Chapter 5 What The Grave Was Hiding

Luna's POV

I stared at my brother's pendant sitting in Councilor Vesper's gloved palm, and every word I knew drained out of my head.

"That's impossible," I said again, because it was the only thing left.

"Impossible things seem to follow you tonight, Miss Vale." Vesper's smile was thin and patient. "A guard dead. A pendant that was buried five years ago. A girl whose eyes can't decide what they are."

I pressed my hand to my right eye, as if I could hide it. The wine-red was still there, warm and strange, pulsing in time with my heartbeat.

"She didn't kill anyone," Cassian said.

"With respect, Your Highness, you were not with her the entire evening."

"I was with her for the part that mattered."

"Marcus died during the part that mattered."

"Look at the pendant." Cassian's voice was calm, but I could feel his anger humming through the bond like a held note. "The chain is broken, and there's no dirt on it. A pendant buried for five years would be caked in earth. That one has been wiped clean."

Vesper's gaze flickered. Just once.

"A fair observation," he said smoothly. "Which is why the Council will examine the grave at dawn."

"The grave?" my father said hoarsely.

"If that pendant is Victor Vale's, then someone dug it up. Or the grave never held what you claimed." Vesper tucked it back into the velvet pouch. "Either way, Alpha, we will find out. Until then, your daughter remains here under Council guard."

"The hell she does," my father growled, and the whole room shifted. Silvermoon warriors flexed their claws. Black-armored guards drew steel.

"Rowan." The king's voice cut through it, tired and heavy. "Enough blood has been spilled tonight."

Everyone froze.

King Adrian looked at me for a long moment. Then, to my surprise, he looked away first.

"The girl stays in my son's wing, under my protection, not the Council's. Alpha Vale may remain with her. Councilor Vesper, you have your dawn."

Vesper's smile tightened. "As you wish, Your Majesty."

He swept out, white robes trailing, his guards following like a tide going out.

Darius lingered a heartbeat longer. His gray eyes slid over me, then Cassian, then the king.

"Get some rest, Cass," he said gently. "You look terrible."

Then he was gone.

The door closed. The silence that followed was the loudest I had ever heard.

My father sat down on the edge of Cassian's couch like his strings had been cut. The great Alpha of Silvermoon, who I had never once seen sit down in front of a rival, put his face in his hands.

King Adrian stood by the window with his back to us.

"Somebody tell me," I said. My voice shook, and I hated it. "Now. All of it."

Nobody moved.

"Please."

My father spoke first. "Her name was Seraphine."

He didn't look up.

"She came to Silvermoon twenty-six years ago, as part of a peace delegation. I was twenty-one and had only just become Alpha. I thought she was the most arrogant woman I had ever met."

A faint, broken smile touched his mouth.

"She thought the same of me."

"Wait." I held up a hand. "Twenty-six years ago. Victor was..."

"Three." His voice softened. "He was three years old, Luna. And I was already a widower."

The words landed in the quiet room like stones.

"Victor's mother was my first mate. She died when he was barely a year old, a fever the healers couldn't break. I had a baby son and a pack to lead and no idea how to do either." He rubbed his face. "Seraphine was not Victor's mother. I want you to understand that. She never pretended to be. But she was the one who sat up with him through the nightmares. She was the one who taught him to read the stars. He called her Sera. He loved her like she was his own."

My throat closed.

I had spent my whole life believing Victor and I shared a mother. I had never even thought to ask.

"We only shared a father," I whispered.

"You shared everything that mattered." My father's eyes finally met mine, wet and red-rimmed. "He adored you the second you were born. He was eight years old, and he held you like you were made of glass."

I pressed my knuckles against my mouth.

"She did not love me right away," he went on, almost to himself. "Seraphine had come to Silvermoon to get away from someone."

At the window, the king's shoulders went rigid.

"I loved her first," King Adrian said quietly.

I turned.

He still wasn't looking at us. He was staring out at the dark forest, one hand resting flat against the glass, and when he spoke again, his voice was so low I almost missed it.

"I was young. She was brilliant. I thought I had all the time in the world to tell her." His eyes closed. "So I asked. And she laughed, not unkindly, and told me she was sorry, but her heart had never been mine to claim."

"That was before she ever met me," my father said gently.

"It was." The king's jaw worked. "She left the court soon after. I did not know where she had gone until I heard she had married a wolf."

My head spun.

"I did not forgive her," he said. "I did not forgive either of you. I let it rot in me for years. Cassian was born after she had made her choice, and I told myself I had moved on."

Behind me, Cassian had gone very still.

"But when I heard she had died," the king said, and his voice cracked, "I would have mourned her at her grave if anyone had told me where it was."

