Chapter 2
Bound by the Savage Moon
Chapter Two
Elara
The minutes pass as I stare down at my arm.
The silence of the forest around me is unnerving, as if every one of the hidden creatures lurking in the branches is watching me, observing me, knowing of my shame and my tenuous position, and is waiting to see what I’ll do next.
The shifters are the sworn enemies of my people. They have been for decades and decades, long before I arrived into this world.
The mage and the academy may not tolerate mistakes, but they certainly won’t tolerate a mage marked by a shifter.
The bite on my arm may as well be a noose around my neck
I stand there and everything that’s happened in the last few hours crashes through my mind. Immy. The wolf. The cliff. This bite.
What am I going to do?
It seems I have two choices.
I run. Aelyndra knows where, but I run away from the mage, who will kill me if they learn the truth, and away from the shifters, who are my enemies.
Or I stay and I try to survive.
My gaze hardens. I grit my teeth together.
I didn’t drag myself up by my bootstraps, I didn’t fight and scrap and battle every day just to throw everything away now. I am someone at last. I am revered by the other cadets at the academy. I am loved by my teachers. I am held up as an example. A fighting mage. Ruthless. Powerful. Dogged.
I don’t give up.
One little bite isn’t going to send me running. It isn’t going to send me back to the gutter. No way.
I snatch open the leather pouch attached to my belt and yank out a roll of bandages. Gritting my teeth, I peel back the torn sleeve of my jacket, wincing as it tugs on the congealed blood and punctured skin of my arm.
Then I wind the bandage tightly around my forearm, again and again until the shifter’s bite is hidden beneath the gauze. I tie the ends in a double knot and yank my sleeve back down.
It’s still too obvious. The holes in my jacket reflect the perfect pattern of a shifter’s mouth. Anyone seeing my arm will deduce the truth.
I grab the knife attached to my belt and rip at the sleeve until the puncture holes are lost in the torn fabric. I have my story now. Sharp branches did this to my sleeve and my arm — not the sharp teeth of a shifter.
I hook the knife back onto my belt and peer over the cliff behind me. I can’t see my battle staff. It’s lost down there in the darkness. But I lift my arm and call for it with my magic anyway, hoping it isn’t broken.
To my delight and relief — the punishment for a lost staff is severe — the staff comes floating back up and into my hand.
I let out a small sob of relief.
But it’s the only sympathy I will allow myself.
I tuck the loose strands of my auburn hair back into my braid and start trudging back through the forest.
I’m going to be in deep shit. I disobeyed an order. I went hurtling through the forest. I separated myself from my unit. There are going to be questions. Questions I need answers for.
All that I can handle. It’s keeping the bite secret that’s going to be hard. Keeping myself together. Because now …
Once again, I force the image of Immy from my mind and drag myself back through the trees, straining for the sound of voices, feeling for the tingle of magic, hoping I’m walking back toward the front lines and not deeper into shifter territory.
The loneliness begins to overwhelm me.
I have friends at the academy, plenty of so-called friends. I’m well-liked and popular — an unusual position for a girl who spent too many years of her childhood in an orphanage where everyone hated her.
But none of these ‘friends’ were like Immy. A true friend. Someone I could trust with my deepest secrets and my rawest insecurities. Someone who wouldn’t use them against me.
I still can’t believe she’s gone.
I cross my fingers and pray to Aelyndra, hoping I was mistaken, that I’ll find my unit, and she’ll be sitting up in a hospital bed with a bandage around her neck, smiling at me and asking where the hell I’ve been.
But I know that’s just a fantasy. Because I can still picture her eyes. Her dead eyes.
She’s not coming back.
Which means there’s no one I can tell about the bite on my arm.
No one I trust. Not really. Not one of my so-called friends.
Not any of my admirers. I know every single one of them would ditch me if they knew, would use my demise as a way to elevate themselves, would step right over my lifeless body on their way to the top – fuck, they’d probably use me as a stepping stone.
No. There’s no one. I’m all alone again. Just like before.
I swallow down that pain and keep walking.
I must have run much farther than I realized, because the two moons of Kaelos have risen high into the night sky by the time I find my unit.
The battle is over. The forest floor is littered with the bodies of dead shifters, and my comrades are gathering the fallen mages, helping the wounded and the injured.
I spot Commander Coldmere standing in the center of the carnage, throwing orders this way and that.
There’s no use avoiding her. So I march straight toward her, coming to attention at her side and lifting my arm in a salute.
“Commander,” I say.
She diverts her attention from a pair of mages — one helping the other who has injured their leg — and turns her domineering gaze on me.
Her eyes are a hard nut-brown, her hair cut short and gray. Unlike mine, her uniform is unblemished; the golden buttons shining in the bright moonlight.
