All Chapters of Bound by the Cursed Moon: Chapter 591 - Chapter 600

Point of View: Kieran (Male Lead)"You told me you were checking the fences. Then you spent the whole night near the Order's camp, and you told no one. Kieran, do you understand that is exactly what the voice wanted from both of us?"I am Kieran, and my wife was angrier at me than I had ever seen her.We stood in the empty schoolhouse at the edge of the quarry road. Someone had lit the stove for us. The air smelled of chalk and wet wool. Rhen kept her back to me and her hands flat on a child's desk, and the way she held her shoulders told me she had been rehearsing this for hours."I can explain," I said."I know you can. You always can." She turned. Her eyes were red and fierce. "I woke up and your side of the bed was cold. I thought the Order had taken you. I thought the thing in the cave had you. Then it spoke in your voice, Kieran. In your voice.""I know. I am so sorry.""Where were you?""Dorian ran last night, after the tea and the page. He took the quarry road. I went after hi

Point of View: Kieran (Male Lead)"Kieran, I only turned my back to fetch her water. One minute. She was asleep, I swear it. Tell me you can catch her. Tell me you always catch things. Please, I am begging you."I am Kieran, and I ran up Hollin Hill with a dead man's courage and a father's terror.The moon had risen over the ridge, huge and pale, and the bell was already tolling. One. Two. Three. The sound rolled down the slope like a slow, heavy heartbeat. Behind me ran Edric, Rhen, Briar, Sable, Dorian and a dozen village men with lanterns. Nobody spoke. We saved our breath for the climb.Four. Five."Spread out," I called. "Do not go in alone.""I am not alone," Edric panted. "I have you."Six.The old bell tower stood at the crest, a squat stone box with a wooden loft and a rope that dangled through a trapdoor. The door at its base hung open. A single lantern burned at the top of the stairs. I took the steps two at a time, my boots slapping the worn stone, with Rhen's breath hot o

Point of View: Kieran (Male Lead)"Kieran, a man asked me today whether you could keep his children safe without a vault. I did not know what to tell him. So I am asking you the same thing, and I want the truth."I am Kieran, and Rhen asked me the hardest question of my life while stirring a pot of soup.We sat around a communal fire in the schoolhouse yard that night, a few hours before dawn, with a dozen people packed close under blankets. Mira slept in Edric's lap. Petra dozed against Alden's chair. Orne sat at the edge of the firelight with her hands out toward the flames, and nobody had told her to leave. Dorian sat apart, staring into the coals.I took the bowl Rhen handed me. It was thin soup, mostly turnips. Wood smoke curled up into a sky full of hard bright stars. Somewhere a dog barked twice and gave up."The truth," I said."Yes.""I do not know."She nodded slowly, not surprised, just tired. "Go on.""I want to say yes. I want to promise that nothing will ever hurt the ch

Point of View: Kieran (Male Lead)"I have read three letters from three keepers, Kieran, and every one says the same thing. We are tired. We cannot do this alone. Please take it from us. Would you like to read them, or shall I?"I am Kieran, and I realized with a slow cold feeling that the enemy was not lying.Councilor Aldine raised one small hand. Over the ridge, a handful of figures appeared, walking slowly, hesitating at the edge of the bowl as if the stones might bite them. There were three. An old woman with a cane, bent nearly double. A broad, quiet ferryman in a river coat, turning his cap in his hands. A young mother with a baby tied across her chest and shadows under her eyes like thumbprints."This is Maren Ashdown," said the councilor, resting a hand on the old woman's arm. "Keeper of the Ashdown line. Joss, who keeps the river fragment. And Tamsin, who keeps the salt line. They are not prisoners. They came because I wrote and asked.""You wrote to them?" Rhen said."I wro

Point of View: Kieran (Male Lead)"Kieran, promise me that tonight we sleep. No maps, no pieces, no counting. Just one whole night in our own bed, with the door locked and our daughter safe down the hall."I am Kieran, and I watched my daughter write the last line of the hardest year we had ever lived.The sixth page had opened under Dorian's hands like a flower. It had screamed once, a long, thin note that raised every hair on my arms, and then it had settled into the weave of the map and gone quiet. Not closed, never fully closed. Dorian said afterward that it felt like holding a door half open against a gentle wind. But eleven hands had held with him, and the wind did not win.The councilor had watched in silence. When it was over, she bowed to us, a small, formal bow, and gave the order to ride. Fifty gray cloaks wheeled and went down the ridge road without a word. Orne stood at the edge of the stones and watched them go. Then she took off her gray cloak, folded it neatly, and lai