Crescent (Old Version)

+ Part 24 +

I was painfully aware of the fact that there were two more guards at every post the next day. It might have been that Ceth thought I might try and run again. Or maybe it was the servants whispering of another attack on the border.

Ceth and Moira were both absent from breakfast which meant that I ate in the servant's hall alone, watching Janice prowl back and forth while cooking.

After, Saren was silent as she lead me down the path beneath the castle, guards behind us like phantom mists until we reached the old mining cavern. We walked the rest of the trek alone. 

I hadn't stopped sweating since.

When I finally did see Moira again, Saren had made me shift so many times that day that I sat in a puddle on the floor of the hut when she appeared. I was to know this room six days a week for at least five hours a day. Shifting was beginning to come like sleep. I'd close my eyes, my mind would go blank, and when I woke, I felt the burning cold again. Then, I'd blink and it would start all over again. Never without pain. Never without a wave of sickness. 

Saren had been gone when I'd woken up this time. Instead, Moira stood in the doorframe, the wooden door rattling on its hinges in the frigid wind. She frowned at me, and my eyes fell to the canteen of water she carried at her side. I shook as I moved, and failed, to move toward her. Moira crossed the room, sat beside me, and gently pulled my hair back from my face. She held the jug to my mouth herself and made me drink. 

I wasn't sure I could hold it down. I hadn't been able to with breakfast, and now dinner just sounded like a curse. But, I knew I needed it. So, I drank, my lips chapped, the skin at my fingers bleeding from the cold.

Her chocolate hair was down as I looked at her, and she gave me a small encouraging smile as she coaxed more water down. "I'm sorry," she whispered. 

I'm sorry he's doing this, I felt she wanted to say. But, Saren was likely somewhere nearby. I knew she couldn't say more. 

"I heard about yesterday. You got to see your mother?"

I didn't bother acknowledging the statement. I blinked at her, at the shadow of frost that was left in the doorframe in her wake. The flakes fell to the ground slowly as my mother's words echoed in my memory: "The forest, Brenna. You will find your answers there."

Moira continued: "The day you can shift without thinking about it will be the day he- the day this stops."

I nodded weakly, but that day still felt so far off. I swallowed and cooled my breathing. "Does Ceth... make everyone shift like this?"

She looked to the folded hands now in her lap and squeezed them tightly. "Not everyone." The look in her eyes spoke wonders. She knew this feeling. She wasn't lying when she said it would end.

"You too?" I croaked. A nod. The thought of her on the ground, Ceth watching- Nic even- made me sick all over again. "He's Nic's father." I said plainly. There was no dancing around it. There was a story, some reason that Moira herself wasn't the Lady of Crescent, the twin ruler of White Stag. 

Her eyes were glazed over when she finally looked at me. "Yes. Yes, Ceth is Dominic's father. 

"And?" I pushed. It wasn't my business, but something told me that if I asked, she would answer. I wanted answers from somebody, at least.

"And... Ceth is not the person I thought he was," her voice broke as she glanced around the hut. She pointed towards the woods beyond the door, and I understood.

Not here.

Though every muscle in my body protested, Moira helped me stand. I nearly whined as my muscles adjusted to the weight. She kindly helped me limp out into the snow. A gust of wind blew the door shut behind us, and I looked toward the graying sky as snow crunched beneath our feet.

She held me upright, my bones grating against each other, and I waited until we had found a steady, limping gait in the direction of the castle.

She ran her hand soothingly over the back of my palm, almost absent mindedly as she swallowed and cleared her throat. "I'm bound to this court," she said. "Once you swear your oath, it's near impossible to leave. There are rules. And, if I leave these grounds, Ceth would have me killed. He would force me to shift, scalp me, and hang my body for the beasts. A traitor's death." I felt a lump forming in my throat, one that was far too difficult to swallow. I focused on our steps instead, each burning. "I made my choice years ago, before Nic, when... when my mother died and I took her place as the Head Mistress and officially met Ceth." 

Her hand gripped mine harshly, and there was longing in her voice. "I loved him.... He was- just a man. I was just a woman. I knew I could never been his lady... I understood the way it would look to have the Head Mistress become Lady. Pureblood or not. And, I was okay with that. He just- changed in the months leading up to his father's passing. He became..." she stopped herself, voice hoarse, as if terrified the birch trees or the snow banks might be listening in. "Cruel and forceful." I could hear her tears falling now, her composure slowly falling away the further we walked. I wanted desperately to hug her, to make some attempt at showing my sorry. "I will never regret my son. If nothing else, he was the gods only kindness with Ceth. I don't regret him one bit." She sniffled, and her voice hardened. "But, I regret the naïve girl I let myself become. Some part of me knew that after Dominic... Ceth would be through with me. I knew."

She looked at me hard suddenly. "You don't know me, Brenna. And, by gods, I don't know you. But, you can't be the same girl I was. I saw the way you talked to him that first day and I knew you wouldn't be." She seemed to laugh and I smiled a tad.

I did have a mouth on me.

She cautioned, slowly as I knew we were approaching the hallow leading down to the cavern. "Pick and chose your fights with him. If you want to see them again, you will do things you won't like... Shameful things. Painful things." My stomach turned leaden all over again. "This gala only happens once every century. The front he'll expect you to pull will not be an easy one."

All this time dancing around the idea of seeing my family again. I had promised to play by his rules. I had bound myself in a way that left for no questions, no room for mistakes. And, I hadn't even considered that I truly might not be able to fulfill his every whim. 

Now, looking at Moira, hearing the things I'd always suspected spoken to life, it made me wonder just how tightly I'd bound myself to that monster of a man. 

I didn't fit the part of lady, of pureblood, of the strength that came with both titles. I wasn't Moira. I don't think I could stay with Ceth after the things he'd done. Yet, she did. And, she seemed to spot that doubtful look in my eyes. 

She gripped my hands one last time. "I've known very few wolves to survive a silver bullet so close to the heart." She motioned to my shoulder, the one I hadn't realized I'd been rubbing. There was still pain after shifting and if I adjusted myself just so. "Even fewer that have survived shifting as much as you have. If anyone can do this... You can." 

Two guards were waiting on the other side of the tunnel's stone exit. I stepped out toward them ready to be escorted to dinner, just as Ceth usually expected. With a simple nod, Moira smiled. Then, she was gone.