Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 51 - Chapitre 60

“This isn’t about whether you deserve him,” Morwen says. “It never was. You were always enough. The question is whether he can be enough for you. Whether he can stop trying to be everything for everyone and finally choose a life where you are not collateral.”“What if he can’t?” I whisper. The thought has been rotting quietly in the corner of my heart for days. Hearing it aloud makes it worse.“Then you can end it,” Morwen says simply. “Not with your death, not if you are wise—but with your leaving. Properly done, with willingness and knife and word, you can sever the bond yourself. You can walk away.”My head snaps up. “I thought the Severing Rite was for that. Their ritual.”“Their Rite is a butchery,” she says, sudden disgust roughening her voice. “Crude, dangerous, meant to punish you for daring to exist outside their order. What I speak of is older. Cleaner. Rarely used, because few Lunas are willing to bear the break. But the Goddess gave you that key as well.”“Why haven’t you

We trade blows for a while after that. She’s getting better—still wild, still too eager to overextend, but her feet are faster, her flinches shorter. When she lands a clean hit on my ribs, she whoops like a kid.“See?” she pants. “Progress. Soon I’ll be an unstoppable murder sprite.”“Cassian is going to age ten years watching you call yourself that,” I say, clutching my side.“Cassian can get in line behind everyone else who underestimates me,” she says, but the fondness under it is impossible to miss.When we finally stagger off the mats, Bella appears like a soft‑voiced ghost with waters and a basket of something that smells like bread.“I heard thuds,” she says by way of explanation. “And Naomi yelling ‘murder sprite’ again.”Naomi takes a dramatic swig of water, then points at me. “Lilah has a nuclear button now. An actual one. Moon Goddess sanctioned.”Bella’s brows knit. “What?”I sigh. “Morwen told me I can… end the bond myself. If it comes to that.”Bella’s fingers tighten ar

“I’ll talk to her,” I say. The words taste like ash. I’ve been putting off this conversation, hoping—what? That the Goddess would swoop down and cancel the Rite herself? That Malric would trip on his own schemes and fall on his face?Coward, a familiar inner voice, whispers. The same one that watched a banner recede on a hill in a life I half‑remember.“I’ll talk to her,” I repeat, firmer. “Tonight.”Morwen studies me for a long beat, then nods once. “See that you do,” she says. “Time makes cowards of us all. Don’t let it steal what little courage you have.”She glides out, leaving sage and iron in her wake.Cassian claps a hand on my shoulder. “You’re not alone in this, you know,” he says quietly. “Whatever you decide.”“That’s the problem,” I say. “What I decide hits more than just me.”He squeezes once, then let's go. “You keep pretending you can protect everyone by sacrificing the one person who makes you want to live,” he says. “It’s not going to end the way you think.”“Is this

“Best case?” she says. “You and he come to an agreement before the Rite ever begins. Either he chooses you fully and publicly on his own terms, not as a panicked reaction in a ritual circle. Or you choose to end the bond cleanly, with the old severing I mentioned. Away from their chalk and their fear.”“And the Goddess?” I ask. “She just… accepts that?”“She accepts a choice made freely,” Morwen says. “That was the point of all this. Not that you dance to the elders’ tune.”I stare at a knot in the wood of her table until it stops swimming.“He’s not going to decide in time,” I say quietly. “Is he?”Morwen’s silence is answer enough.“He’s clinging to the idea that he can protect everyone,” I say. “Me, the pack, his position, his conscience. He thinks if he just waits long enough, the right answer will reveal itself without him having to pick it.”“It’s an old habit,” she says. “From another life.”Her gaze flicks up, knife‑sharp. “The last time he hesitated,” she says quietly, “you d

“No,” I say, sharper than I mean to. “You don’t get to ‘Lilah’ me like that fixes anything. You stood in that room and watched them draw the outline of where they’re going to cut me open, and you still let the day end without coming here.”His shoulders tighten. “I stopped them from moving the Rite up,” he says. “I forced them to wipe the circle. I bought us time.”“Us?” I echo. “Or you?”Anger flashes in his eyes. “Do you think this is easy for me?” he snaps. “Every choice I make has a hundred lives balanced on it. I’m trying to keep you alive, and this pack intact and the curse from detonating in our faces. Forgive me if that takes more thought than just charging in and biting a mark into your neck.”“If you loved me,” I say, and the words come out calm, somehow, “you wouldn’t have let it get to the point where they needed chalk.”Silence slams into the room.He looks like I hit him. Maybe I did.“I do love you,” he says, voice low and hoarse. “That’s the problem.”Something in my c