My gaze dropped to the parchment in my trembling hands. The healer’s mark confirmed it. I was carrying a pup. I had come from the healer’s den with joy in my chest, ready to tell him we would have another pup after losing Sven, my seven-winter old boy.
But now that happiness felt distant, like a fading dream.
My fingers tightened around the door until they ached. Razen had killed our son.
“And Navielle, how did she react after you sacrificed her sister’s pup for her?” Layton asked quietly.
“She pitied the boy,” Razen said without care. “But she understood. He was already dying.”
Anger and disbelief surged through me.
My own sister accepted it. She allowed my son to die for her sake. How could she?
“I only hope Nivella never learns the truth,” Layton muttered.
“She will not,” Razen replied with cold certainty. “She’s too soft. Too trusting. Even if she learns it, she has no one. She’s powerless.”
Powerless?
My jaw tightened as that word burned through me like fire.
A mother’s rage is not something the moon can calm.
I would make them pay. Both of them!
They took my pup. They broke me. And now, I would break them in return.
I left the Blackspire stronghold with tears falling freely, my chest tight with betrayal.
I climbed into my carriage and drove without direction, not caring where the road led. I only needed distance. Distance from him and from everything.
The path blurred as my tears would not stop. My mind replayed every word I had heard.
At last, I found myself at the sacred burial grounds. The place I had avoided because the pain was too heavy. My hands trembled as I stepped onto the cold earth.
Sven’s grave rested at the far edge, beneath a lone silver tree. I fell to my knees, my fingers brushing over the name carved into stone.
Sven Blackspire
Beloved Son. Forever under the Moon.
A broken sob left my lips as memories crashed over me. The night Razen returned, covered in blood, his face filled with false grief.
“He was taken by rogue wolves,” he had said, voice shaking. “It happened too fast. I couldn’t save him.”
I had screamed and collapsed, my world shattering in an instant. When I woke, Sven was already buried. Razen told me it was done quickly, to spare me from seeing my son lifeless.
But now I knew. It was never mercy. He buried Sven to hide his sin.