Chapter Four -The Garden of Thorns
1660 Words
—Aurelia—
The bells tolled midnight — the third toll since the council's decree. I wasn’t waiting for salvation. I was making my own.
They thought the tower was secure. They thought I was pliable. But they'd forgotten that a healer knows anatomy… and weak points, even in stone and ritual.
I waited until the palace guards changed shift. I watched their patterns like I used to study the blood flow of a fevered child. They always blinked too long at the eastern wall. Always lingered near the moonstone altar. Arrogant men in armor, guarding relics rather than prisoners.
The priestess assigned to me had left an oil lamp near the window, casting weak light over a chamber that reeked of incense and old books. The curtains were silk. The bedposts, carved from alderwood, meant to honor some goddess whose name I didn’t remember.
I took the silk ties from the drapes. Braided them with strips of bedding. My hands moved fast, firm. I’d done this before — not for escape, but for healing. For binding shattered limbs and bruised ribs. Now I was binding a path down the outer wall.
The moon had shifted to silver. The mark on my chest pulsed in rhythm with my fear, but also… something steadier.
He feels me again.
I paused, clutching the window ledge.
“Forgive me,” I whispered into the wind, not sure if I meant Kaelen or the gods. And then I climbed. My feet scraped stone. My palms burned as silk tore once, but held.
The palace gardens spread below, twisted and symmetrical. But the one I sought wasn’t meant for beauty. It was walled off by ivy-laced iron and bone.
The Garden of Thorns.
The place where old Lunas were buried, and failed rituals were forgotten. They kept it locked, sealed by holy writ. But I’d heard rumors from the servants — whispers that not even the council dared linger there. Because he could feel it. And if a Luna died in its soil, the wolf stirred.
Perfect.
I hit the ground hard, rolling into the wet grass. My breath caught, but I didn’t stop. I ran. The gate was cold as I gripped it. The moment I stepped inside, the air changed. Stillness reigned. The flowers were too red. Too open. Thorns curled like ribs from dead vines.
A graveyard wrapped in a garden’s skin. I wasn’t trying to find escape anymore. I was trying to find the truth.
And then I heard it. Footsteps. Not behind me. Ahead.
I crouched, ducking behind a thorn tree. My hands reached instinctively for the dagger hidden in my boot — not blessed, not ceremonial. Just sharp.
The figure emerged slowly through the fog. A woman. Old. Hooded. Her face was carved in grief. “You shouldn’t be here, child,” she said.
I stood. “Neither should you.”
She turned fully toward me. Her eyes were pale silver. Sightless — but somehow piercing.
“I buried the last Luna here,” she whispered. “She tried to run too.”
“What happened to her?”
The woman smiled — and it broke my bones with sorrow.
“She ran into him.”
—Kaelen—
She smelled like my memories. Rainwater. Lavender crushed underfoot. And something else — ink and doubt. The door to the sanctum opened when it should not have.
And for the first time in centuries, the priestess who entered wasn’t reciting anything. She just stared at me. Her robes were too clean. Her hands are still too. Her eyes—uncertain.
“Why are you here?” I asked.
The chains around my chest creaked, resentful. The runes on the floor pulsed, warning her. But she stepped closer.
“I’m here to ask you a question,” she said. “And I want the truth.”
I laughed — a dry, cracked sound.
“No one has asked me for the truth in centuries.”
The priestess pulled back her hood. Young. Maybe twenty. Sharp cheekbones. A crescent pendant hung from her throat, but she didn’t touch it like the others. She let it hang loose.
“You knew her,” she said. “Before. The Luna who broke you.”
The chain snapped taut. My breath hitched. Her words were a knife slipped beneath old scabs.
“I knew her,” I said flatly. “I loved her. She loved power more.” The girl didn’t flinch.
“She’s why the curse began.”
“Yes.”
“But this one,” she whispered, her eyes darting toward the ceiling, as though sensing Aurelia above — “She’s different.” I said nothing.
“She’s resisting. I watched her argue with the Oracle. I saw her look at the moon like it wasn’t holy, like it was a prison. And you… You’re not what they said you’d be.” I stared at her.
