Luna Forsaken (Arya and James) novel Chapter 155

155 Moonlight, Not Promises

Arya’s POV

The garden was too beautiful for the kind of thoughts I was having.

That felt offensive somehow.

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The night was soft, silvered, almost gentle. Moonlight spilled over Dragonclaw’s inner

garden like water, touching the stone path, the trimmed hedges, the low flowering

shrubs, the old tree near the far wall whose branches cast long shadows over the grass.

Somewhere beyond the wall, I could hear the distant shift of guards and the faint hum of

pack life settling into sleep. The air smelled of damp earth, leaves, and something faintly

sweet from the flowers planted along the edge of the path.

Peaceful.

As if the world hadn’t ripped through my life and left bones showing.

I sat on the grass anyway.

My dress from dinner had been changed hours ago for something simpler, softer, but I

still felt dressed in the day’s weight. My knees were drawn up, my arms wrapped around

them, my chin resting there while I stared at nothing and everything at once.

I had been doing that a lot lately.

Staring.

At walls. At firelight. At food gone cold. At my own hands. At the places in this house

where quiet settled too deeply and let memory crawl in.

The truth was out now. Margaret and Lisa had confessed. Rebecca had been exposed.

Marcel’s house had cracked in public. People had heard it. People had seen it. The lie

that destroyed my child and shattered my place in Nightwind had been dragged into the

light and beaten until it stopped pretending to be truth.

I should have felt better.

I did not.

I felt vindicated in one place and hollow everywhere else.

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<155 Moonlight, Not Promises

Revenge had texture. I knew that now.

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It was not clean. It was not bright. It did not arrive carrying peace in its hands.

It came with shaking fingers and blood on my pulse and a grief so deep it sometimes felt

like rage wearing my face.

I pressed my mouth against my knees and shut my eyes.

For a few seconds, I let myself breathe without fighting it.

Then Ria stirred.

Not a whisper. Not a passing flicker.

A real presence inside me, restless and wakeful and far too aware of what I was trying

not to think about.

You are doing it again, she said.

I did not move. Doing what?

Staring at pain like it will answer you if you look long enough.

My fingers tightened around my legs. Maybe it will.

She made a sound inside me that felt like a snort and a sigh mixed together. No. It only

gets comfortable.

I opened my eyes and looked up at the moon through the branches.

The light caught on the leaves and made them gleam at the edges. Beautiful. Annoying.

Ria shifted again, prowling beneath my skin in that agitated way she had when she

wanted to push and I wanted to stay still.

You got part of what you wanted, she said.

My jaw clenched. Part.

The liars were exposed.

And my baby is still dead.

Silence.

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155 Moonlight, Not Promises

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That was the thing about Ria. She could be feral, shameless, hungry, inconvenient, especially when it came to Lev, but she never tried to dress my pain up in pretty words when the wound was open.

For a while she said nothing.

I kept staring at the garden and tried not to think of the hall in Silverfang. Margaret on her knees. Rebecca’s face. Marcel’s shock. The murmurs. The crack of that slap. The way

truth had spilled out ugly and frantic and too late.

Too late.

Ria moved closer inside me, less pacing now, more watchful.

Then she asked, What will you do when you get it?

I frowned. Get what?

Revenge. All of it. Not fragments. Not confessions. All of it.

The question slipped between my ribs before I could block it.

I went still.

Because I had not let myself go that far.

I had imagined faces. Pain. Fear. Apologies. Begging. Blood. Exposure. Collapse. I had

imagined Marcel losing status. Leah losing her smile. James understanding. The people

who watched me fall choking on the truth of what they helped destroy.

I had imagined all of that in pieces.

But after?

After was a blank wall.

My throat tightened.

I don’t know, I admitted.

Ria was quiet for a beat, then said, Exactly.

I looked down at the grass, at my bare feet half-hidden in it, the moonlight turning my

skin pale and the blades silver-green.

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Maybe I don’t need to know yet.

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Maybe, she allowed. Then, more softly, But you cannot build your whole life on the

moment of someone else’s suffering.

I laughed once, dry and tired. Since when did you become wise?

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