Todos os capítulos de The Stray Moon: Capítulo 31 - Capítulo 37

The doors to Nightwind pack house are not doors so much as jaws—two slabs of blackened oak, studded with enough iron to anchor a ship, parted just wide enough to admit the condemned. They swing open on silent hinges, sucking in a coil of frigid air that raises the hair on my arms and scours the sweat from my collarbone. I step through, the silver cuffs already burning fissures into my skin, and the borrowed coat—three sizes too large, because nothing here is meant to fit—sags off my right shoulder, advertising the bones underneath.Jace stands at my left, hands clasped behind his back, posture so correct it could be a warning label for spinal injuries. His eyes—too pale, too quick—flick over me and away. The professional mask is flawless, but underneath it there’s a seam of something else, a hairline crack of regret that he covers by blinking more than he needs to. He doesn’t touch me. Doesn’t even stand close enough for our arms to brush. He just waits for the guards to take up posit

I step into the final cell with my face as blank as I can make it. The instinct is to bare my teeth and glare, to let the whole world know it can’t rattle me, but my jaw’s so tight it feels wired shut and there’s no way I’m giving Nightwind the show it wants. The air is heavy, seasoned with a thousand years of old secrets and fresh sweat, and the dimensions are so mean that even standing up straight, my elbows brush stone on either side.The cot’s less a bed than a threat—thin wool over hard wooden slats, one of which is snapped at the edge so it juts up like a splinter with ambitions. The blanket is exactly what you’d expect: threadbare, stained in places, and so rich with the scent of former occupants that I wonder how many ghosts I’ll be sleeping with. I run my fingers along the underside, find a crust of something that could be blood or mildew, and make a mental note to never, ever get desperate enough to use it as a pillow.Jace stands in the doorway, half-shadowed. He’s watching

For three full minutes, no one comes near me. The dining hall resets, benches scraping, bowls being refilled, conversations rising and falling in wavelets that skirt the edges of real violence. My isolation is so complete it’s almost a physical thing—a moat of open air, a buffer of untouchability. I imagine the boundary as a circle of salt poured around my bench, every grain a warning: Here lies the Stray Moon. Do not approach.Then the kitchen girl breaks the circle.She carries a tray loaded with bowls—some destined for the warriors, some for the children, but one unmistakably for me. She threads her way through the crowd with the same self-erasing gait as before: shoulders rounded, gaze cast slightly down, movements careful and soft, the opposite of the brash, elbow-throwing betas who muscle their way to the food line. Even so, I see the way she scans the room, the way she counts threats, the way her hand drifts unconsciously to the scar on her wrist whenever a raised voice pierces