She frowns at me and purses her lips. It’s an expression I’m no longer familiar with, one she hasn’t directed at me since my early days at the academy, when she assumed she’d been saddled with a lost cause.
I proved her wrong. But I wonder if her opinion of me has changed right back again. One mistake …
“Cadet Brightsky,” she says in a short, clipped tone. “Please help the others. We’re moving out in ten minutes.” She leans closer. “We’ll talk more when we return to the academy.”
I nod and go to help the injured, trying not to look at the bodies already wrapped in the silk death shrouds.
There are four bodies. This battle was brutal. We’ve never lost so many of our kind in one night before. And among those bodies lies Immy.
When the dead, the injured, and the survivors are finally gathered together, Commander Coldmere surveys the damage and shakes her head with familiar disappointment.
“This was a poor performance tonight, girls. A disappointing performance.”
I cast my eyes back out to the forest. I see at least twenty dead shifters on the ground.
Twenty of them killed for four of us. Usually, despite what the commanders might say, I’d think that a pretty fair exchange.
Not tonight, though. I don’t think anything could avenge Immy’s death.
Even if I’d killed that shifter out there by the cliff’s edge, I know deep down this lust for avenge would not be subdued.
I’ve lived with this need for too long – I’ve killed too many – to know that.
“You were sloppy, ill-disciplined,” the commander’s eyes meet mine momentarily, “and weak. How will we keep our people safe? How will we stop these invasions and incursions if you do not step up?”
She shakes her head again and waves her arm through the air, her fingers dancing in a familiar pattern. Smoke winds around us all, curling about our bodies. Then the forest slowly disappears.
When the smoke disperses, we’re back at the military academy, standing in the yard, the academy buildings looming behind the commander’s back.
Another unit is waiting for our arrival. They whisk away the bodies and lead or carry away the injured.
We stand at attention, waiting for the commander to dismiss us.
“Get to bed, the lot of you,” she says. “Tomorrow, we start again … from scratch.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” we chant back in unison, each of us resisting the urge to groan. Then, we begin to turn away and walk back toward the dormitory.
But before I’ve strolled two paces, I hear the commander call my name.
“Not you, Elara.”
The others hesitate, their gazes lingering on me with interest. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in the commander’s bad books. A long time since I’ve received a punishment of any kind.
I step forward, prepared to take it, lifting my chin. I think I’d actually welcome it tonight. The last thing I want is to return to my bunk — the one I shared with Immy — and stare up at her empty bed.
The commander waits for the others to leave. Then she glares at me.
“We lost Cadet Vaelcrest today,” she states, without emotion. I jerk my head in acknowledgment, forcing myself not to cry. No weakness, remember? Weakness is not tolerated. Not at all. “I understand you were close.”
“We shared a bunk,” I say.
“It can be disconcerting. However, it does not excuse your behavior tonight, Cadet.”
“Yes, Commander.”
“I would be within my rights to expel you from this academy. To discharge you from our army.” I say nothing, though behind my back I sink my nails deep into the flesh of my palms. “At the very least, I should be confining you to barracks for the foreseeable future.” She tosses her head in annoyance.
“You’re our best fighter, Cadet Brightsky, and I can’t afford to lose you.
I don’t know what happened out there – if it was a moment of madness, a moment of misjudgment … ”
She pauses. I realize she wants me to speak. She wants me to give her an excuse to lessen the punishment.
“I identified their pack leader,” I say, repeating the story I prepared on my long walk back through the forest, one I’ve invented entirely. Unlike the shifter I chased through the trees, pack leaders are decades of years old. “I had an opportunity to take him out. I didn’t want to lose it.”
“Their pack leader?” the commander says, interest flickering across her face.
“That was the northern pack we faced tonight. They’re more organized, better disciplined than many of these mongrels.
But the leader — their alpha — has often been absent.
No one is sure of his identity. What makes you think it was him? ”
“I can’t be certain,” I say. “I don’t know for sure. But I had a feeling.”
The commander snorts. “We don’t act on feelings, Cadet. We act on information.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“What happened when you chased him?”
“I was gaining on him. I had him,” I say. “But he knows the forest terrain better than I do, and I lost him in its depths.”
The commander’s shoulders sag. “Well, I suppose your bravery should be commended. I will have to report this to the Hierarchy. But I’m sure your bravery will act as a counterbalance to your disobedience.”
“Thank you,” I say.
“This is the only time, Cadet. You won’t be so lucky next time.”
“I understand,” I repeat.
The commander glares at me.
“So unlike you,” she mutters.
And I wonder if it is.
There’s always been this anger, this fury, this rage burning inside me uncontrollably. Every day, every hour, every minute I battle to contain it.
Maybe tonight was exactly like me.