Todos los capítulos de Bound to Four Alphas : Capítulo 31 - Capítulo 40

We reach Mooncrest as the sun fully crests the eastern ridgeline, the campus I once believed I'd left forever now spread out before us, banners strung between every tower, crowds already gathered thick around the stone arena at its heart. The scent of trampled grass and morning dew mixes strangely with the smoke still clinging to my clothes from the coronation hall's wreckage, two entirely different nights colliding in the space of a single breath. "There," Rosalind says, pointing toward the massive gathering visible even from this distance. "The ceremony's still underway. We haven't missed it entirely." We move quickly through the outer grounds, Riven's mother's people and Rosalind's riders fanning out to secure our approach, though the sheer size of the crowd makes any true stealth impossible. Whispers ripple outward the moment people begin recognizing faces among our group, students, faculty, even a handful of Council guards who simply stare, uncertain whether to intervene or re

"That's not possible," Selene whispers, staring at her own reflection standing calmly at the arena's edge, her voice barely audible over the crowd's lingering murmur. "That's not me." "No," the figure agrees, tilting her head with an expression Selene's face has never once worn, something ancient and amused sitting strangely on such familiar features. "Though I confess, wearing your shape for the last several months proved considerably more useful than I initially anticipated." The chamber, already reeling from Ysolde's unraveling, falls into fresh, horrified silence. "Months," Selene's mother breathes, horror dawning across her face as she looks between her daughter and the impossible copy standing before us. "You've been walking around wearing my daughter's face for months?" "Since shortly after your arrival at Mooncrest, actually," the figure says, addressing me directly now, gold flickering briefly behind eyes that should be Selene's ordinary brown. "Ysolde required eyes clos

The chamber falls into stunned silence, every member of our exhausted coalition staring at the trembling man still steadying himself against Eryx's arm, the crystal-lit walls throwing pale, shifting light across faces caught somewhere between disbelief and desperate hope. "She's alive," I whisper, the words barely making it past my throat. "My mother. She's actually alive." "She was, twenty years ago, when I helped her through the escape passage beneath the execution chamber," Eryx's father says carefully. "I cannot promise you what became of her afterward. Twenty years is a long time, and I have spent every single one of them sealed in this vault, unable to learn anything beyond these walls." "Start from the beginning," my father says, moving closer, his own voice tight with barely restrained urgency. "Please. Everything you remember." The healer nods slowly, lowering himself onto an overturned crate near the vault's entrance, his legs still visibly unsteady beneath him. "I was

Selene's mother doesn't answer immediately, her guarded expression cracking slowly into something closer to exhausted resignation, as though she's been waiting years for exactly this question and dreading it in equal measure. The archive's dim, crystal-lit air seems to hold its breath along with the rest of us. "Mother," Selene says again, sharper this time. "Why do you have their mark?" "Sit down," her mother says quietly. "All of you. This deserves more than a rushed answer shouted across an underground archive." "We don't have time," I say, though something in her tone makes me hesitate. "Eryx's father—" "Will still need finding in five more minutes," she says. "And you'll find him considerably better prepared if you understand exactly what you're walking toward. Please, April. Sit." Reluctantly, the group settles into whatever space the ruined archive provides, exhaustion finally catching up with all of us in the sudden stillness. "Twenty-three years ago," Selene's mother b

My hands shake so violently that Jodan has to steady them with his own before I can even begin reading, the letter's careful, looping script swimming briefly before my eyes as twenty years of grief and sudden, impossible hope collide all at once. The entire chamber seems to hold its breath around me, waiting. "Read it aloud," my aunt says softly. "Please, April. We've carried this uncertainty together long enough." I take a steadying breath and begin. My dearest April, If this letter has finally reached you, it means the fifth house's old falcon lines survived long enough to carry it, and that you have survived long enough to receive it. Both possibilities seemed impossibly unlikely twenty years ago, when I first began writing these words, not knowing whether I would ever have the chance to send them. I did not die the night the Council claims I did. Marcus, the healer who examined me before my scheduled execution, recognized something in me worth risking everything to protect.