Chapter 81: Back to the Stolen Bed

The passage beneath Blackridge had not changed. The stones still wept moisture, the torches still burned low, and the air still carried the smell of iron and old lies. Nora had taken this route twice before: once as a Luna fetching Iris a tray of tea she knew would be refused, and once as a ghost the night she fled the pack with nothing but the clothes on her back and a child Rowan had called impossible. Now she walked it a third time, and Hope rode against her chest in a tied sling, breath soft and even. The silver tear the infant had shed in the nursery had dried to a flake on Nora's collar, and she had not washed it off. It felt like proof. Darius moved a half-step behind her, his presence a wall of warmth at her back. He had not argued when she told him where she needed to go. He had simply picked up the torch and said, "Then we go." She stopped at the base of the narrow staircase that led up to the room. The steps were worn concave from generations of feet--royal and servant alike. The torchlight threw her shadow long and thin up the stone. Hope stirred but did not wake. "Iris's room," Nora said under her breath. "Rowan gave her the Luna chamber after the claiming." "Do you want me to wait here?" Darius asked. "No. I need you to see this." She climbed. Her boots found each step with care. The door at the top was unlocked, the wood swollen from the damp. She pushed it open with her shoulder. The room was exactly as she remembered--the four-poster bed stripped of its silk, the cold hearth, the window that faced the moonstone courtyard. But Nora did not stop at the bed. She crossed to the far corner, where the floorboards had been laid in a pattern that seemed random unless you knew what to look for. She knelt, shifting Hope's weight to one arm. The sling kept the baby snug. With her free hand, she pressed on the third board from the wall. It gave with a soft groan. She worked the board loose, then the next, then the next. Beneath the wood, the stone floor had been carved with a circle as wide as her outstretched arms. Wards spun outward from a central star--runes she had seen in the old texts, the same ones Iris had traced on the nursery floor. A mother-bond transfer circle. Designed to rip a Luna's magic from her and graft it onto another. Darius crouched beside her, the torch casting light into the hollow. "Is that--" "Her blood." Nora's voice was flat. The center of the star was dark with it, dried and flaking, but still red. Not rust. Not ink. Blood, old enough to soak into the lime, fresh enough to remember. Nora's blood. The blood she had shed in this room on the night of the claiming, when Rowan had cut her palm with the ritual blade and placed it over Iris's heart. She had thought it was a seal of loyalty. A symbol. It had been payment. Fuel. Every drop a thread for Seraphine to pull. Nora's hand hovered over the dried stain. She did not touch it. She did not need to. The circle still contained her blood--still held the resonance of her life. Which meant it was still active. She looked up at Darius. "She never cleansed it. She left it here, waiting." Darius's jaw tightened. Behind him, the torch flame guttered as though something in the walls drew breath. Hope whimpered, a small sound that cut through the stillness. Nora pressed a hand to the baby's back. Her pulse beat steady through the sling. "I need to undo this," she said. "But I need to know what happens when I do." The dried blood gleamed in the torchlight. It was still hers. Still waiting.