All Chapters of Rejected Luna: Royal blood : Chapter 71 - Chapter 78

78 Chapters

Chapter 71

He came at the third hour past midnight.Not with drums. Not with torches. The out scouts gave the horn signal and then ceased, the element that made me know all the rest, not the single sustained note of a border discovery, not the triple blast of full assault. One short call, and there was no more. The definite silence of sentries who had observed something and had not yet a classification of it.I was already dressed when Rollins moved.We climbed to the battlements. The consolidated force had been sleeping in shifts - half the warriors asleep, half on the alert - and before we reached the outer wall the half that was up had already found their places. Liam, in the inner gate. Marcus and Leon on the west parapet. Voss's border wolves steady along the southern stretch. The Ashenmere warriors of Margot on the northern wall at which she had posted them two days ago.Each of them gazing westward.I looked west.The tree line was full.Not moving. That was the first thing I registered.

Chapter 72

Nobody moved.Not the sentries. Not the assembled warriors along the wall. Not Rollins by my side, not Marcus by my side. The keep itself appeared to be keeping its breath the way it had been when the emissary had ridden in on the pale horse, but it was more. More fundamental. The specific stillness of a large number of people who have all understood simultaneously that what is happening in front of them is not something they have a word for yet.Claus was there at the boundary marker, and looked up at me.I looked back at him.The First Power lay still. Not held still. Not anchored still. In the same sense that a dog becomes still when its name is called to it when it is in a direction it was not expecting to be. Oriented. Listening. The contrast between restraint and attention, and this was attention, complete and uninfluenced, and directly toward the figure beneath.Then he spoke again.It is not my name this time. Words I did not know. The older tongue, the one Marcus had mentione

Chapter 73

I could not sleep.Rollins was beside me, breathing slow and even, and his arm across my ribs. The fire had died down. The keep was quiet. The line of trees outside the window were dark and still, there was neither movement nor sound of the outer scouts which might have been something had they changed.Everything was still.I was not.The First Power was not to be settled since Claus had spoken. It was not straining the way it had on the battlements. It was not rushing towards the trees. It was doing something worse than either of those things. It was listening. Turned inward and outward simultaneously, like something that had heard a sound it recognized and was trying to remember where it knew it from.An hour passed and I lay still. Maybe longer.Then I sat up carefully, moved Rollins's arm without waking him, and crossed to the window seat.Nothing was happening down in the courtyard. One of the sentries on the inner wall. The warriors of Shadowcrest were camped in the outer yard,

Chapter 74

I told Rollins everything.Not in pieces, not carefully arranged. It all, and the grey dawn light through the window, and the fire reduced to nearly nothing. The sorrow in the profound place. The recollection of the entire connection prior to the sealing. What it was like when the power told me in the register below language what choice was. The manner in which it had rejected Claus not with animosity but with the definite preference of that which had discovered something in which it would give no exchange.He was listening as he always listened. Completely. And without filling the blank spaces I left. In not interrupting or turning aside. The bond was steady and warm to-day, and he had my attention, as ever when he was putting his whole weight on me.When I finished he was quiet for a long moment.Then he said, "You asked it what it wanted.""Yes.""And it answered you.""Yes."He glanced out of the window. At the grey sky and the dark line of trees and the little orange dots of Clau

Chapter 75

Marcus came within the hour.He looked like a man who had not slept. His hair was tied back loosely and he had the particular stillness of someone who had been awake and thinking for a long time and had arrived at conclusions he was not comfortable with. He came through the door and looked at both of us and understood immediately that something had developed overnight.Rollins told him what I had found in the deep place. The grief. The memory of the complete connection prior to the sealing. The manner in which the power had responded to my question to it. Marcus listened without sitting down, standing at the window with his arms crossed and his eyes on the tree line beyond the glass. His jaw was tight. He was processing as he listened.When Rollins finished Marcus was quiet for a long time."The grief belongs to Claus," I said. "He left it in the deep place at the sealing. Can he get it back."Marcus wheeled about."The archive does not answer that directly," he said. But the sealing

Chapter 76

We went out through the main gate together.All of us. Rollins in the lead, Liam at his right, Marcus at his left. The Ironclaw warriors following close behind. Shadowcrest, Voss's border wolves, the Ashenmere warriors led by Margot. The Fenrath at the rear, Sera's face calm and set.Two hundred wolves walking out through the gate of Ironclaw in full daylight, crossing the outer yard, moving toward the boundary marker.I walked beside Rollins.The First Power was quiet. Not straining, not pulling. Moving with me the way it had been moving since the night I asked it the question, the way something moves when it has found its direction and is no longer fighting itself.The boundary stone was a couple of hundred steps from the wall.Claus was already there.Not alone this time. He had brought perhaps thirty of his force to the boundary line, standing in a loose formation behind him. The rest stood in the tree line in the shadow. Watching.Claus stood next to the marker stone.He watched

Chapter 77

He came back the next morning.Not with his force. Alone. Not with his force. Alone. Walking out of the tree line at the first hour after dawn, crossing the open ground toward the outer wall with the same unhurried pace as before. The outer scouts sent the single note. One sustained sound, then silence.I was already on the battlements when he reached the boundary marker.Rollins was beside me. Liam behind us. The inner gate was closed, the wall manned, but nobody had called the assembled packs to position. There would be no attack. We knew that now.Claus looked up at me."I want to talk to you," he said. "Not at a distance."Rollins said nothing. I felt his jaw tighten through the bond."Alone," Claus said."No," Rollins said. His voice ended in a command.Claus looked him over. Then back at me. He didn't fight him. He simply waited, the way he always waited, with the patience of something that had learned a long time ago that most obstacles resolved themselves if you gave them enou

Chapter 78

I could not sleep that night.Not because of fear. Not because of the weight of what was coming. I lay next to Rollins in the dark and felt the First Power turning in my chest and I thought of what Claus had said at the boundary.Ask the power what it remembers.I had been careful with it for so long. Reaching in only when I needed something. Anchoring to the mate bond to stop it from pulling toward him. Managing it the way you manage something you do not fully trust.He had said it would show me. When I was ready.I decided I was ready.Rollins was asleep. I lay still and I closed my eyes and I reached into the First Power. Not to anchor it. Not to speak to the packs. I went to the deep place, to where the grief had been sitting since the sealing, and I went beyond it.Further than I had ever gone.It was not darkness.It was memory.Not my memory. Not the Royal bloodline's memory. Something older than both. The power's own recollection of what it had been before the sealing, before

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