Moon bound Hearts: The Wolf and the Crown Prince

THE NIGHT OF

d the old women who kept the hearth fires. But the night the sky bled, the chest-deep silence of the valley broke into a sharp, el

last of the morning's roots into a woven satchel. Her breath made small ghosts in the cold air. A t

watched them with the patient, guarded look of someone who had learned the rhythms of waiting. She was not like the others-no one had let her forget that. Half-wolf, they called her in whispers. A silver shadow

past and the present felt as thin as the skin of a cicada. The scent on the wind shifted-pine smoke and damp loam and something older, mineral an

e place of half-remembered stories and the land that bled into Neverland. People spoke of Neverland as a child's map-bright and impos

e a name. She stepped toward it without deciding to. Her feet found the hidden path, the one th

d. The trunks seemed to lean, curious, expectant. Shadows moved like breathing things. A sound glanced off the air ahead: the echo of horns, like a hunting call muffled by distance. Lyri

a current that answered to the moon. She pressed her palms to her sternum and exhaled. Fur prickled along her arms, a faint silvery down looking suddenly taller

of polished metal: a silhouette with the sniff of river clay and the untamed set of ears. But this was diff

arpening like small knives. Her spine elongated, and a soft, warm weight threaded along it: a tail, feathery at the tip. Lyria's breath

he fir

er feet. It rose from her chest in a spill of brightness, like moonlight seething into form. When it touched her tongue, it tas

ver flame hummed like a thing she had always known how to cradle. It answered to the red moon, and in its reflection, she glimpsed more than her own face. For a mom

of sharp, barbed words flung by those who feared difference. The silver flame, warm in the hollo

ail like scattered coins. Where the flame brushed the bark, ancient runes awakened, faint and twisting, writing themselves in smo

," an old vo

an age-soft surprise. The elders had always been able to notice the small things: a missing goat, a change in weather, a child's lie. To them, Lyria had been a c

ilver," he said,

Lyria's tail lowered another fraction. The flame dwindled but did

?" she asked, voice rough

bled," he said. "I know the songs my mother taught me when I was a child. The Silver

ill you-will you lock me away?" she asked, thinking of exile t

will be questions. But I do not think you can be chained

allowed herself to be a creature less alone than she had been since memory began. T

h. "You will choose how to use it. The world wi

thought of the border that separated her people from the courts of Neverland, of the legends that told of princes and crowns and

said softly. "The

ome. Her wolf ears lowered, and she became Lyria once more than a rumor, more than a half-thing. T

d like a shadow through the birches. Lyria paused and felt it, a pull as sure as the moon. She did not know whose i

louder hunger: the hunger to seek what the flame had shown. She wrapped her satchel tighter and walked into the camp where whisp

ia would have to decide what to do with herself a