All Chapters of Bound by the Cursed Moon: Chapter 371 - Chapter 380

Point of View: Rhen Thornwolf"If you flinch at the basin the way you flinched just now, it will know exactly where to press." Wren said it quietly, not unkindly, and I hated that she was right before she had even finished the sentence.The walk to the hillside took longer than any of us wanted, the ground still soft from last night's rain, mist curling low across the grass in a way that made every shape at the treeline look like something waiting to become a threat. Kieran walked close beside me without touching me, the way he did when he knew I needed my hands free and my mind clear, and I was grateful for it even as some smaller, tireder part of me wanted nothing more than to lean into his shoulder and stay there until the world stopped asking things of us. Dorian walked ahead with Sable, his shoulders set in a way I recognized from the months right after the quarry, braced for something he could not yet name. Elara had stayed behind to face the council, and I found myself missing

Point of View: Rhen Thornwolf"It has your face," Dorian said, still staring into the water, and every hair on my arms rose at once because I had not moved close enough yet to see what he was seeing.I dropped to my knees on his other side, and the basin's black water had gone from still to slowly turning, like something vast shifting far beneath its surface, and reflected there instead of my own face was a woman I did not recognize, dressed in clothes older than anything in Ashveil's oldest portraits, her expression caught somewhere between grief and fury in a way that made my chest ache with a feeling I had no right to, a feeling that was not entirely mine. "That is not me," I said, though my voice shook on the words."It is the woman who wrote the name," Wren said, leaning over the basin's far rim, her voice hushed with something close to reverence. "This is memory, not prophecy. The founders left this here on purpose. A way for the right blood to see what they saw."The water shif

Point of View: Rhen Thornwolf"He wants us to watch him coming." Wren said it the moment we cleared the passage mouth and saw the torches strung across the far ridge like a slow, deliberate wound cut into the dark, and something about her certainty frightened me more than the torches themselves.We had barely caught our breath from the basin when the third horn reached us, and I felt Dorian's hand tighten in Sable's the instant the sound rolled across the valley, both of them understanding before the rest of us said a word that this was no longer a raid or a rescue attempt. This was an announcement. Kieran's jaw was tight in the low light, his eyes fixed on the line of torches moving with unhurried, almost theatrical patience along the ridge, and I recognized the particular stillness in him that always meant he was calculating exactly how many people he could lose tonight and still call it a victory."How far to the treeline from here," he asked Farris, who had ridden out to meet us t

Point of View: Kieran Ashveil"He has not slept in two nights, and he keeps saying he is fine, and I do not know how many more times I can hear that word before I stop believing anything else he tells me." Sable said it to me alone, away from the fire, her voice low and raw in a way I had never heard from her before, not even at the ridge.I found her near the horses at dawn, arms wrapped tight around herself against the cold, watching Dorian through the gap in the tents where he sat with Tam again, patient and quiet, teaching the boy something about breathing through the pull that I suspected he had never fully learned to do himself. "He is trying to be strong for Tam," I said. "It is easier to be strong for someone else than for yourself. I understood that particular trick long before I understood almost anything else about leading a pack.""I know the trick," Sable said. "I have been watching him use it on himself since the day he found out what he was. I just do not know how to ma

Point of View: Rhen Thornwolf"Say it wrong and we may wake something that was never meant to hear its own name spoken aloud again." Wren's warning followed us all the way down into the listening room, and I felt every word of it settle into my spine like ice.The basin sat exactly as we had left it, black water undisturbed, the chamber's cold light pulsing faintly with a rhythm I had not noticed before, slow and steady, almost like breathing. Kieran stood close at my shoulder, Dorian and Sable a careful distance back near the passage mouth exactly as we had agreed, and Wren knelt beside me at the basin's rim, the worn parchment spread flat between us, tracing the broken shapes one final time with a fingertip that trembled despite her best effort to steady it."Here," she said quietly, pointing to the first unbroken sound. "And here. The gaps we fill with intent rather than exact sound, the way the old rites always allowed for grief too large to fit cleanly into language."I looked on