All Chapters of Blood of the Black Moon: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

The sound of the circle closing was a low hum, the air thick enough to drink. Torches flickered, their light trembling against the stone walls as if the fire itself feared what was about to happen. Ardan stood in the center, the mark on his throat glowing faintly—gold against the bruised shadow of his skin. Power gathered like a thunderhead around him. Kaelira could taste it. Metallic. Wild. Wrong. She kept her breathing slow, steady, though her palms ached from clenching. Every instinct in her screamed to stop him. To pull him out of that circle and away from whatever dark ritual the Elders had whispered into motion. But Zevran’s hand found her wrist, a warning and a tether in one. “Not yet,” he murmured. His voice was low, steady, but the muscle along his jaw ticked. Kaelira met his eyes—those sharp amber irises that always seemed to see too much. “He’s losing control,” she said under her breath. Zevran’s gaze flicked bac

By the time they reached the northern ridge, the forest had changed.The air was colder here, sharp with pine and the faint metallic scent of frost. Mist clung to the roots, curling like smoke around their boots. Kaelira had traveled these woods countless times, but now every tree felt like a witness—silent, watchful, holding its breath.Zevran walked ahead, his pace measured. The mark on his wrist—the one that tied him to the Council—had begun to fade, its lines duller than before. He didn’t mention it, but Kaelira noticed.She noticed everything about him now.The way he ran his thumb along the edge of his blade when he thought. The stiffness in his shoulders each time the wind shifted west—the direction of the Council’s capital. The way he avoided her eyes in the quiet moments, as if afraid of what he might say if he met them too long.And beneath all that, she could feel him.Not in a mystical way, but in the simple, human gravity of proximity. The echo o

The fire had burned down to embers, yet neither of them moved.Kaelira sat across from Zevran, her knees drawn to her chest, the faint orange light washing across her pale skin. The silence between them was fragile — not peace, but the quiet that came after a storm. The kind where one wrong word could summon thunder again.“You should sleep,” Zevran said finally. His voice was low, roughened by exhaustion and something else she couldn’t name. “We’ll need to break camp before dawn.”“I can’t,” she murmured. “Every time I close my eyes, I see them. The faces of the ones we couldn’t save.”Zevran didn’t look away from the dying fire. “Then don’t close them. Keep them open. Let them burn.”She glanced at him — really looked at him — the hard lines of his face softened by the flickering light. There was something carved deep into him tonight, something raw.“Is that how you live with it?” she asked. “You just… don’t look away?”He gave a small, humorless laugh. “If I ever looked away, I’d

The wind carried the scent of iron and rain. The storm had passed, but the sky still looked wounded — bruised clouds bleeding light across the ruins.Zevran sat on the cold stone floor of the Temple courtyard, Kaelira cradled against his chest. Her skin was pale, her pulse faint, her breath shallow. She looked less like a warrior now and more like the ghost she’d always feared becoming.“Come on,” he muttered, brushing his thumb across her cheek. “Don’t you dare disappear now.”No response. Only the distant crackle of fading magic and the echo of his own heartbeat.The runes on her arms were still glowing faintly — their light flickering like dying embers. Zevran could feel the hum of her power under his fingertips. It wasn’t gone. Just… sleeping.He pressed a hand to her wrist, over the Mark. “If you can hear me,” he said quietly, “you’ve done enough. You don’t have to fight anymore tonight.”The Mark pulsed weakly in response — once, twice — before dimming

The world burned red.The moon hung low over the mountains like a wound that refused to close, its bleeding light painting the valley in shades of ruin. Kaelira had seen many horrors in her lifetime, but nothing like this — the sky itself unraveling, the air trembling with the heartbeat of something that should have stayed dead.They rode hard through the night. The forest below was nothing but black shapes and whispers. Each time she looked up, she swore the moon pulsed faster, like it was watching them.Zevran said nothing for hours. His jaw was tight, his eyes fixed ahead, but his hand never strayed far from the hilt of his blade — or from her.It wasn’t until dawn threatened that he finally spoke.“Tell me the truth,” he said. “That thing Varyn became… you knew it could happen.”Kaelira hesitated, the reins slack in her hands. “I suspected. Not like that.”“What did he mean, when he said the Moon remembers you?”She looked down at her gloved wrist