All Chapters of The Luna's Crown : Chapter 51 - Chapter 55

CHAPTER 51: THE RITUAL BEGINSWhat was Darius stops being shaped like a man.It happens slowly enough to watch and fast enough that I cannot look away. The convulsion in the circle becomes something else — bones reorganizing under skin that was never built to hold what is filling it, shadow pouring out from the edges of him like ink finding water. His face is the last thing to go. For one terrible second I see Darius's actual eyes, frightened and human and entirely his own, looking out at me from inside the thing consuming him.Then even that is gone.What stands in the circle now is roughly the size and shape of a wolf, if a wolf were built from absence instead of flesh. Its outline shifts at the edges — not quite solid, not quite shadow, something the eye refuses to fully resolve."Now," Kael says.The pack moves.Ronan goes left with two wolves. Three more flank right. I have seen Kael's people fight before — at the marshes, at the cell, at the estate gates — but I have never seen

CHAPTER 53: THE CHOICE I wake to the smell of something burning faintly in the kitchen and the specific quiet of a house trying to function normally around people who cannot afford normal right now. Kael is gone from the room. I find him eventually in the kitchen, standing at the counter with a cup of something he has not touched, looking at nothing in particular. He turns when I come in. Whatever he sees in my face makes his shoulders drop half an inch — relief, maybe, that I am upright and moving. "You should still be resting," he says. "I have been resting for fourteen hours." I sit at the table because my legs are honest about their limits even when my pride is not. "We need to talk about what happens next." "There is no version of what happens next that involves you risking the coronation Queen Alara described." His voice is even, but underneath it I feel the bond carr

CHAPTER 55: THE BANISHMENT The room is silent when my vision clears. Queen Alara has both hands pressed to her mouth. Draven is gripping the back of her wheelchair so hard his knuckles have gone white. Ronan has not moved from where he was standing — I can see him out of the corner of my vision, utterly still, watching me the way you watch something you are not certain has finished happening yet. Kael is the only one moving. He crosses the room in three steps and stops just short of the circle's edge, his hands raised slightly like he wants to reach for me but is not certain it is safe. "Fina." I look at him. My own voice comes out strange to my ears — steadier than I expected, carrying a weight it did not have an hour ago. "I am here," I say. "Still me." He crosses the last few feet and pulls me against him, and I feel his heart through