Chapter Nine: The Feather and the Flame
The feather shimmered under the morning light—black like the sky before a storm, but laced with silvery veins that pulsed faintly.
Aria held it in her palm, heart racing. It hadn't been there the night before. No window was open. No bird had flown in. And something told her this wasn't from a bird at all.
She placed it gently in her sketchbook and closed it tight.
---
Kael didn't come to school.
Neither did Lena.
The silence in the hallways made the walls feel too narrow, the moonlight leaking through the windows too bright. Aria sat alone during lunch, fingers twitching against the edge of her pendant.
That's when she heard the voice again.
> "Aria…"
A whisper. Low, almost a breath against her ear.
She turned. No one.
> "Come to the veil."
Her pendant warmed.
She stood.
---
The walk to the Veil Line was shorter than before. The air seemed to bend around her, guiding her feet as if the earth itself wanted her there.
But someone was waiting for her.
Lena.
Her friend stood with her back to the wall, arms crossed. Her normally bright eyes were distant, unreadable.
"Lena?" Aria called out.
Lena turned—and smiled. But it wasn't a smile Aria recognized.
It was... wrong. Too calm. Too knowing.
"You've changed," Lena said. "Since Kael."
Aria stepped back slightly. "You're not... you're not acting like yourself."
Lena tilted her head. "Maybe I'm just remembering who I really am."
She held up something small—a charm. A piece of moonstone wrapped in thorns.
"I thought you should know," Lena said. "Kael's not the only one watching you. And not all of us want you to survive this."
Before Aria could respond, the charm pulsed—and Lena vanished into shadow.
Not walked away. Not faded.
Vanished.
---
Aria stumbled back, shaken.
Someone was playing with reality now. With her reality.
Back home, she opened her sketchbook again to look at the feather.
But it was gone.
In its place: a small symbol drawn in silver ink.
Not by her.
Not by anyone she knew.
A crescent moon, pierced by a dagger.
And beneath it, in handwriting eerily like her own:
> You are not the only one who made a choice beneath the moonlight.
---
That night, Aria sat under her covers, reading the last of the letters her mother had hidden.
One phrase chilled her more than all the others:
> "The deeper your bond with him grows, the more the Pact will demand. Trust your heart—but question your fate."
And for the first time since Kael had come into her life, she whispered aloud:
"What if loving him is what destroys me?"
---