Bitter MOON :No More Chances. のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 11 - チャプター 20

The bond settled into Nell's bones like a sickness.Three days passed. Three days of sitting at Lena's right hand. Three days of smiling when she was supposed to smile. Three days of eating oatmeal and pretending the mark on her palm didn't burn every time Lena looked at her.Rue was right. The bond never stopped hurting. You just got used to it.Nell didn't want to get used to it.She wanted to burn it off.---On the fourth night, she couldn't sleep.The house was quiet. Too quiet. Even the usual creaks and moans of old wood had fallen silent. Nell lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, her marked hand pressed against her chest.Thump.Nothing.She still wasn't used to the silence where her heartbeat should be.She sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed. The floor was cold beneath her bare feet. She stood. Walked to the door. Pressed her ear to the wood.No footsteps. No voices. Just the hum of the old house breathing around her.She opened the door and slipped into the hal

Nell didn't sleep.She lay on the cold floor of her room, her cheek pressed against the wood, her body still trembling. The mark on her palm had stopped burning. Now it just sat there warm, present, smug.She could feel Lena through it. Not words. Not thoughts. Just a presence. A weight. A satisfied smile somewhere in the dark.Lena knew. Lena always knows.Nell closed her eyes.She thought about Elias's face as they dragged him back to the basement. He hadn't screamed. He hadn't fought. He had just looked at her and smiled.She thought about the way Lena had smiled warm, patient, victorious.She thought about all the chances she had given. Second chances. Third chances. Fourth chances.All of them wasted.All of them used against her.She pressed her palm to the floor and whispered into the dark: "No more."The next morning, Nell didn't go to breakfast.She didn't get out of bed. She didn't brush her hair or wash her face or change her clothes. She just lay there, staring at the ceil

Three days had passed since the blood moon.Nell's body still hurt. Her palm was wrapped in clean bandages. The scar where the crescent mark used to be was still raw. But she was awake. She was aware. She was healing.Elias sat beside her bed, dozing in a chair.She didn't wake him. She just watched the light move across the ceiling and thought about what came next.The door opened.Rue walked in. Her gold-flecked eyes were red. She stood at the foot of the bed, arms crossed, jaw tight."You almost died," Rue said."I know.""Don't do it again."Nell almost smiled. "I'll try."Rue's face crumpled. She looked away."I was scared," she whispered."I know.""I thought she was going to kill you.""She almost did."Rue nodded. Then she walked to the side of the bed and sat down. She didn't say anything else. She didn't have to.Caleb came next.He stood in the doorway, hands in his pockets, his face pale."I should have done something," he said."You did.""I stood there. I watched.""You

The day after Sol and Iris left, the house felt smaller.Not physically. The rooms were the same size. The hallways still curved in the same wrong ways. But the silence was heavier. The empty chairs at the table seemed to stare. Finn stopped asking where they'd gone. He knew. No one had told him. He just knew.Nell found him in the garden at dawn, sitting on Silas's overturned bucket, staring at the frost on the grass."Hey," she said."Hey."She sat on the ground beside him. The cold soaked through her clothes. She didn't feel it."Are you scared?" Finn asked."Yes.""Me too." He was quiet for a moment. "Do you think Sol and Iris are scared?"Nell thought about it. "I think they were scared. That's why they left.""Is that why people leave? Because they're scared?""Sometimes."Finn looked at the dead fountain. At the frost on the stone. At the sky, gray and low."I'm scared," he said. "But I'm not leaving."Nell put her arm around him."I know," she said. "That's why you're braver t

The whisper came at three in the morning.Not a voice, exactly. Not words Nell could hold in her hands and examine. More like a shape in the dark familiar and wrong at the same time, the way a word looks strange when you stare at it too long.You felt it too.The thread. Lena meant the thread. The one Knox had described the one she was pulling. Nell felt it. She'd felt it every night since the ritual. A tug. A presence. A weight.Nell sat up.Her room was dark. The curtains moved. The window was closed.She pressed her palm flat against her sternum and waited for her heartbeat to slow.It didn't.Four days until the Council. Four days until she walked into the lion's den. And now this. Lena pulling at her from the inside.She didn't go back to sleep.She pulled on Elias's old sweater the one he'd left on the back of her chair three days ago and hadn't asked for and went downstairs barefoot, stepping over the third stair because it creaked, old habit, the kind of habit that lived in yo