Chapter 2: The Forgotten Wing

The warmth was gone.

Lunaria's body was slick with drying blood, her fragile limbs twitching against the cold air. Her cries had begun to quiet—not because the grief had faded, but because her tiny lungs could no longer keep up. Her throat was raw, her body too weak to scream as it once had.

But even as her voice faded, her terror did not.

The Duke's hands were nothing like her mother's. They were firm, heavy, calloused—uncaring. He held her like a thing. Not a child. Not a daughter. Just a burden wrapped in soiled linen.

Lunaria could barely see. Her newborn eyes burned, unfocused and untrained. But she felt every motion, every step, every shift in the air as she was carried away from her mother's lifeless body.

The door creaked shut behind them with a hollow thud, sealing her first nightmare in silence.

They walked through corridors that stretched endlessly, lined with red velvet curtains and polished floors. The grand halls of the Azar duchy estate echoed with distant murmurs and the faint tapping of heels upon marble. It was opulent, but cold—so far removed from the dusty little room where she had first felt warmth.

No one stopped him. No servants approached. No noble ladies peeked out from behind their doors. If they heard the baby's quiet whimpers, they ignored them. If they saw the blood on the Duke's sleeve, they said nothing.

She was a stain in this house, and everyone already knew it.

He turned left, then right—descending a narrow staircase tucked behind a tapestry. The path grew darker with each step, the lanterns fewer, the air heavier with dust. The elegance of the estate faded behind them, replaced with cobwebbed corners and flaking plaster.

Lunaria's limbs squirmed weakly in his grasp, her tiny fingers curling instinctively, her body trying to remember the safety it had already lost.

"Stop fussing," the Duke muttered under his breath, his voice a low growl, half-scorn, half-disgust.

His pace slowed as they reached the bottom of the hidden staircase. A heavy wooden door loomed ahead, its frame warped and crooked from age. Rust coated the hinges. The scent of damp stone lingered beneath old candle wax.

He opened it without hesitation.

Beyond it stretched a forgotten corridor, a wing long abandoned, far from the bustle and brightness of the main estate. Dust hung in the air, disturbed by his passage. The carpets were faded to grey, the drapes half-torn. The ceiling bore cracks, and the windows, clouded with grime, let in only faint slivers of moonlight.

This place had not seen warmth or joy in years.

"This'll do," he muttered, as if talking to himself. "Out of sight, out of mind."

Lunaria didn't understand the words, but the tone chilled her. She whimpered, and for a brief moment, he paused… then sighed.

"I suppose you'll need a nursemaid," he grumbled, already moving again. "Can't have you dying before you're useful."

The hallway ended at a small door—low, narrow, crooked on its hinges. He nudged it open with his foot and stepped into a dust-choked chamber, lit only by a single high window where the moonlight pooled weakly on the floor.

There was no cradle. No bedding. Just a worn-out cot shoved into the corner and a warped rocking chair that creaked with age.

He laid Lunaria down on the cot roughly, without tenderness, the old mattress creaking beneath her small weight.

She cried again—soft and feeble now, her little body arching with discomfort.

He looked at her with a strange mixture of apathy and annoyance, as if she were an inconvenience, not a life. Not his daughter.

"I'll have someone bring milk in the morning," he said, already turning to leave. "Don't die before then."

And just like that, he was gone.

The door closed with a heavy clunk, sealing her into the silence.

Lunaria lay there, arms twitching, face wet with tears, surrounded by shadows and dust. The scent of rot lingered in the corners of the room. The old wood groaned in the wind.

No lullabies. No soft hands. No warmth.

Only silence… and the cold echo of her mother's dying heartbeat in her memory.

Time did not flow gently in the forgotten wing of the Azar estate.

The days bled into each other in shades of gray and shadow, each one a cold echo of the last. In that isolated, dust-choked room, Lunaria grew, inch by inch, breath by breath—but not with warmth, not with joy. She grew in silence, in hunger, in bruises.

Her first year was a haze of neglect.

A nursemaid came, eventually. An old woman with a crooked back and a face carved by bitterness. She never spoke kindly. Never held Lunaria close. She fed her hastily and without care, sometimes forgetting for hours—sometimes deliberately skipping feedings altogether when irritated.

"Filthy little bastard," she would mutter under her breath, slamming the bottle onto the floor beside the crib. "Should've died with your whore mother."

Her milk was often cold, sour, or spilled. When Lunaria cried, she was left to wail until exhaustion claimed her. Her blankets were rarely changed. Her skin often raw from soiled cloths and damp bedding. The old woman would strike her with an open hand when her cries were too loud or persistent.

"You're lucky to even have a roof over your head," she would say.

Her second year was worse.

She learned to walk—clumsily, painfully—on a floor covered in dust and splinters. There was no one to catch her when she fell. No arms to comfort her when she cried. Every tumble left bruises. Every scrape was ignored. Her knees bled, her hands blistered.

The maids tasked with tending to her only came when summoned, and they hated being summoned. They mocked her under their breath, sneered at her tiny, awkward movements, and shoved her aside when she wandered too close.

They never used her name. Not Lunaria. Not anything kind.

Just "the bastard," or worse—"it."

Sometimes, they laughed when she cried. Other times, they snapped brooms at her feet to scare her, or poured cold water over her head to "clean" her.

"Know your place," one sneered once, after slapping her for tugging on her dress for attention. "You don't belong in this house."

Her siblings began to visit around then.

Not out of curiosity—but cruelty.

The Duke's legitimate children were perfect in the eyes of society. Polished, poised, proud. But behind closed doors, they were monsters in silk.

Her eldest half-brother, Caelan, would bring guests to "see the animal" locked in the back of the estate. He would gesture to Lunaria like a caged beast as she sat curled in the corner of her room, hiding beneath a torn blanket.

