CHAPTER 201: CHAPTER 201: CLOSING IN

Lorraine’s POV

The sun had been a blunt, relentless thing all day, and by the time it sank low enough to gild the treetops we all felt like we’d been scrubbed raw. We’d been walking for hours, miles that stretched in the form of never ending paths. The woods around us had been a rolling sea of green and brown, birds hiding from our passing, shafts of light slicing through the canopy.

We walked mostly in silence. It was easier that way. The quiet allowed each of us to listen for things that might otherwise be lost in chatter, the snap of a twig that wasn’t ours, the thin metallic whisper of armor too close, the soft scuff of a boot trying to mask its approach. Silence made you sharper. Silence kept you alive.

Every so often the silence broke because Felix couldn’t help himself. His complaints started as small grumbles and swelled into full tantrums.

"I can’t keep going," he said for what felt like the hundredth time, dropping to his knees beside a clump of ferns and panting like he’d run a hundred sprints. "Lorraine, honestly, I am exhausted. My legs are burning. I’m too tired."

He looked like he might cry and I wanted, briefly and foolishly, to laugh. Instead I reached into a low hanging branch and plucked a small, tart fruit. It split easily under my teeth, it was cool, wet and full of sugar, and I passed it toward Felix.

"Eat," I said. "We have to keep moving. The Old Moon Bridge won’t cross itself."

He popped the fruit into his mouth and chewed gratefully. Alistair, who’d stayed mostly silent, gave a dry chuckle.

"I’m kind of with Felix on this," Alistair admitted, not looking away from the trail. "Why are we walking the entire day when we could have super sped to where we needed to be? It would be easier. Faster."

Varya gave him a look that could have frozen a river. "You actually think splicing straight through a forest at super speed is clever?" she snapped. "Do you want to sing out our location like a beacon? No, we need to move quietly. We move slow but we blend in, and we save our wolf’s energy for the later fights."

Her scolding was sharp, but correct. Super speed through dense woods meant cutting right into the teeth of any lurking pack.

Kieran spoke then, in that cold voice that had become command without the trappings of rank. He never yelled, he simply said what needed to be said and everyone else fell in line.

"These woods aren’t kind to those who move when the moon’s up," he told us. "We must reach the Old Moon Bridge and cross before the moon fully rises."

I glanced at him. The setting sun threw his jaw into sharp relief, his face was glowing from the evening light and it was.... beautiful. The air around him felt taut, like a bowstring. I wanted to touch him and to stay away from him both at once.

"What happens if we don’t make it in time?" I asked.

Kieran tilted his head, looking at me as if gauging whether I could take the truth without breaking. "The Old Moon Bridge was said to have been built by the first Alpha King himself," he said slowly. "He built it for the first Luna Queen, so they could meet on the outskirts of the city and stare at the stars."

He paused, his expression hardening. "There was a tragedy. No one knows what exactly happened. But anyone who walks its planks while the moon is fully up hears strange voices. The voices don’t stop until they make you run mad. People see things, lose themselves. Some have jumped. Others simply walk away different, broken. It’s a place of memory and of ghosts."

******

At Lunar Crest Academy the sky was already turning ember. The hallways hummed with the low energy of students and guards moving around.

Astrid Voss didn’t move like the rest of them. Her pace had the straight, lethal purpose of a blade drawn from a scabbard. She had pulled her silver hair back into a tight ponytail, and the gray strands that threaded it whipped behind her as she strode. She walked through the corridors in her leather suite and even her footsteps seemed to echo how angry she was.

She got a door and kicked it down with her heels.

The wood splintered and the door fell inward with an exclamation. Cyrin, surprised, thrown by the noise, lunged up from behind his desk.

"What is the meaning of this, Voss?" he demanded.

Astrid didn’t answer with words. She hit the desk with a step and grabbed Cyrin’s throat with one hand, pinning him against the wall. The force of her grip made his face redden and his legs search the floor for leverage.

Cyrin pushed at her with hands that were suddenly clumsy at the neck. "Astrid, I do not want to fight you so you better stop this and explain!"

"You are a physician and I am a warrior," Astrid cut in, her voice cold and hard. "You cannot fight me even if you wanted to."

She squeezed just enough to let the words taste like threat. Cyrin’s eyes flashed with anger.

"You let them go," Astrid accused, voice low and furious. "Lorraine. Varya. Felix. You let them go and you led them into a trap. Our troops found a burnt van at the river bend, a van with evidence that they were there. That van was yours. You allowed them to escape and told them to go, ypu set them up!"

Cyrin’s expression shifted from shock to irritation. "This is absurd. In case you’ve forgotten, Varya is my daughter. You can’t accuse me of..."

"Oh please," Astrid snapped, not budging. "We both know the truth about Varya so do not play the daughter card with me. You allowed my students to go out of the academy and you perfectly know how dangerous it is out there right now!’

Cyrin’s jaw tightened and he tried to push words into armor. "I only let them to go cause we really needed to find Kieran and your troops were doing a lousy job at it"

Astrid finally let him go with a final shove that knocked him back into his chair, then she leaned close, and whispered

"You were the Alpha King’s royal physician," she said "You proclaimed him dead. No one saw the King’s body except your word. You abandoned the Queen in the castle, leaving her for the enemy. You escaped with royal guards while the castle was in shambles. You do not act like a true royal physician and I do not trust you."

Cyrin opened his mouth, shut it, and opened again, searching for answers that wouldn’t come.

"If anything happens to any of my students, including Kieran, you will pay for it, dearly." Astrid finished, then turned on her heel and stalked from the room like a shadow with legal power.