All Chapters of Bound by the Cursed Moon: Chapter 281 - Chapter 290

Point of View: Kieran Ashveil"Kieran, if the final closing takes the one thing anchoring her back to herself every single time she starts to slip, what am I supposed to do with a version of her who no longer remembers choosing me?"I asked the question aloud to no one, pacing the length of my father's study long after Rhen had finally fallen asleep, the words escaping before I had fully decided to let them, the candles burned low around the room, and Alaric looked up from the maps he had been studying with an expression more sympathetic than I expected from a man who had spent his whole life training himself not to show fear. He set his quill down carefully, as though he already sensed that whatever conversation was coming deserved his full attention rather than the half of it he usually spared for anything not written on paper."You are asking a question I asked myself for years after your mother sealed the Duskmoor treaty," he said quietly, his gaze drifting briefly toward the wind

Point of View: Kieran Ashveil"Kieran, before you say anything else tonight, I need you to look at these pages, because if they mean what I believe they mean, someone inside our own leadership has been feeding Vane's people information for months."Elara arrived at the hall well past midnight, her face pale, a leather folder pressed tightly against her chest, her cloak still damp from a hard ride, and I rose immediately from the table where I had been reviewing defense positions with Alaric, something in her expression telling me whatever she carried would not wait until morning. Alaric set down his quill without a word, sensing the same urgency I did, and moved to shut the study door behind her before she had even fully crossed the threshold, the heavy latch falling into place with a sound that felt, somehow, like the closing of something far larger than a single door.She spread the brittle pages across the table, decades old correspondence between her grandfather and a hunter facti

Point of View: Kieran Ashveil"Kieran, before Rhen walks down there tomorrow, you deserve to know the last piece of Corin's story, the piece I have been too ashamed to tell even myself for a hundred years."Ilsevet's confession came late that night, after Dorian and Sable had finally gone to rest, the two of them moving now with a quiet, settled closeness that told me everything about what had passed between them in that candlelit chamber without needing to ask a single question about it, a closeness that made the empty ache in my own chest feel, for a moment, almost bearable to look at directly. I had stepped outside for air when Ilsevet found me, its ancient face carrying an expression heavier than I had seen even during its earlier warnings, the stars overhead unusually sharp and cold."Tell me," I said, bracing myself the way I had learned to brace for every new truth this creature seemed to carry."Corin's guardian partner did not simply die of ordinary causes," Ilsevet said, its

Point of View: Kieran Ashveil"Kieran, you cannot hear them from here, and staring harder is not going to change that, so either trust her or come down there and ruin everything she is trying to build."Sable's whisper beside me on the ridge carried more patience than I currently deserved, my whole body tensed forward as though leaning far enough might somehow close the distance between me and the small clearing below, where Rhen stood facing a figure I recognized instantly, even from this far away, as something far older and stranger than an ordinary man. The wind up on the ridge was sharper than it had been in the valley, and I welcomed the cold of it against my face if only because it gave me something to feel besides fear, something ordinary enough to hold onto while everything else in me strained toward the clearing below.Corin looked almost unremarkable from this distance, dark haired, plainly dressed, and I hated that some small part of me had expected a monster, something eas

Point of View: Kieran Ashveil"Bastian, before this council votes on anything else tonight, I would like an explanation for why hunter faction supply routes keep avoiding exactly the territories your family has historically controlled."Elara's opening question landed across the packed council hall like a struck bell, and I watched Bastian Duskmoor's calm, practiced expression falter for the first time in the two years I had known him, a small crack appearing in a mask I suspected he had worn flawlessly for far longer than any of us had realized. The torches along the hall's walls seemed to burn brighter in the sudden silence that followed her words, and every council member present seemed to lean forward at once, sensing that whatever came next would not be the ordinary business the evening had been scheduled for."That is an unusual accusation to bring before the full council, Elara," he said carefully, straightening the sleeve of his coat as though the small gesture might restore s