Nyx
Everyone rushed toward Lysera the instant her body struck the marble.
The sound of her fall had barely faded before the hall erupted, gasps ripping through the air like torn fabric, voices colliding in a frantic, overlapping storm of panic, shock, and raw disbelief. High heels skittered. Glasses clattered forgotten onto trays. The music, once bright and celebratory, cut off mid-note as though soone had strangled the strings. What had been a glittering birthday feast only minutes earlier now resembled a battlefield after the first casualty.
I remained rooted at the top of the stairs.
Frozen.
Breath trapped sowhere between my lungs and my throat.
From up here the scene unfolded like a slow, terrible painting I could not look away from. I watched it all as though I had beco untethered from my own body, a ghost caught between one heartbeat and the next, unable to step fully into the chaos below.
Thorne reached her first.
He dropped to his knees so fast the impact must have bruised them, hands shaking as he cradled her head with a tenderness that felt like violence against my ribs. His fingers threaded gently through her hair, searching for blood, for injury, for any sign of life. The worry carved across his face was so unguarded, so visceral, brows knit, mouth tight with fear, eyes wide and glassy, that sothing inside fractured cleanly in two.
He looked terrified.
Not the polite concern he sotis offered when I was hurting. Not the restrained worry he showed when my parents’ cruelty left fresh marks. This was terror, pure, animal, unguarded. The kind of fear that strips every mask away.
And in that single, searing instant the question clawed its way into my mind, uninvited and rciless:
If it were lying broken at the bottom of those stairs... would he look at the sa way?
The thought burned worse than any slap.
"Call the doctor!" soone bellowed from the crowd.
Several pack mbers fumbled for phones, fingers trembling so violently they nearly dropped them. Voices rose again, urgent, overlapping orders, nas of healers shouted across the hall. The banners that had hung so proudly... crimson and silver, woven with symbols of alliance and joy, now swayed gently in the sudden draft of movent, mocking reminders of what this night had been ant to celebrate.
Then my mother pushed through.
She carved a path with ruthless efficiency, elbows sharp, expression stripped bare. When she dropped beside Lysera her face was bloodless, cheeks hollow, lips parted in a silent gasp. Fear twisted her features into sothing almost unrecognizable. Not fear of scandal. Fear of losing her.
The one daughter who mattered.
I swallowed against the stone in my throat and forced my legs to obey. Each step down the stairs felt like wading through tar, knees weak, ankles threatening to buckle, every joint protesting as though my body understood what was coming long before my mind could na it. The murmurs swelled around as I descended, low at first, then sharper, slicing against my skin like invisible blades.
"She pushed her..."
"...just like Eira..."
"...can’t even pretend innocence anymore..."
The mont my bare feet touched the cold marble floor I had no chance to steady myself.
My mother surged upright.
Her eyes, usually cold, usually distant, blazed with sothing feral. She closed the distance in two strides.
Pah.
Her palm connected with my cheek in a burst of white-hot pain. My head snapped sideways; ears rang with a high, tinny whine. I staggered back one step, then another, tasting copper where my teeth had caught the inside of my lip.
"You want to kill her too?" she scread, voice splintering on the edge of hysteria. "Just like you killed Eira?!"
The accusation landed heavier than the physical blow.
The hall went deathly still.
Every eye... every single one... turned to .
In that suspended heartbeat I understood sothing with terrifying, bone-deep clarity:
No matter what had actually happened.
No matter the sequence of events.
No matter the truth I carried inside like a wound that refused to close.
I would always be the villain in their story.
Always.
"I didn’t," I said.
My voice ca out small, barely threaded together, trembling on the edge of breaking. I lifted my gaze to et my mother’s, pleading silently for sothing, anything, that resembled belief.
I wished I didn’t have to speak at all.
I wished I could stand in perfect silence and let the truth radiate from untouched, unquestioned.
But silence had never protected . Silence had only ever given them more room to fill the void with their own version of events.
The expressions staring back at told the rest.
They had already decided.
Already judged.
Already convicted.
Exactly as they had the night Eira died.
The weight of it crushed inward. Why did misfortune cling to so loyally? Why did every tragedy circle back to my na like a hound trained to my scent?
Tears burned behind my eyes, hot and inevitable.
"I really didn’t push her," I forced out, louder this ti, voice cracking on every syllable. "Believe , Mom. She was the one about to push off the stairs..."
"Yet she’s the one lying on the floor," Rhett interjected, voice flat and cold as he stepped forward from the crowd. "And you’re still standing on your feet."
