All Chapters of REJECTED BY THE MOON : Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

What Victor CarriedHe was waiting for me in the small study off the guards' quarters, a room I'd never once had reason to enter before tonight. It was sparse and functional, a narrow desk pushed against one wall stacked with duty rosters nobody had bothered filing away, a single lamp burning low between two mismatched chairs, the kind of room built for reports rather than anything a person might actually want to say out loud in it."You could have chosen somewhere less like an interrogation," I said, taking the seat across from him, the chair's wood cold even through my skirts."I chose somewhere private," Victor said. "There's a difference, though I understand why it might not feel that way tonight."He didn't speak again for a long moment. He turned a small carved token over and over in his fingers, wolf-shaped, worn smooth along every edge, and I watched him open his mouth twice and close it again before any sound came out, the silence stretching long enough that I nearly reached

Marcus's Turn"Can I ask you something, and you tell me honestly if I've overstepped."Marcus said it without preamble, catching me at the training yard fence before I'd even set down the water skein I'd carried out for the morning session, frost still clinging to the lower rails in the early light, the whole yard hushed in that particular quiet that belongs only to the hour just after dawn, before the guards had begun their drills and the noise of the day had fully settled over the grounds."You haven't overstepped yet," I said, setting the skein down at the fence post. "Ask.""Do you think confession is contagious," he said, "or do you think I've simply been waiting for permission to say something I should have said years ago.""Maybe both," I said. "What is it."He trailed his fingers along the frosted rail as we fell into step together, leaving faint dark lines where his warmth melted through, and I watched him gather himself the same slow, deliberate way Victor had in that small

Ten DaysWe gathered in the library that evening, all seven of us, and I found myself looking around at each face with a different understanding than I'd carried even a week before, Victor's guilt now spoken aloud and settling into something steadier, Marcus's quiet confession still waiting for its moment with his father, Kaiden's old hesitation finally named instead of buried, a small pile of ash still faintly visible on the courtyard stones outside where we'd burned Mireille's map together only an hour before."I want to say something," I told them, once the evening's usual planning had wound down, Akira's charts and Mireille's notes spread across the table between us. "Not about the eclipse. About us. The Keepers warned that doubt fractures the circle. I've spent the last several days watching some of that doubt come loose, and I think it's made all of us stronger, even though it didn't feel that way in the moment.""Then let's finish it properly," Elara said. "Before the eclipse

The Gate at DuskKieran refused, at first, to let me go alone, and I refused, in turn, to bring the full circle to a meeting Shane had specifically framed as private, and we spent the better part of an afternoon negotiating a compromise neither of us was fully satisfied with, both of us arguing our positions with the particular stubbornness that came from caring too much about the outcome to simply defer. In the end, Kieran and Akira came with me, the rest of the circle holding position at the tunnel entrance, close enough to reach us quickly if the meeting turned into something worse than words, though I noticed Victor had insisted on scouting the approach himself an hour before we left, unwilling to trust the path to secondhand reports alone.We approached the gate slowly as dusk began to settle, the last light of the day bleeding orange across the black river behind it, staining the water the color of something molten. Kieran stopped us a good distance out, his eyes moving methodic

The Chaos Faction Shows ItselfIt found us on the seventh day, not the eighth, arriving a full day sooner than any of us had braced for, which was, I understood later, exactly the point.I was in the training yard alone at dawn, my palm pressed against the dead oak, the crack in its bark now wide enough that I could fit two fingers into the gap if I wanted to.The ground beneath my feet shuddered, once, hard enough that I stumbled and caught myself against the trunk. A heartbeat later, a second tremor followed, deeper this time. I heard, distant but unmistakable, the sound of stone cracking somewhere beyond the castle walls, a low, grinding groan that seemed to travel through the earth itself."Rory!" Kieran's voice, sharp with alarm, carrying across the yard as he sprinted toward me, half-dressed, clearly roused from sleep by the same tremor, his bare feet careless against the frost-hardened grass."I'm fine," I said, though my heart was hammering, my hand still pressed flat against