her abdomen, he ha
Lies dieses Buch weiterhin kostenlos
Code scannen, um die App herunterzuladen
Gesperrtes Kapitel

Aktuellstes Kapitel

  • Where the Silver Moon Leads   Chapter 14

    Fourteen years passed from the day I accepted the office of Silver Moon Chancellor.For the first five, I presided over the Moon-Breath Sanctuary and the new-law hearings. During the next five, I transferred power piece by piece to chancellors elected by the clans. For the final four, I kept only the authority to stop Black Moon sorcery and protect cubs.Whenever I surrendered a responsibility, I left the Court for a time. If the process still worked without my signature, the power had truly passed from my hands.When Eamon retired, Willow became court recorder. The wet nurse who had once trembled on the witness platform could now make the strongest clan chief answer a question twice. When one elder mocked her birth, she read the first hearing she had recorded from beginning to end and invited him to name a single fault in its procedure.He could not.At eighteen, Rowan passed a succession examination with eleven other candidates. The blood seals he earned came not only from his royal

  • Where the Silver Moon Leads   Chapter 13

    Rowan's first visit in the Moonwood lasted half an hour.Kael brought a small bow made for the winter hunt. Old habit shaped his opening words. "The Wolf King commands you—"Rowan stepped back.Kael stopped and set the bow on the snow."I hope you will come to the winter hunt," he began again. "If you do not want to, we can choose another day."Rowan left the bow where it was and asked if they could walk beside the river instead. Kael agreed. They went ahead while Mara and a neutral guard followed ten paces behind. I remained outside the trees. I would not turn one visit into a reconciliation on anyone's behalf.For months afterward, Rowan still had nightmares when he returned from the Court. Sometimes he pushed me away because the severing spell had taught his body that affection for his birth mother would anger the Wolf Queen.Mara taught him to recognize the sweat in his palms, the pressure in his chest, and the bells he heard when no bells were ringing. I never asked whom he loved

  • Where the Silver Moon Leads   Chapter 12

    On the third day after the trial, a fire alarm sounded in an abandoned storehouse beside the King's inner wing.A forged emergency order, stamped with a copy of the first token, sent Rowan's four new guards through the western infirmary passage. A former Royal Guard whom two of them recognized presented the second token himself. By the time they realized his badge belonged to a missing Voss officer, moon-devouring grass was already burning in the narrow corridor.The four guards were found alive. Rowan was gone.The kidnappers left two scent trails, one north and one east, hoping to split the search. The severed bond had made Rowan's moon-breath almost impossible to track. Kael could do little but divide the Royal Guard between the two routes.Cassian brought Rowan's discarded boot buckle into Cedar Valley. It smelled of damp rust.There were no iron mines in the northern snowfields. The abandoned shafts lay in Black Gorge to the east. Scent alone was not proof, so I closed my hand aro

  • Where the Silver Moon Leads   Chapter 11

    On the day of the Black Moon trial, I remained in Cedar Valley.Only a handful of elders knew I was alive. They presented the account sealed before the fire while keeping my later affidavit in custody. Appearing without secure passage would have exposed both me and the children to the Voss remnants; warning Seraphine in advance would also have allowed her to tailor every answer to my testimony. The council would test her first against evidence gathered from hands other than mine. If a second hearing became necessary, I had agreed to appear under neutral guard.Seven moon crystals stood beside the water mirror. Each time a witness spoke, the corresponding crystal would light. I could neither interrupt nor answer. I could only watch as they made the statement that the woman I once had been was never allowed to give.Seated before the water mirror in Cedar Valley, I watched everything on the Moon Altar reflected across the wall of ice. Banners of the Hundred Clans surrounded the totem. Se

  • Where the Silver Moon Leads   Chapter 10

    A letter written by Seraphine Voss eventually reached me.It had not been addressed to me. A neutral courier intercepted it on the road to the Voss clan's northern estate and delivered it to Eamon under the council's evidence order. Seraphine had written to her uncle, asking him to hold the war-wolf regiments together. The first pages recalled how she and Kael Blackthorn had met in the north, how they had crawled from a mound of corpses, and how, when an obsidian arrow pierced her abdomen, he had sworn that no one would ever take her place.I understood the weight of everything they had survived together. It explained the fear running through her letter; it did not alter what she had ordered done to me.She did not know whether I was alive. In the letter, she insisted that my death had never been her purpose; she had acted, she wrote, because the Court would cast aside a barren Wolf Queen unless she secured the royal heirs as her own.Taken literally, the claim was false. She had order

  • Where the Silver Moon Leads   Chapter 9

    The letters split the Court along lines Seraphine could no longer keep hidden.At the Moon Council, the White-Bearded Elder raised the ancient matrilineal laws once more, while the northern war-wolves demanded a full investigation into the source of the black-obsidian powder. The two factions formed an unprecedented alliance, forcing Kael Blackthorn to open the Moonlight Hall storeroom.The storeroom had been burned after the eclipse, almost certainly to destroy evidence, and three of Seraphine Voss's confidants were dead. If the investigation relied on the scene alone, naturally it would uncover nothing.The three had not died in the fire. One had fallen from a cliff during transport, one had bitten off his tongue in his cell, and the last had drunk a tasteless moon-poison. Seraphine Voss wept publicly that guilt had driven them to suicide, but Eamon found identical red ligature marks on every body.She was silencing witnesses.I immediately had Cassian Silvercrest suspend all messeng

Weitere Kapitel
Entdecke und lies gute Romane kostenlos
Kostenloser Zugriff auf zahlreiche Romane in der GoodNovel-App. Lade deine Lieblingsbücher herunter und lies jederzeit und überall.
Bücher in der App kostenlos lesen
CODE SCANNEN, UM IN DER APP ZU LESEN
DMCA.com Protection Status