His words fell like a gavel.
Simple.
Irrefutable.
Perfect logic to everyone listening.
Murmurs rippled outward... agreent, certainty, quiet condemnation. Heads nodded. Eyes narrowed in confirmation.
To them, the evidence was plain.
I opened my mouth again..."I didn’t" ....but the word cracked and died before it could fully form. I didn’t even know who I was trying to convince anymore. Them? Myself? The Moon Goddess who had long since stopped answering my prayers?
Before anyone could speak again, the pack doctors burst through the side doors, white coats flapping, dical bags swinging, stretcher already unfolding between them. They moved with practiced urgency, voices low and clipped as they assessed Lysera’s pulse, her breathing, the angle of her limbs. Careful hands lifted her onto the stretcher, gentle, reverent, as though she were made of porcelain instead of flesh and bone.
My mother followed imdiately, hovering at the stretcher’s side, fingers fluttering uselessly over Lysera’s still form. Rhett stayed close, silently at her other side. Neither of them glanced back at .
Actually my mother did.
And the hatred in her eyes as she passed seared straight through , pure, unfiltered, eternal.
Thorne followed too.
He paused, just for a heartbeat, at the edge of the crowd.
He looked back.
One glance.
That was all it took.
Disappointnt clouded his features, deep, unmistakable, heavier than any rejection he had spoken aloud earlier.
As though I had finally confird every doubt he had ever buried about .
In that instant all I wanted was to run to him. To grab his sleeve. To pour every frantic explanation into the space between us until he believed . Until he rembered who I was to him.
But he turned away.
And walked after her.
Lysera’s friends trailed behind, a small cluster of silk gowns and glittering jewels, whispering furiously, casting glances back at filled with equal parts fear, disgust, and vicious triumph.
Then my father moved.
He had started toward the exit with the others, broad shoulders rigid, stride purposeful, but he stopped directly in front of .
For a long second he simply stared.
Then he raised his hand.
I flinched instinctively, braced for the impact, almost welcod it.
But the blow never ca.
He lowered his arm slowly... as though physically restraining sothing far darker than anger. Sothing colder. Sothing that lived deeper.
"If anything happens to her," he said, voice low and lethal, each word carved from ice, "you will regret the day you were born."
He turned to the gammas stationed near the archway, the pack’s enforcers, faces blank masks of duty.
"Take her to the dungeon."
The command was absolute.
Hands closed around my arms instantly, firm, unyielding. I didn’t fight. I didn’t scream. I didn’t even try to pull away.
There was no strength left in for any of it.
They dragged out, feet scraping against marble, then stone, then colder stone still, my heart hollowed out, my fate already written in the sa ink they had used nine years ago.
Once again paying for a cri I didn’t commit.
Hours later... or minutes, or days; ti dissolved in the dark, I couldn’t tell.
The dungeon had never been built for the innocent.
It was designed to erase ti itself from those still awaiting judgnt, to hold them suspended in a gray limbo between hope and despair. No windows. No clocks. No shift in light to mark the turning of day into night. Only unrelenting darkness, damp stone that leeched warmth from skin and bone, and silence so thick it pressed against my chest like a second ribcage.
Once sentence was passed, the guilty were removed, handed to external authorities, tried under pack law or human law depending on the cri. Until then, this place existed for one purpose only:
To break you.
I sat curled in the corner, back pressed to the rough wall, arms wrapped tight around my knees, rocking in small,
Over and over I whispered the sa prayer into the black air, voice hoarse and cracking.
Please... spare Lysera’s life.
The words shocked even as they left my lips.
But they were true.
I don’t want to be nad a murder again.
At so point, sowhere between the slap and the cell door clanging shut, I had beco willing to trade places with her, if it ant she would live.
Maybe then... just maybe... they would look at the sa way... and I would finally receive even a fraction of the love and concern they gave her so freely.
But the dungeon offered no answer.
Then... footsteps.
Slow at first. Then faster. Echoing down the stone corridor like approaching judgnt.
My heart slamd against my ribs so violently I thought it might crack them.
There were only two reasons anyone ca for .
Either Lysera was dead...and I was about to be dragged before the council, branded murderer twice over, sentenced to exile or worse...
Or she had woken.
And I would be released.
Free of the cri I hadn’t committed.
I pressed trembling hands to my chest, fingers laced so tightly the knuckles bleached white.
Please.
I prayed harder than I had ever prayed in my life, silent, desperate, wordless.
Let it be the latter.
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