Chapter 14: Fractured Trust

Rain lashed the tavern's roof long after the storm had passed, the downpour echoing like a thousand whispered warnings. Lira sat at the bar, the chalice cradled in her hands like a sleeping viper. Its obsidian surface had grown colder, the hum in her bones reduced to a faint tremor, but the weight of it Orion's weight never left. Across the room, Ryen slept fitfully in a nest of discarded maps, his brow furrowed even in dreams.

Nina's sketches papered the walls, their charcoal lines smudged by humidity. One in particular caught the dim light a chalice split down the middle, its halves held by two mirror-image hands. Lira's and Eclipse's. She tore it down, crumpling it into her pocket.

"Couldn't sleep either?"

Kael's voice rumbled from the cellar stairs. He held a bottle of bloodwine, the label peeled and stained.

"Not tired," Lira lied.

He poured two glasses, sliding one to her. The liquid inside was the color of a fresh bruise. "You're a shit liar."

She drank. The wine burned, bitter as regret. "How's the perimeter?"

"Quiet. Too quiet." He nodded to the boarded windows. "Even the ferals are hiding. They know something's coming."

The chalice pulsed faintly. Lira set it down before her hands betrayed her. "We need to find Selene."

Kael's glass paused mid-air. "Why? So she can stab you again?"

"So she can tell me how to kill Orion."

He snorted. "You think that ice-hearted witch knows?"

"She's his oldest enemy. His equal." The words tasted like ash.

Footsteps creaked above Mira, pacing the attic with Jax. Their muffled voices filtered through the floorboards, sharp with exhaustion.

Kael studied Lira, his scarred throat bobbing. "You're changing. The chalice…"

"Is a tool."

"Tools don't whisper."

She stood, the stool screeching against the floor. "You want to lead? Lead. But don't pretend you know what this is."

He didn't flinch. "I know what it's like to lose yourself. To become the thing you hate."

The confession hung between them, raw and unexpected. Lira's anger faltered. "How do you come back?"

"You don't." He drained his glass. "You just find something worth staying for."

Dawn bled gray through the cracks in the boards. Ryen found Lira on the roof, her knees drawn to her chest, the chalice beside her like a cursed relic.

"You're avoiding me," he said.

"I'm thinking."

He sat, the old wood groaning. "About Eclipse?"

"About choices." She touched the relic, its surface slick with dew. "Orion made me to be a weapon. Selene hid me to be a martyr. What if I'm neither?"

Ryen's hand covered hers, calloused and warm. "Then be something they never saw coming."

The kiss was softer this time, lingering. A promise, not a surrender.

A scream shattered the moment.

They bolted downstairs, weapons drawn. Nina stood in the center of the room, her sketchpad trembling in her hands. The page showed a tree split by lightning, its roots coiled around a dozen faceless bodies. At its base, a single word: RUN.

"They're here," she whispered.

The tavern door exploded inward.

Eclipse stood framed by daylight, her silver-streaked hair wild, her eyes hollow voids. Behind her, the forest writhed hybrids, dozens of them, their forms grotesque mergers of wolf and vamp. But it was the creature at her side that froze Lira's blood.

A child.

No older than ten, with Lira's auburn hair and Eclipse's dead eyes.

"Meet your sister," Eclipse purred, stroking the girl's head. "Father calls her Requiem."

The child smiled, her fangs glinting.

"Playtime," she said.

The hybrids surged.

Chaos erupted. UV grenades lit the room in searing bursts, their light scorching hybrid flesh. Kael roared, his silver dagger a blur, while Jax lobbed explosives through the shattered windows.

Lira grappled Eclipse in the center of the fray, their claws locked, their faces inches apart.

"You're wasting your breath," Eclipse hissed. "He'll never let you go."

"Then I'll drag him with me."

The chalice flared, its light searing Eclipse's skin. She screamed, recoiling, but the child Requiem leapt onto Lira's back, her tiny fangs sinking deep.

Pain blinded her. Memories not her own flooded her mind Orion's lab, needles and scalpels, a voice chanting Again. Again. Again.

Ryen's gun barked. Requiem shrieked, tumbling off Lira, a silver round lodged in her shoulder.

"No!" Eclipse lunged for the girl, her hollow eyes wide with something almost human. "She's all I have!"

Lira raised the chalice, its light trembling. "Then you should've protected her."

The blast tore through the room, hurling hybrids into the walls. When the light faded, Eclipse and the child were gone.

The tavern was a tomb. Blood pooled between floorboards, and the air reeked of burnt fur and wolfsbane. Mira tended to Jax's shattered leg, her hands steady but her face pale.

"They'll be back," Kael growled, wiping gore from his blade.

Ryen gripped Lira's arm, his voice low. "That light it came from you, not the chalice."

She stared at her hands. The relic lay dormant on the bar, its surface cracked. "I don't know what's happening to me."

Nina pressed a new sketch into her palm a woman standing at a crossroads, one path bathed in light, the other swallowed by shadow. At her feet, the chalice bled black.

Ryen's thumb traced the bandage on Lira's neck. "We'll figure it out. Together."

In the Eclipse Wilds, Eclipse cradled Requiem's shivering body, the child's veins pulsing black.

"Hurts," Requiem whimpered.

"I know." Eclipse pressed her forehead to the girl's. "But Father will fix you. He'll fix us."

The forest watched, silent, as they limped toward Orion's lab.

Night fell. Lira stood at the tavern's ruined threshold, the chalice heavy in her grip. Somewhere in the dark, shadows whispered of war.

Ryen joined her, his shoulder brushing hers. "What now?"

She closed her eyes, the relic's hum a dirge in her blood.

"We find Selene."