Nyx
Everyone rushed toward Lysera the instant her body struck the marble.
The sound of her fall had barely faded before the hall erupted, gasps ripping through the air like torn fabric, voices colliding in a frantic, overlapping storm of panic, shock, and raw disbelief. High heels skittered. Glasses clattered forgotten onto trays. The music, once bright and celebratory, cut off mid-note as though someone had strangled the strings. What had been a glittering birthday feast only minutes earlier now resembled a battlefield after the first casualty.
I remained rooted at the top of the stairs.
Frozen.
Breath trapped somewhere between my lungs and my throat.
From up here the scene unfolded like a slow, terrible painting I could not look away from. I watched it all as though I had become untethered from my own body, a ghost caught between one heartbeat and the next, unable to step fully into the chaos below.
Thorne reached her first.
He dropped to his knees so fast the impact must have bruised them, hands shaking as he cradled her head with a tenderness that felt like violence against my ribs. His fingers threaded gently through her hair, searching for blood, for injury, for any sign of life. The worry carved across his face was so unguarded, so visceral, brows knit, mouth tight with fear, eyes wide and glassy, that something inside me fractured cleanly in two.
He looked terrified.
Not the polite concern he sometimes offered when I was hurting. Not the restrained worry he showed when my parents' cruelty left fresh marks. This was terror, pure, animal, unguarded. The kind of fear that strips every mask away.
And in that single, searing instant the question clawed its way into my mind, uninvited and merciless:
If it were me lying broken at the bottom of those stairs… would he look at me the same way?
The thought burned worse than any slap.
"Call the doctor!" someone bellowed from the crowd.
Several pack members fumbled for phones, fingers trembling so violently they nearly dropped them. Voices rose again, urgent, overlapping orders, names of healers shouted across the hall. The banners that had hung so proudly... crimson and silver, woven with symbols of alliance and joy, now swayed gently in the sudden draft of movement, mocking reminders of what this night had been meant to celebrate.
Then my mother pushed through.
She carved a path with ruthless efficiency, elbows sharp, expression stripped bare. When she dropped beside Lysera her face was bloodless, cheeks hollow, lips parted in a silent gasp. Fear twisted her features into something almost unrecognizable. Not fear of scandal. Not fear of politics.
Fear of losing her.
The one daughter who mattered.
I swallowed against the stone in my throat and forced my legs to obey. Each step down the stairs felt like wading through tar, knees weak, ankles threatening to buckle, every joint protesting as though my body understood what was coming long before my mind could name it. The murmurs swelled around me as I descended, low at first, then sharper, slicing against my skin like invisible blades.
"She pushed her..."
"...just like Eira..."
"...can't even pretend innocence anymore..."
The moment my bare feet touched the cold marble floor I had no chance to steady myself.
My mother surged upright.
Her eyes, usually cold, usually distant, blazed with something feral. She closed the distance in two strides.
Pah.
The slap rang out louder than any shout, crisp, resounding, silencing the hall as effectively as a gunshot.
Her palm connected with my cheek in a burst of white-hot pain. My head snapped sideways; ears rang with a high, tinny whine. I staggered back one step, then another, tasting copper where my teeth had caught the inside of my lip.
"You want to kill her too?" she screamed, voice splintering on the edge of hysteria. "Just like you killed Eira?!"
The accusation landed heavier than the physical blow.
The hall went deathly still.
Every eye... every single one... turned to me.
In that suspended heartbeat I understood something with terrifying, bone-deep clarity:
No matter what had actually happened.
No matter the sequence of events.
No matter the truth I carried inside me like a wound that refused to close.
I would always be the villain in their story.
Always.
"I didn't," I said.
My voice came out small, barely threaded together, trembling on the edge of breaking. I lifted my gaze to meet my mother's, pleading silently for something, anything, that resembled belief.
I wished I didn't have to speak at all.
I wished I could stand in perfect silence and let the truth radiate from me untouched, unquestioned.
But silence had never protected me. Silence had only ever given them more room to fill the void with their own version of events.
The expressions staring back at me told the rest.
They had already decided.
Already judged.
Already convicted.
Exactly as they had the night Eira died.
The weight of it crushed inward, ribs compressing, lungs refusing to expand fully. Why did misfortune cling to me so loyally? Why did every tragedy circle back to my name like a hound trained to my scent?
Tears burned behind my eyes, hot and inevitable.
"I really didn't push her," I forced out, louder this time, voice cracking on every syllable. "Believe me, Mother. She was the one about to push me off the stairs..."
"Yet she's the one lying on the floor," Rhett interjected, voice flat and cold as he stepped forward from the crowd. "And you're still standing on your feet."
His words fell like a gavel.
Simple.
Irrefutable.
Perfect logic to everyone listening.
