Reject me twice (Kira and Theron) novel Chapter 88

[Ciri’s POV]

Three weeks ago I was in the hall all dark wood and firelight, and the Alpha on the throne at its center radiates a controlled fury that makes the air feel thin.

Every wolf in the room breathes shallowly, instinctively, the way animals breathe in the presence of a predator they cannot outrun.

My brother Cyrus.

He’s not a large man — lean, angular, with the same auburn hair Celeste had, cropped close, military-style.

His face is handsome in a way that has an edge to it, the kind of face that smiles easily and means it rarely.

His eyes are the color of dark honey, holding the warmth of a fire that has burned through everything soft and left only the part that destroys.

When he speaks, his wolves go still from fear.

I stand before him with my hands clasped behind my back to hide the trembling. I’ve always been the invisible sibling. Not beautiful like Celeste, not dangerous like Cyrus.

The one they forgot to name at gatherings, who trained alone because no one assigned her a sparring partner, who learned to fight because no one told her she couldn’t.

My pocket knife sits at my belt — the one I found when I was nine, half-buried in the mud behind the kennels. I’ve carried it every day since. It’s the only thing in this hall that belongs entirely to me.

“I want to talk about Celeste,” Cyrus says, and the hall contracts around his voice.

He doesn’t speak about the woman she became — the Order conspirator, the kidnapper of a pregnant queen, the wolf who died on Theron Nightshade’s blade. He speaks about the girl she was.

“She used to braid your hair, Ciri. Do you remember? Before the feasts, when Mother was too occupied with the guest preparations to notice either of us. Celeste would sit you on the kitchen steps and work the braids so tight they lasted three days.”

His voice is steady, measured, and underneath it I hear the particular madness of a man who has decided that grief entitles him to destruction.

“She snuck honeycakes from the kitchen during those preparations. One for you, one for herself, always wrapped in a cloth so they wouldn’t crumble. She saved the bigger one for you every time.”

My throat tightens. I remember — Celeste’s fingers in my hair, the sweetness of stolen honeycakes, the feeling of being seen by someone in a family that treated visibility as a privilege.

“She was my sister—” Cyrus continues, and his hand rests on the arm of the throne with a stillness that is more frightening than any clenched fist.

“And she was yours. Whatever she did at the end, whatever choices led her to that throne room — she was ours before she was anyone else’s. And Theron Nightshade put a sword through her ribs and watched her bleed out on stone.”

“Cyrus—”

“Don’t.” The word cuts through the hall like a blade through silk. “Don’t tell me she brought it on herself.”

His honey-dark eyes find mine, and the grief in them has been compressed into something diamond-hard and lethal.

“She made mistakes, terrible ones. But she was manipulated by people who used her ambition like a weapon, and she deserved a chance to answer for it — not a sword in her chest from a man she trusted.”

He stands. The hall holds its breath.

He draws the blade from his belt — ceremonial, sharp, the kind of blade reserved for oaths that cannot be taken back. He draws it across his palm without flinching, and his blood falls onto the stone floor in dark, steady drops.

“I name Theron Nightshade as my enemy. I name him oath-breaker, kinslayer, executioner of a woman who deserved judgment, not death. I swear on my blood and the memory of my sister that I will kill him. I will take Shadowpine. I will sit on the throne of the man who murdered her and I will make his wolves kneel on the same stone where her blood dried.”

“You open the gate. Literally or figuratively — whatever it takes to give my wolves the advantage they need. After that, your part is finished, and you can decide what you want your life to look like without Celeste’s shadow over it.”

He says it as though he’s offering me freedom. I look at his face — the sharp jaw, the honey eyes — and I see a man who loved our sister the only way he knows how: possessively, destructively, with the conviction that his grief is permission to burn down whatever stands in its path.

I accept. The word tastes like ash. That night, alone in my quarters, I draw my pocket knife.

The blade is old, nicked, sharpened so many times it’s thinner than the day I found it. I press it against the inside of my left forearm and cut — deep enough to bleed convincingly, shallow enough to heal clean.

Then a second cut on the upper arm, angled like a blade strike from a taller attacker.

The pain is clarifying. It tells me this is real and that in three days I’ll walk into a stranger’s territory carrying my brother’s hatred and a map in my boot.

I wrap the wounds in clean linen, pack nothing I can’t carry, and braid my hair tight the way Celeste used to do it — three strands pulled close, lasting for days.

By dawn, I’m walking west. The road is empty, the forests are thick, and somewhere ahead of me a man named Theron Nightshade is rebuilding a life that my brother has sworn to destroy.

I carry the knife in my belt and the mission in my chest, and I try not to think about honeycakes wrapped in cloth or the warmth of my sister’s fingers in my hair.