“What exactly did they say I would be?”
“A monster who devours innocence. A god twisted into teeth. A beast incapable of mercy.” I smiled bitterly.
“They speak of their own reflection.” The priestess hesitated.
Then — bold, dangerous — she stepped forward, close enough that the heat from the bond sparked through my bones.
“I want to help her,” she said.
My eyes narrowed. “And you think helping her means helping me?”
She knelt, removing a hidden scroll from her satchel. Her voice lowered.
“There’s a ritual — forbidden. One that lets a Luna see through the curse instead of being consumed by it. It was outlawed after the first betrayal. But I found it in the catacombs. I brought it here.”
She pushed the scroll toward the edge of the rune barrier, lips trembling.
“You have to choose, Kaelen. Stay caged and let them offer her to a god that doesn’t exist anymore… or become the man who can meet her without chains.”
I stared down at the parchment. Blood ink. Old tongue. Dangerous magic. If I took it… I’d be unshackled. But also exposed.
And if Aurelia saw all of me—not the myth, not the bond, but the whole, unvarnished truth—would she stay? The girl stood again.
“You don’t have to love her,” she whispered. “Just stop them from killing her soul.”
And then she was gone.
—Aurelia—
The old woman watched me like she’d seen death wear my face before. Her hand hovered near a thornbush, fingers brushing petals that looked too crimson to be natural. My instincts told me to run — to find another path out — but I stood still.
"You said she ran into him," I said slowly, heart drumming in my throat. "What does that mean?" Her expression didn’t change.
"It means she mistook the beast for salvation. And salvation doesn’t come when called. It comes when bled." A chill crept over me.
“She loved him?”
“Love is not what saves you,” the woman said, her voice hollow. “Sometimes it’s what curses you.”
The wind shifted — and with it came a sound.
Not a howl.
A heartbeat.
Not mine.
Louder. Steadier. Heavy like the thud of hooves in soil or the pounding of war drums. It pressed against my ribcage, made the mark on my collarbone pulse again.
I stumbled back, gripping the base of the thorn tree. “What is this?” I gasped.
Her silver eyes narrowed. “He’s reaching for you again. Through the bond. Through memory.”
“I didn’t ask for this.”
“No one ever does,” she murmured.
The wind picked up. Something tugged at the braid of silk still tied around my waist. My eyes darted to the gate — still open, just slightly. But beyond the thorns…
I saw it.
A grave with no name. Fresh. Unblessed. Burned into its edge was a rune I couldn’t read — but felt in my soul. A crescent. Beneath it, in blood-red ink:
“She chose.”
—Kaelen—
The scroll burned in my hand. The priestess was gone. The guards hadn’t noticed her. Or maybe they had, and the gods had blinded them for one brief, borrowed moment of rebellion.
I stared at the incantation. It would unbind me. Not fully. Not permanently. But for a night.
It would let me walk the boundary between curse and clarity — to see her, maybe even touch her, without the full weight of what I’d become.
But there were warnings. Blood would be required.
Mine.
Hers.
Or worse — both.
And if she rejected me, then — if she looked at me and saw the wolf, not the man — the bond would splinter. And I would lose her before we ever truly met.
Still…
I could feel her. Not just through the thread of magic. Through the rhythm of the earth itself. She was in the garden. Near the old graves. Near her.
The last one.
My hands curled into fists. They buried her there to erase the memory — to make sure no Luna ever again believed she had a choice.
But Aurelia…
She was choosing.
Right now.
Running. Asking questions. Tearing at the roots of the ritual, they thought she’d submit to. And I? I was still in chains.
Still waiting.
Still silent.
No longer.
I turned to the wall of the sanctum. My claws extended without effort — not as a threat, but as a symbol.
I sliced my palm open with the edge of a bone.
Blood spilled.
It painted the ancient stones like a vow.
And I whispered the incantation — low, steady, with a voice I hadn’t used since the last time I loved and lost.
“Come morning,” I whispered, “if she calls me… I will answer.”
- Writer