Murmurs rippled outward... agreement, certainty, quiet condemnation. Heads nodded. Shoulders shifted. Eyes narrowed in confirmation.
To them, the evidence was plain.
I opened my mouth again..."I didn't" ....but the word cracked and died before it could fully form. I didn't even know who I was trying to convince anymore. Them? Myself? The Moon Goddess who had long since stopped answering my prayers?
Before anyone could speak again, the pack doctors burst through the side doors, white coats flapping, medical bags swinging, stretcher already unfolding between them. They moved with practiced urgency, voices low and clipped as they assessed Lysera's pulse, her breathing, the angle of her limbs. Careful hands lifted her onto the stretcher, gentle, reverent, as though she were made of porcelain instead of flesh and bone.
My mother followed immediately, hovering at the stretcher's side, fingers fluttering uselessly over Lysera's still form. Rhett stayed close, silently at her other side. Neither of them glanced back at me.
Except once.
My mother did.
And the hatred in her eyes as she passed seared straight through me, pure, unfiltered, eternal.
Thorne followed too.
He paused, just for a heartbeat, at the edge of the crowd.
He looked back.
One glance.
That was all it took.
Disappointment clouded his features, deep, unmistakable, heavier than any rejection he had spoken aloud earlier. Not anger. Not confusion. Just… disappointment.
As though I had finally confirmed every doubt he had ever buried about me.
In that instant all I wanted was to run to him. To grab his sleeve. To pour every frantic explanation into the space between us until he believed me. Until he remembered who I was to him.
But he turned away.
And walked after her.
Lysera's friends trailed behind, small cluster of silk gowns and glittering jewels, whispering furiously, casting glances back at me filled with equal parts fear, disgust, and vicious triumph.
Then my father moved.
He had started toward the exit with the others, broad shoulders rigid, stride purposeful, but he stopped directly in front of me.
For a long second he simply stared.
Then he raised his hand.
I flinched instinctively, braced for the impact, almost welcomed it. Pain I could understand. Pain was familiar.
But the blow never came.
He lowered his arm slowly... as though physically restraining something far darker than anger. Something colder. Something that lived deeper.
"If anything happens to her," he said, voice low and lethal, each word carved from ice, "you will regret the day you were born."
He turned to the gammas stationed near the archway, the pack's enforcers, faces blank masks of duty.
"Take her to the dungeon."
The command was absolute.
Hands closed around my arms instantly, firm, unyielding. I didn't fight. I didn't scream. I didn't even try to pull away.
There was no strength left in me for any of it.
They dragged me out, feet scraping against marble, then stone, then colder stone still, my heart hollowed out, my fate already written in the same ink they had used nine years ago.
Once again paying for a crime I didn't commit.
Hours later... or minutes, or days; time dissolved in the dark, I couldn't tell.
The dungeon had never been built for the innocent.
It was designed to erase time itself from those still awaiting judgment, to hold them suspended in a gray limbo between hope and despair. No windows. No clocks. No shift in light to mark the turning of day into night. Only unrelenting darkness, damp stone that leeched warmth from skin and bone, and silence so thick it pressed against my chest like a second ribcage.
Once sentence was passed, the guilty were removed, handed to external authorities, tried under pack law or human law depending on the crime. Until then, this place existed for one purpose only:
To break you.
I sat curled in the corner, back pressed to the rough wall, arms wrapped tight around my knees, rocking in small, unconscious arcs as though the motion could keep my thoughts from shredding me apart. Over and over I whispered the same prayer into the black air, voice hoarse and cracking.
Please… spare Lysera's life.
The words shocked me even as they left my lips.
But they were true.
At some point, somewhere between the slap and the cell door clanging shut, I had become willing to trade places with her, if it meant she would live.
Maybe then... just maybe... they would look at me the same way… and I would finally receive even a fraction of the love and concern they gave her so freely.
But the dungeon offered no answer.
Only cold. Only silence.
Then... footsteps.
Slow at first. Then faster. Echoing down the stone corridor like approaching judgment.
My heart slammed against my ribs so violently I thought it might crack them.
There were only two reasons anyone came for a prisoner here.
Either Lysera was dead...and I was about to be dragged before the council, branded murderer twice over, sentenced to exile or worse…
Or she had woken.
And I would be released.
Free of the word.
Free of the crime I hadn't committed.
I pressed trembling hands to my chest, fingers laced so tightly the knuckles bleached white. Tears slipped hot and silent down my cheeks as I held my breath.
Please.
I prayed harder than I had ever prayed in my life, silent, desperate, wordless.
Let it be the latter.
Let her live.
Let me be innocent, just this once.
The footsteps stopped outside my cell.
Metal scraped in the lock.
The door began to open.
And in the thin slice of torchlight that spilled through the widening gap, I waited, heart in my throat, fate balanced on the edge of a blade, to discover which version of hell awaited me next.