Semua Bab Cursed Bonds:The Wolflees Luna's Redemption : Bab 31 - Bab 39

Chloe's POVKael was back at the window within a minute, torch in hand, leaning out over the ledge like he could will footprints into existing on stone that held none."Nothing," he said. "He knew this drop. He's used it before, or scouted it, or both.""Ridge roads," Theron said, low. "That's what he told Chloe. He thinks we don't know them.""We don't." Kael's jaw tightened. "Not the way a man who's spent years riding this border for pleasure knows them.""Wait." I looked between them. "Ridge roads. Rock that holds no tracks."Kael's eyes came up to mine, already working it out before I finished saying it."Seraphine," he said."The case they found empty, half a mile out near the old well road," I said. "Your own words, Kael. Tracks that stopped the moment the ground turned to stone, because whoever took her knew exactly where the tracking would fail."The room went very quiet."You're saying Thorne knew where she was taken," Theron said."I'm saying he just told us, without meaning

Chloe's POVAdrian was awake when I came in, propped against pillows with his bandaged hand resting on the blanket, and something in his face changed the moment he saw mine."You've been riding," he said. "All night, from the state of you. What happened.""We found Seraphine.""Thank the gods." Relief moved across his face, quick and unguarded, the kind that was hard to fake even for someone as easy with a smile as Adrian usually was. "Is she—""Alive. Cold. Furious." I pulled the chair beside his bed closer and sat, close enough that he couldn't mistake this for a courtesy visit. "She heard something, while she was held. A name Thorne used. Someone who already knew everything Thorne knew, without needing convincing."Adrian's expression didn't change right away. That, more than anything, was what made me watch him closer."You think it was me," he said finally, quiet."I think Theron is standing outside that door right now deciding whether to believe it was."Something flickered behin

Chloe's POVThe ruins came into view an hour past what should have been dawn, the sky still bruised and grey, snow starting to fall in a way that felt less like weather and more like the world holding its breath.Nothing about the site announced itself as significant. A collapsed circle of standing stones, half-swallowed by moss and centuries of frost-heave, sitting in a hollow the forest had grown up around rather than through. No wall. No gate. Just an old stone that had been waiting a very long time for someone to remember it mattered.Kael reached the tree line first and threw up a fist. The column stopped behind him."Two horses," he said, low. "Tied there, at the edge. Recently."Theron was off his own horse before I'd finished dismounting, sword already drawn, and I followed him into the hollow with my heart trying to climb out of my throat.Marcus sat propped against the base of the largest standing stone, his splinted leg stretched out in front of him, a lantern burned nearly

Chloe's POVThe keep's gates were already open by the time we reached them, torches burning along the wall despite the hour, word of our return having outpaced us somehow the way word always did in that court.Healers took Marcus and Sera the moment we crossed into the courtyard, both of them too exhausted to argue about it, and I stood there watching them carried off on stretchers and felt the whole night finally catch up with my own body, the cold clinging to my bones, the faint throb of my shoulder where the strain of the journey had settled deep, the current still humming faint under my skin from the ruins, the ache that had settled behind my ribs and hadn't left since."You should rest too," Theron said, close behind me, his hand brushing the small of my back before falling away like he wasn't sure even now what he was permitted to offer."So should you." I glanced up at him shadows under his eyes, lines of exhaustion carved deep around his mouth, and yet he stood straight as a sw