Chapter 3

The day the Moon Selection roster was posted, the Frostridge bell rang three times.

I read from the first line to the last and did not see my name.

The candidates crowded around the stone wall, talking in low voices. Some said my Silent Blood rating had been changed to "Dangerously Unstable." Others said the Youth Council would never let someone who could not shift drag the pack down. Sabine's name, though, stood third on the list, with House Hale's recommendation seal stamped beside it.

I went straight to the Youth Council.

Rowan sat at the end of the long table sorting documents, as if he had known I would come. He did not deny it. He did not even stand up.

"I held back the application," he said.

"On what grounds?"

"Because I'm the coordinator, and because the Moon Selection is not a game for you to prove your self-worth." He looked up, sounding so weary that he almost seemed sincere. "Elara, you panic when you step onto the platform. If the Moon Well senses your fear, who will answer for it?"

Sabine stood by the window and handed over a yellowed witness statement. It said I had screamed at the old hunting ground and obstructed the team's advance. The apprentices gathered around to read it, and their expressions changed at once.

I took the paper. A very faint echo of a vow clung to its edge, exactly the same as the trace on Rowan's promise ring.

I could not accuse him of forgery on that alone. Echoes could take me as far as suspicion, Cassian had said, but they could not cross the line into proof for me.

So I put the paper back on the table.

"The Moon Selection rules are clear," I said. "A rating on paper decides the initial screening and nothing more. Only the live test at the Moon Well is the final judgment."

Rowan's face finally changed. "You're going to make a scene?"

"I'm requesting a Stone Circle hearing."

The Stone Circle Elder, Gideon Thorne, did not take my side. He listened to my statement, read the Youth Council's rating, and remained silent for a long time.

"I'll grant you a place among the alternates," he said at last. "If you trigger an anomaly during the live test in three days, the Ashford branch will lose its shelter allotment for next season."

This was no gift. It was permission designed to drive me to the edge of a cliff.

That night, Cassian took me into the abandoned training ground. When the mist ward rose, every scent around us was wiped flat, and all that was left was the wind, the stone, and my own heartbeat.

"Find the way out," he said.

"I can't smell anything."

"Then don't."

Rowan's voice came from the mist. So did Sabine's laughter and the muffled crack of the old hunting ground splitting open. I almost ran toward the sounds, but Cassian spoke from behind me, his voice cold. "That isn't the way out. That's the explanation you most want to believe."

I stopped and forced myself to listen past the noise. At the far edge of the mist, a vow so faint it was nearly broken kept repeating, [Go left. Do not go down.]

I reached out and pushed open the stone door on the left.

There was no moonlight behind it, only a cracked old tablet. The name carved into its face was my mother's: Claire Ashford. Beneath it, two words had almost faded away: Dangerously Unstable.