Chapter 3 Iron

I woke up tasting iron and moonlight.

My head throbbed like someone had used it as a war drum. The air was thick with damp stone, old blood, and something sweeter-jasmine and decay. I was chained again, but not in the pack's detention cells. These chains were black iron, etched with runes that glowed sickly green whenever my skin brushed them. They drank my strength like leeches.

I was underground.

Deep.

The kind of deep where screams never reach the surface.

A single torch flickered in the distance, throwing long shadows across a cavernous chamber. Stalactites dripped somewhere far above. And in the center of it all, carved into the living rock, was a circle of thirteen ancient thrones.

Twelve were empty.

On the thirteenth sat Selene.

She wasn't restrained. No chains. No guards. Just her, barefoot in a black silk dress that pooled around her like spilled ink, hair loose and wild, violet eyes fixed on me with an expression I couldn't name.

Relief. Terror. Hunger.

"Elara," she breathed, and the sound echoed off the walls like a prayer.

I jerked against the chains. They didn't budge. "Where the hell are we?"

"Under the mountain," she said softly. "The Hollow. Where the first Blackthorns made the bargain."

She rose, gliding toward me as if the floor itself moved her feet. When she reached me, she knelt, cupped my face with trembling hands.

"You're awake. Thank the Goddess. I thought-" Her voice cracked. "I thought I'd lost you."

"You drugged me," I snarled. "Silver collar. Tranquilizer dart to the neck. Ring any bells?"

She flinched. "I had no choice. They were going to execute you at dawn. The council voted. My father couldn't stop them."

"Your father offered himself to that thing inside you!"

"And you stopped it," she whispered. "You bound yourself to it. To me." Her fingers brushed the new mark on my collarbone-two drops now, silver and black, pulsing in time with my heartbeat. "Do you feel it?"

I did.

A thread. Thin as spider silk, strong as steel, stretching between my chest and hers. When she breathed, I felt it in my lungs. When her heart raced, mine answered.

I hated it.

I hated how much I didn't hate it.

"Unchain me," I said.

"I can't." She showed me her wrists. Matching black runes circled them like bracelets, glowing the same poison green. "We're both prisoners now."

"Of who?"

She glanced over her shoulder at the empty thrones.

"The Covenant of the Hollow Moon," she said. "The original thirteen bloodlines. They've been waiting three hundred years for a vessel strong enough to hold the curse without breaking."

"And you're it."

"We're it," she corrected. "The curse chose me as host. It chose you as anchor. Together, we're... complete."

A laugh tore out of me, sharp and bitter. "You think I'm going to help you murder people every new moon? You're insane."

"I think," she said quietly, "you're going to help me kill the curse instead."

Silence stretched between us, thick and heavy.

Then she did something that broke me all over again.

She laid her head on my lap, right over the chains, and cried.

Not the pretty tears of the girl I once loved. These were raw, animal sobs that shook her whole body. I felt every one of them through the bond like knives.

"I didn't want this," she choked out. "I tried to fight it. I starved it. I locked myself in the cellar during my twentieth birthday and swallowed wolfsbane until I blacked out. But it just... waited. And when it woke up, it was so hungry, Elara. So hungry."

Her fingers clawed at my thighs through the iron.

"The first heart it took was my little brother's."

The world stopped spinning.

She wasn't lying. I felt the truth of it through the bond-grief so vast it threatened to swallow us both.

"Leander," she whispered. "He was eight. I woke up covered in him. My mother found me holding what was left. She covered it up. Told the pack he'd been taken by rogues. That's when they brought me here. When they told me the truth."

I wanted to rage. Wanted to scream. Instead I found myself threading my chained fingers through her hair, holding her while she shattered.

"I'm a monster," she said against my leg.

"You're not."

"I ate Marcus's heart in front of you."

"You fought it. You warned me to run."

"I marked you without consent!"

"I kissed you back, you idiot."

She went still.

Then she looked up, eyes red-rimmed, and laughed-wet, broken, real.

"We're so fucked," she said.

"Yeah," I agreed. "We really are."

A gong sounded somewhere deep in the mountain. The torch flames turned blue.

Selene tensed. "They're coming."

"Who?"

"The Covenant. They want to test the bond."

The empty thrones began to fill.

One by one, figures stepped out of the shadows-men and women in robes the color of dried blood, faces hidden behind bone-white masks carved into screaming moons. Twelve of them. The thirteenth throne remained empty.

Selene's.

An old woman stepped forward, mask etched with silver tears.

"Vessel," she intoned. "Anchor. The Hollow welcomes you."

Selene rose, placing herself between me and them.

"Release her," she said, voice steady now. "The bargain was for a Blackthorn daughter. Not her."

The woman tilted her head. "The curse chose differently. You know this."

"I know you're afraid," Selene said. "Afraid of what happens when the vessel stops obeying."

A ripple went through the masked figures.

The woman raised a hand. The chains around my wrists tightened, cutting deep. Blood welled, dripping onto the stone.

Selene snarled, eyes flashing black for a heartbeat.

"Touch her again," she said, "and I'll show you what happens when the vessel stops pretending."

The woman smiled behind her mask. I saw it in the way the eyes crinkled.

"Very well," she said. "A test. If the anchor can withstand the Hunger's call for one night unchained, she earns the right to walk free. With you."

"And if I can't?" I asked.

The woman's eyes found mine.

"Then the vessel feeds. And the Covenant takes what's left of your soul to bind her forever."

Selene spun toward me. "No. Elara, say no-"

But I was already nodding.

"Unchain me."

The runes flared. The iron fell away.

I stood on shaking legs, blood dripping from my wrists.

The woman clapped once.

The torches went out.

Darkness swallowed the chamber.

And then the Hunger came.

It didn't creep. It slammed into me like a tidal wave-cold, endless, ravenous. My vision bled to black and silver. My mouth filled with the taste of hearts and screams.

I heard Selene scream my name.

I heard the Covenant chanting in a language that hurt to hear.

And then I heard the curse, clear as a bell inside my skull:

Feed me, anchor. Feed me, or I take her piece by piece.

I dropped to my knees.