"I couldn't," my father whispered. "Adrian, I couldn't. She made me promise."

"Promise what?"

My father lifted his head.

"The night Luna was born, Seraphine was dying. We both knew the birth would be impossible. Her blood fought mine, and she was bleeding out, and the healers couldn't stop it." His voice shook. "She held our daughter for four minutes. And then she told me three things."

He held up one finger. His hand trembled.

"One. Never let anyone know what Luna was."

A second finger.

"Two. Never trust the Council."

I felt Cassian go rigid behind me.

"And three." His voice dropped to a whisper. "She said someone inside the Council had known about the pregnancy from the very beginning. Someone who had been waiting for a hybrid child to be born. Someone who would do anything to get their hands on her."

The room seemed to tilt.

"She never told me who," he said. "She died before she could."

"So you hid me," I said slowly.

"I buried her under a different name. I raised you as a wolf. I told you your mother was one of us." He wiped his face with the back of his hand. "I thought if you never knew, they would never find you."

"And Victor?"

My father's face crumpled.

"Victor found out," he said. "Five years ago. He wouldn't tell me how. He just came to me one night and said he was going to the Moon Games, and he was going to win, and when he did, he would tell me everything."

My heart stopped.

"Three days later," my father whispered, "he was dead."

I don't remember leaving the room.

I remember the cold air of the balcony. The stone railing under my palms. The enormous moon hanging above the trees, pale and swollen, looking down at me like it had been waiting.

"Luna."

Cassian's footsteps stopped a few feet behind me.

"I'm fine," I said.

"You're not."

"I'm fine."

He didn't argue. He came to stand beside me, close enough that I felt the cold radiating off him, steady and solid. For a long while, neither of us spoke.

"Your father loved her," I said at last. "My mother. Your father loved her first."

"Yes."

"And I'm the thing standing between them."

"You're not standing between anything." His voice was quiet. "You're the only part of her that's left."

I made a sound that wasn't quite a laugh.

"That's a terrible thing to say to someone."

"It's true."

"You've known me for one night."

"I know." He looked at me, ice-blue eyes steady in the moonlight. "It doesn't feel like one night."

My throat closed.

I hated that he was right. I hated that every time he said something like that, the rope between us pulled tighter. I hated that my wolf, who had been silent all evening, was suddenly curled up against the inside of my ribs, warm and purring like she had finally found where she belonged.

"What do I do?" I whispered.

"Tonight?"

"Tonight."

He considered it.

"Tonight," he said, "we find out what's in Victor's grave."

I turned to stare at him.

"The Council won't open it until dawn. By then, whatever's in there will have been tampered with. Someone dug up that pendant. If we go now, before they do..."

"You'd break the king's order."

"I'd break a lot more than that."

"Why?"

He held my gaze, steady and unafraid.

"Because you asked me not to let them take you," he said. "And you haven't asked me for anything else."

~~~

The Silvermoon cemetery lay a mile from the border stones, tucked inside a hollow of old pines where the wind never quite reached. I hadn't been back since the funeral.

We left my father asleep on the couch, his Alpha aura finally quiet. I hated lying to him. I hated more that I hadn't even hesitated.

Cassian ran beside me the whole way, silent as a shadow. I didn't have to tell him where to turn. The pull in my chest led me straight to the old oak where Victor lay, the one he used to climb as a boy.

I stopped at the edge of the clearing.

"Luna?" Cassian's hand brushed my elbow. "What is it?"

I couldn't answer.

The headstone stood where it always had. Gray granite. Carved letters. Victor Rowan Vale. Beloved son and brother.

But the earth in front of it was wrong.

The grass had been torn up in a ragged rectangle. Fresh soil, black and wet, was heaped to one side. A shovel lay abandoned in the dirt. And at the center of it all, the coffin lid sat propped against the headstone, split down the middle.

My legs moved before my mind did.

"Luna, wait..."

I fell to my knees at the edge of the pit and looked down.

The coffin was open.

And it was empty.

Not disturbed. Not robbed. Empty. No body. No bones. No burial clothes. Only a bed of rotted white satin, and in the center of it, pressed neatly into the fabric where a man's chest should have been, one object.

A silver crossbow bolt.

Carved into the shaft, small and precise, the same number as the one that had nearly killed me.

Behind me, Cassian drew a sharp breath.

I couldn't breathe at all.

Because beside the bolt, tucked into the satin like a gift, was a folded sheet of paper. The corner was yellowed. The ink was old.

And on the front, in a hand I would have known anywhere, from a hundred birthday cards and a thousand school notes, were three words.

For my Luna.