Lies Beneath the Moonlight Chapter 08
Kane didn’t know the truth. Not really. He knew I was sick, but he didn’t know how sick. He knew I had silver poisoning, but he didn’t know that I was already dying. That the witch had given me a month – maybe less.
The night I got home from the tavern, my fever spiked.
My mother ran around the house, putting cold cloths on my forehead, changing my pillowcase when I sweated through it, calling the pack witch at two in the morning.
The witch came. She was an old woman with gray hair and kind eyes, and she had been treating me for seven years. She had watched me go from a healthy eighteen-year-old to a dying twenty-five-year-old. She had held my hand through every purification ritual. She had cried with my mother when the treatments stopped working.
That night, she took one look at me and her face went hard.
“The silver poison has reached her bone marrow,” she told my mother. “At this rate, she has maybe a month.”
My mother collapsed. She fell to her knees on the floor and grabbed the witch’s hands.
“You said three months. You said she had three months. How can it be ”
“The fall. The impact.” The witch shook her head. “It made the poison spread faster. I’ve done everything I can. She’s too weak for another purification.”
My mother sat on the floor and held my hand. She cried until she couldn’t breathe.
I opened my eyes. The room was blurry, but I could see her face. Her cheeks were wet. Her nose was running. She looked like a child – lost and scared and desperate.
“Mom,” I whispered. “Don’t cry.”
“How can I not cry?” she sobbed. “You’re dying.”
“I saw him, Mom. That was all I wanted.”
She pulled me into her arms and held me. Her body shook with every sob.
“You have no regrets,” she said. “But I do. You’re my only daughter. What am I supposed to do without you?”
I didn’t have an answer for that. So I just held her back as best I could.
She didn’t sleep that night. She stayed by my bed, holding my hand, changing my cold cloths, whispering prayers to the moon.
In the morning, my fever went down a little. I still looked like a ghost – pale and thin and weightless – but I could think clearly again.
“Mom,” I said. “Take me outside. I want to see the sun.”
She put me in the chair – my wheelchair – and pushed me out the door.
The sun was warm on my face. I couldn’t feel it. The silver poison had damaged my nerves over the years. But I pretended I could. I closed my eyes and tilted my head back and pretended.
“Take me to the old oak tree,” I said.
She pushed me there.
I looked up at the old tree. Its branches spread wide against the blue sky. Its roots dug deep into the earth. It had been there for a thousand years. It would be there for a thousand more.
I wouldn’t.
“Mom,” I said. “What if I hadn’t listened to Ilsa? What if I hadn’t pretended to cheat on Kane?”
My mother didn’t answer. She just stood behind me with her hands on the handles of my chair.
“Maybe we would be married by now,” I said. “Maybe we would have pups. Or maybe I would have died years ago and he would have watched. Maybe he would have held my hand while the silver poison ate me aliye.”
I paused. Tears came to my eyes.
“I don’t regret it, Mom. I left him so he could live. He has Vivra. He has a pup on the way. He has a whole life. He won’t be destroyed when I die.”
I pulled the moonstone off my neck. The chain was warm from my skin. The stone glowed faintly in the sunlight.
“Take this back to him,” I said. “I don’t need it anymore.”
My mother took the stone. Her hand was shaking.
“I don’t need the moon to find him,” I said. “I already saw him. I already said goodbye:”
I closed my eyes.
“Take me home, Mom. I’m tired.”
