Echoed Lullabies (Lunar Chronicles x Reader)

Chapter 47

She dreamed that she was being chased by an enormous white wolf, its fangs bared and its eyes flashing beneath a full moon. She was running through crops thick with mud that sucked at her shoes, her breath forming clouds of steam. Her throat stung. Her legs burned. She ran as fast as she could, but her body became heavier with every step. The shriveled leaves of sugar beets turned rotten and brittle under her. She spotted a house in the distance—her house. The farmhouse her grandmother had raised her in, the windows beaming with warmth.

The house was safety. The house was home.

But it receded into the distance with each painful step. The air around her became thick with fog, and the house disappeared altogether, swallowed whole by the encroaching shadows.

She tripped, landing on her hands and knees. She rolled over, scrambling and kicking at the ground. Mud clung to her clothes and hair. The coldness from the ground soaked into her bones. The wolf prowled closer. Its lean muscles moved gracefully under the coat of fur. It snarled, eyes lit with hunger.

Her fingers fished around on the ground, searching for a weapon, anything. They struck something smooth and hard. She grasped it and pulled it from the squelching mud—an axe, its sharp blade glistening with moonlight.

The wolf leaped, gaping jaws unhinged.

Scarlet lifted the axe. Braced herself. Swung.

The blade cut clean through the beast, cutting it into two pieces from head to tail. Warm blood splattered over Scarlet's face as the two wolf halves landed on either side of her. Her stomach roiled. She was going to throw up.

She dropped the axe and collapsed back on the ground. The mud squished around her ears. Overhead, the moon filled up the whole sky.

Then the wolf halves began to rustle. They gradually rose up, now only the soft outer pelt of the beast, shorn in two. Scarlet could make out vague human-like shapes standing over her, each wearing half of the snow-white pelt.

The fog cleared and Wolf and her grand-mère were before her. Holding their arms out.

Welcoming her home.

Scarlet gasped. Her eyes flew open.

She was met with the sight of steel bars, the earthy smell of ferns and moss, and the chatter of a thousand birds—some trapped in their own elaborate cages, others flocked in the tree branches that entwined around the enormous beams supporting the glass ceiling.

A wolf yipped, sounding both sorrowful and concerned. Scarlet forced herself onto an elbow so she could see the barred enclosure on the other side of the pathway. The white wolf was sitting there, watching her. He howled, just a short, curious sound, not the haunting howls that Scarlet heard in her dreams. She imagined he was asking if she was all right. She might have been screaming or thrashing during the nightmare, and the wolf's pale yellow eyes blinked with worry.

Scarlet tried to gulp, but her mouth was parched, her saliva too thick. She must be going crazy to be carrying on silent conversations with wolves.

"He likes you."

Gasping, Scarlet flipped onto her back.

A stranger, a girl, was sitting cross-legged in her cage, so close Scarlet could have touched her. Scarlet tried to push herself away, but the action sent pain rippling through her bandaged hand. She hissed and fell back onto the ground.

Her hand was the worst of it—Levana had forced her to take her own left pinky finger to the second knuckle. She had not passed out, though she wished she would have. A Lunar doctor had been waiting to bandage the wound, and he had done it with such precision, Scarlet suspected it was a very common procedure.