All Chapters of Bound by the Cursed Moon: Chapter 341 - Chapter 350

Point of View: Kieran Ashveil"If Wren is right about what Delphine has built up there, then walking in with an offer to trade ourselves is not a plan anymore, it is a gift wrapped in exactly the ribbon she has been waiting twelve years to receive," I said, and the words tasted like ash the moment I said them out loud.We had made camp again an hour after Wren's revelation, though no one slept. The fire had burned down to embers that gave more shadow than light, and I found myself watching those shadows move across faces I trusted more than I had ever trusted anyone outside my own pack. Farris kept watch at the tree line with a tension in his shoulders I had not seen since the border skirmishes of my father's time, and Maris sat close to the fire with her arms wrapped around her knees, watching the rest of us argue our way toward a plan none of us liked."Then we change the offer," Dorian said. "Not guardians for a hostage. Guardians for information. We let Delphine believe we want to

Point of View: Kieran Ashveil"Whatever we find on that ridge, I need every one of you to remember we are not here to punish a woman for what she built, we are here to bring a child home before that ritual fire finishes what it started," I said, low enough that only our small advance party could hear it, as the mountain's northern face finally rose black against a sky still stubbornly refusing to lighten.We had left the rest of the camp behind under Farris's watch, moving fast and quiet through terrain none of us knew, the ground uneven and treacherous beneath our boots, roots and loose stone waiting to catch an unwary ankle at every turn. Ilsa moved in front with the particular urgency of a mother who had spent twelve years learning every shortcut this land might offer her someday, her breathing ragged but her stride never once faltering. Rhen moved beside me, her breath even despite the pace, and I found myself grateful, not for the first time, that whatever this bond had cost us b

Point of View: Kieran Ashveil"The moment Delphine's guards moved toward the tree line where Sable and Wren were hiding, I understood our surprise had already run out, and I stopped waiting for the perfect moment to enter that clearing entirely," I said afterward, though in the instant itself there had been no time for thought at all, only motion, only the roar of blood in my ears and the certainty that Rhen was standing too close to a woman who had already decided how this night would end.I broke cover with Corvin's earlier warning glance still burning in my memory, closing the distance to the firelight faster than caution should have allowed, branches tearing at my sleeves, and arrived just as Delphine's composure finally cracked into something sharper and far more dangerous than her earlier patience had shown."Ashveil," she said, my name landing in her mouth like a piece she had somehow miscounted. "I was not aware negotiations included an audience.""They did not," I said. "They

Point of View: Kieran Ashveil"I did not realize how badly Corvin had been hurt until the fighting stopped entirely and I watched him sway on his feet, the blade wound in his side finally demanding the attention he had refused to give it while there was still a fight left to finish," I said, catching him before he went down completely, his weight heavier against me than I expected from a man who had held himself so carefully upright all night.The clearing had gone quiet in the particular exhausted way of a battlefield after violence, Delphine's remaining guards either fled or restrained, the ritual fire burning low and unattended now, no one left with the will to feed it further. Smoke curled thin against the paling sky, and the smell of it clung to all of us, bitter and strange. Wren knelt beside Corvin immediately, tearing strips from her own sleeve to press against the wound, her earlier wariness of him entirely forgotten in the urgency of keeping him alive."Stay with me," she sa

Point of View: Kieran Ashveil"We buried nothing on that mountain except the fire, and still I felt as though we were leaving an entire chapter of this story behind us, one that would keep smoldering long after we had walked back over the ridge and out of its sight," I said to Rhen, both of us walking a little apart from the rest of the column as the mountain shrank slowly behind us in the clean light of true morning.The journey south felt different from the one that had carried us north two days earlier. Ilsa walked with her daughter's hand in hers, unwilling to let go of it for more than a few steps at a time, and I watched the girl steal small, wondering glances at her mother's face, as though still testing whether the last day had truly happened or might dissolve the moment she stopped paying attention to it. Corvin rode slung carefully between two makeshift poles Dorian and Farris had lashed together, weak but stable, his color slowly returning with every mile, Wren walking clos