Alle Kapitel von The Crimson Moon : Kapitel 1 – Kapitel 10

Kael had been watching the girl for six days before she caught him.That was the part that bothered him more than it should have. Six days of standing across streets, sitting three tables back in coffee shops, once even trailing her into a bookstore and pretending to care about a shelf of poetry he had zero interest in, and she'd never so much as glanced his way. Then this morning she'd looked straight at him like she already knew his face.He shouldn't have let it get to him. He'd tracked worse things than a university student without getting made. But something about the way her eyes found his, direct, unafraid, a little furious that he'd been caught at all, had knocked something loose in his chest that he didn't have a name for and didn't want one.He circled back through an alley off Thorne Street and let himself into the safehouse the Nightguard kept two blocks from the campus gates. The place smelled like gun oil and old coffee, same as every safehouse he'd ever worked out of. H

Lyra had never seen anything move like that.One second the shape by her closet was only shadow. The kind her eyes made up when she woke too fast in the dark. Then it had a shoulder. An arm. Fingers reaching for her, the nails catching the little bit of light left in the room.Then the room was gone.Concrete. Cold air. Copper on the back of her tongue that wasn't hers. A parking structure she'd never stood in. Blood on the ground, not enough of it, and a name scratched into a pillar in jagged, angry lines.VALE.Across the street from a lit window she somehow knew was her own, a man stood in a doorway. Watching it. Not moving.Kael.It let go of her all at once, and her knees buckled against the wall behind her. The shadow was still crossing the floor. Still reaching. She screamed his name anyway, before she'd even decided to."KAEL!"The window blew in.Glass sprayed across the room, catching lamplight in a hundred small pieces as Kael came through it low, already moving before his

The symbols on the wall didn't look like family trees up close. They looked like scars.Lyra stood in front of the glass case long after Kael had gone to find her water and something to change into, tracing the pattern with her eyes without letting herself get close enough to touch it. Each small symbol connected to the next with thin engraved lines, branching and rebranching, some names worn almost smooth like someone had run a thumb over them a thousand times. At the bottom, newer than the rest, cut clean and recent into metal that hadn't had time to dull yet, was a symbol she recognized without wanting to.Her mother's name wasn't written anywhere on the wall. But there was a gap exactly where a name should have gone, a blank space left between two older branches like someone had deliberately cut it out."You're not supposed to be in here alone."She turned. A woman stood in the doorway, maybe late forties, sharp eyed, dressed like someone who'd give an order and expect it followed

"Ronan."Lyra's voice tore out of her before she could stop it, loud enough that Kael spun back toward her with a hand already up, a silent order to lower her volume that she had no intention of obeying right now."Ronan!"Nothing answered. The house sat in a silence that felt deliberate, like it was holding its breath along with her, and for one long, terrible second Lyra thought she was going to be sick right there on the ruined hallway floor.Then, faint, from somewhere deeper in the house, past the overturned furniture and the broken glass crunching under her boots, came a sound. Small. Wet. A cough."That way." Kael was already moving, blade up, sweeping the room ahead of them with the kind of fast, economical motion that said he'd cleared buildings like this before. "Stay behind me."She didn't. She was three steps ahead of him by the time they reached the kitchen, where Ronan lay propped against the overturned table, one arm pressed hard against a wound in her side, blood soaki

"How do you have this number." Lyra's voice came out steadier than she felt, which surprised her almost as much as the call itself."I have a great many numbers, Lyra. It's a small convenience of three centuries spent paying close attention to the world." Cassian's voice carried an easy, unbothered warmth that somehow made her skin crawl worse than if he'd threatened her outright. "I'd much rather we not spend our first real conversation discussing logistics."Kael had gone rigid beside her the second she'd said the name aloud. He mouthed something urgently, put it on speaker, and she fumbled the phone, hands still unsteady, until Cassian's voice filled the wrecked kitchen instead of just her ear."I assume Mr. Arden is listening in." Cassian didn't sound surprised by this. If anything, he sounded faintly amused. "Hello, Kael. Your mother sends her regards, I'm sure, though perhaps not in those exact words."Kael's jaw tightened. "What do you want.""Directness. How refreshing." A pau