The healers were summoned—not to restore me, but to cleanse the chamber of “corruption.” They spoke in hushed tones as they brushed salt and ash across the floor where I had bled spirit instead of blood.
I was not taken to the infirmary.
I was escorted back to my chambers like a criminal.
No one spoke to me.
The bond-link between Kael and me felt different now—muted, distant, as though someone had draped a thick veil between our souls. He didn’t come that night. Or the next.
On the third evening, I finally forced myself to leave the room.
The corridors buzzed with whispers.
“She couldn’t hold the heir…”
“The Moon doesn’t bless traitors…”
“Lyra’s scent is changing—maybe she’s the one meant to be Luna…”
I stood behind a stone pillar, my nails biting into my palms, as my world reassembled itself around my absence.
I went to the ancestral shrine where my father’s spirit lamp was kept—a dim crystal flame that pulsed weakly against the growing shadows.
Papa.
Even bound to the altar, his life-force was fading. The healers had told me weeks ago: without a completed Moon-heir ritual to anchor our bloodline, his spirit would eventually slip into the Veil.