All Chapters of Too Skinny To Be Luna : Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

Lyra's POV Training ends earlier than usual that morning, Draven calling a halt well before we've finished the sequence we started with, and something in the abrupt way he does it makes me pause instead of simply accepting the early dismissal. "Something wrong?" I ask, wiping sweat from my brow, watching him carefully. "No." He hesitates, hands flexing at his sides in the particular way that means he's working up to something rather than avoiding it entirely. "I wanted to talk to you. Away from the training, if that's alright." I nod slowly, following him to the low bench at the yard's edge — not the same bench where Kaelan first made me laugh, though close enough that the coincidence isn't lost on me as I settle onto it beside him. "I've been thinking," Draven says, staring out at the empty yard rather than at me directly, "about what you said, when I offered to train you. That I'd be your trainer. Nothing else. That the door was closed permanently." "I remember," I say careful

Lyra's POV The maidens arrive at my chambers just after dinner, unannounced but clearly expected by someone, carrying warmed oils and small polished tools I don't recognize and a general air of purpose that makes it clear resistance won't be entertained. "Compliments of the King," the eldest of them says, already setting out her supplies across the low table near my bed. "He thought you might benefit from some rest, after everything these past weeks." I want to protest that I don't need pampering, that I'm perfectly capable of managing my own exhaustion. The moment warm oil meets the tension knotted permanently into my shoulders, every objection dissolves into something considerably less coherent. "Oh," I say, and one of the younger maidens laughs softly at the sound. "That's usually the reaction," she says, working her thumbs into a particularly stubborn knot near my neck. "You've been carrying an awful lot of weight in these shoulders, my lady." "I've had a complicated few wee

Lyra's POV I call the meeting myself this time — no Elders, no war room, no political weight attached to it. Just the three of us, gathered in the same quiet sitting room where Kaelan once burned half a letter rather than tell me the truth about its sender. Both of them arrive within minutes of each other, and something in their carefully maintained distance as they take seats across from me tells me they've each guessed, correctly, what this conversation is likely to be about. "I need to say something," I begin, "and I need both of you to actually hear it, rather than simply waiting for your turn to respond." Neither speaks. I take that as permission to continue. "These past weeks have been — " I search for the right word, settling finally on the most honest one available. "Overwhelming. A bond I didn't ask for, arriving alongside power I still don't fully understand. A rejection I'm still healing from, standing right beside an apology I'm not certain I've finished accepting. A

Lyra's POVThe Priestess summons me to the small archive room the following morning — the same chamber where the missing pages first revealed themselves weeks ago, though the space feels less foreboding now, familiar in the way that repeated visits eventually make even unsettling places feel ordinary."I've been reviewing what remains of the old records," she says, without preamble, several ancient texts spread open across the low table between us, their pages brittle with age. "Since your training with Kaelan began yielding such immediate results, I wanted to understand more precisely why.""And?" I settle into the chair across from her, curious despite the faint apprehension that always accompanies these particular conversations."I found something," she says, turning one of the older volumes toward me, pointing to a passage rendered in the same archaic script as the missing book's final page. "A fuller account of the seal's mechanics. Not just what it suppressed, but how, and to wh

Lyra's POVI don't set out to make a scene. I genuinely don't. I simply walk to the pack house kitchens for something to eat between training sessions, wearing an ordinary dress, hair loose, doing absolutely nothing dramatic at all.The kitchen goes silent the moment I step inside.Mira — the older woman who once, weeks ago, in this exact kitchen, tsked at me like I was a stray dog wandering into a wedding — freezes mid-stir, wooden spoon suspended over a pot of something that's now dangerously close to burning."My lady," she says, and the honorific still sounds strange coming from her, considering the last thing she ever called me to my face was poor thing, delivered with exactly enough pity to make it worse than an insult."I just wanted some bread," I say, gesturing vaguely at the basket near the counter, deeply unprepared for the reverent hush that's settled over the entire kitchen staff.Nobody moves. Six pairs of eyes track me as I cross the room, take a roll from the basket, a