"She's pathetic, isn't she?" he'd laugh. "Father should've drowned her."

His friends would toss crumbs at her, mocking her every movement. One boy once stepped on her hand for sport. No one stopped him.

Her half-sister, Vivianne, was worse.

Vivianne would come alone, elegant in her dresses, with a twisted smile on her lips. She would kneel beside Lunaria and speak in honeyed words—soft and sharp at once.

"Poor thing," she'd whisper, brushing dirt from Lunaria's cheek. "You're so dirty. So ugly. So unwanted."

Then she'd press her nails into Lunaria's arms until she cried.

"I'm teaching you," she'd say sweetly. "So you don't embarrass the family."

She once brought a dead bird and left it in Lunaria's bed. Another time, she tore her only toy—a doll with one eye—and scattered its parts across the room.

"Bastards don't deserve gifts," she'd giggle.

By the time Lunaria turned three, she had learned not to cry where others could hear.

Tears earned punishment. Silence earned survival.

She learned to eat quickly, whatever scraps she was given, before they were snatched away. She learned to curl in corners where footsteps didn't reach. She learned to clean her own wounds with the hem of her dress, to bite her lip until it bled rather than scream.

And yet… she never forgot her mother's voice.

Even if it was fading.

Even if she could barely remember the warmth.

"My little moonlight…"

She would whisper it to herself at night, rocking in silence, repeating the words like a prayer. Her hands wrapped tightly around the tattered fabric of her doll's body—a doll with missing limbs and torn seams, the only thing she had ever been given that hadn't come with pain.

She didn't know what love was anymore… but she remembered that once, it had existed. Even for a moment.

And so she clung to it.

Alone, unloved, and unseen in the heart of a mansion that hated her.

The silence before the Duchess's arrival was suffocating.

It settled thick and heavy in the stale air of Lunaria's room, like a storm cloud waiting to burst. The girl sat huddled in the farthest corner, her arms wrapped tightly around her knees, her tattered dress clinging to her frail body. Dust clung to her skin, and her eyes—dulled by years of fear—stared blankly at the cracked floor.

She didn't know what she was waiting for.

But the air told her something was coming.

And then—footsteps.

Fast. Sharp. Deliberate.

Each click of a heel struck the floor like a drumbeat of fury.

Lunaria's body tensed instinctively, her breath catching in her throat. The door didn't creak open this time—it slammed, crashing into the wall with a jarring crack that echoed through the chamber.

The Duchess had arrived.

Tall. Immaculate. Dressed in a cascade of deep crimson and black lace, the Duchess looked like a blade made flesh—elegant and deadly. Her hair, perfectly pinned, shimmered like polished obsidian, and her amber eyes burned with barely contained venom.

She looked at Lunaria with utter contempt.

"So this is where he hides you," she hissed, voice low and venom-laced. "Like a filthy little rat in the walls."

Lunaria didn't move. Her limbs had turned to stone. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears.

The Duchess stepped forward, her heels clicking closer, closer, until she loomed above the child, casting a long shadow that swallowed the corner whole.

"I knew you'd be a stain the moment I heard you were born," she spat. "But now he's ignoring me—again—because of you. You and that dead whore of a maid."

She raised her hand.

The first slap came fast.

Lunaria's head snapped sideways, her cheek exploding in pain, her tiny body toppling to the floor.

The second blow followed almost immediately—a sharp kick to her ribs that knocked the air from her lungs. She gasped, curling inward, trying to protect herself, but there was nowhere to hide.

"You think you can crawl into my household and be anything more than garbage?" the Duchess snarled, kicking again, this time into her back. "You're nothing. Nothing."

Her voice cracked into a scream, rage boiling over into madness. She struck again, again—open-handed slaps, sharp nails clawing across Lunaria's face, yanking her by her hair and throwing her to the floor.

"Even the servants hesitate to discipline you properly. Is that it? They think you're special?"

Another slap.

"Do you cry to them when they don't coddle you?"

A knee pressed into Lunaria's stomach, hard, and the girl choked, her limbs flailing weakly.

Pain seared through her chest and arms. Her body felt like it was unraveling—skin bruised, blood warm at her lip, eyes swelling. Her sobs came silent now, breathless gasps and hiccups as her vision blurred.

The Duchess stood over her, chest heaving, fingers twitching from rage.

And then, as quickly as she had arrived… she was gone.

The door slammed behind her again, echoing like a thunderclap in the silence that followed. Her perfume lingered like poison in the air—bitter rose and cruelty.

Lunaria lay there, face against the cold stone floor.

She didn't move.

Her limbs were too heavy. Her skin too raw. Her mind… blank.

The pain was everywhere, but even sharper was the ache in her heart, the hollow ringing in her chest that whispered, why am I alive?

She wanted to sleep. Forever.

But then…

Something moved.

Faint. Subtle. Barely perceptible—but something stirred in the corner of the room. At first, she thought it was her eyes playing tricks on her, the blur of tears making shadows flicker.

But no.

The shadows were moving.

Slow, like creeping fingers. Stretching along the walls, curling through cracks in the stone. Slithering across the floor—drawn to her, inch by inch.

She blinked, struggling to focus. Her battered body remained still, but her eyes tracked the motion, wide with silent confusion.

The corner of the room that had always seemed just a little darker now looked deeper, as if the shadow itself had taken breath and began watching her.

It didn't feel malicious.

No… it felt familiar.

Cold, yes. But not cruel.

It came with a whisper—inaudible yet felt—slithering into the edges of her mind.

You are not forgotten.

Lunaria's breath trembled.

For the first time in three years, something other than pain touched her skin.

Something ancient. Vast. Watching. Waiting.

The shadows curled closer… and she did not flinch.