Chapter 171

Lila

The outpost could no longer hold me safe.

The bread was gone, the dried fruit was nothing but dust at the bottom of the pouch. Even the water flask kept running dry and I had to venture out to refill it at least three times a day.

I couldn’t wait for Ronan any longer, not with my body aching and the faint flutter beneath my ribs reminding me of what was coming.

I’d told myself I’d be safe if I stayed hidden until he returned. But that kind of safety meant starving and being too weak to stand when the time came to bring this child into the world.

If Ronan returned at all. For all I knew, Damon had learned what he did for me, how he betrayed his trust and threw him in the dungeons or worse.

At first light, I pushed the shutters open, the wood groaning in protest as if the room itself didn’t want to let me go.

The crisp morning air hit me, carrying the damp smell of moss and soil. My legs trembled under me, but I forced them forward, one step, then another and out the door.

The forest spread in every direction, vast and dense. I pulled my cloak tighter, hiding my face in its hood, and chose a path at random. I just needed it to be anywhere but here, and away from the palace.

I didn’t know where I was going. Only that I needed food. Shelter. Somewhere I could be more than a dead fugitive huddled in the dark. Somewhere I could be strong enough for the child I carried.

The first village I stumbled across was little more than a scatter of cottages and a crooked tavern leaning against itself like an old drunk. Smoke curled from the chimneys, carrying the bitter tang of peat fires.

My stomach cramped at the smell of bread, even though I had no coin to pay for it.

I kept my head low and offered my hands instead. I had started life forced into servitude, so I was no stranger to scrubbing floors and baking pies.

The innkeeper’s mate welcomed me, happily, and I was put to work scrubbing hearthstones and hauling buckets from the well.

I would do anything that made me look like another weary traveler instead of who I truly was.

No one saw me as Damon’s mate. They didn’t see the woman whispered about in council halls. They saw a stranger with dirt under her nails and too-sharp eyes, and for that, they let me stay the night in a hayloft.

But they talked. Everyone always had something to say.

I heard it first from three males drinking outside the tavern, voices hushed but clear enough to carry on the cold air.

“King’s Luna died in the fire, they say. A martyr. Tragic end to be sure.”

“I thought she’s back home with her mother planning their wedding?” the other replied.

I heard the faint thud of a shoulder being whacked. “No, you dolt, not that one, the true Luna.”

“Nah,” the third replied and spit into the dirt. “She’s not dead. She’s a traitor. Ran from him when he needed her most. Deserted the throne and he has to marry her sister.”

The words made me pause. A martyr. A traitor. Which was I? Which would Damon believe?

I left that village at dawn. And the next. And the next. Everywhere I went, the gossip spread faster than the smoke that still haunted my lungs.

In one place, a girl pressed a sprig of rosemary into my hand, whispering a blessing for the “brave Luna who gave everything.” In another, an old man sneered as I passed, muttering about how women ruin even Kings.

They didn’t know who I was, not really. My hood and keeping to myself kept me invisible enough. But their followed me anyway, weighing heavy on my heart.

By the fourth village, I’d learned to avoid the taverns altogether. I couldn’t stand to hear Damon’s name praised on their tongues. Couldn’t stand the ache it brought, the sharp longing mixed with hurt and anger.

Still, I moved. A barn, abandoned cottage, even a half-collapsed temple with ivy strangling its roof…I slept where I could, ate what little was earned or offered, and kept moving before anyone grew curious enough to ask me questions.

Each mile farther from the palace was a reminder that my life there was gone, Damon was gone, and the only thing left was the fragile life inside me.

I pressed a hand to my stomach as I walked, whispering silently to the child. “I’ll find a place for us. Somewhere safe. Somewhere no one can reach us.”

But the truth pressed harder with every passing day: I wasn’t sure such a place existed.

Rather than dwell on it and lose hope, I lost myself in the rhythm of walking, in the endless shuffle of my boots through mud and pine needles, and in the faint gnaw of hunger and nausea that at least kept my mind fixed on something physical.

But at night, when I lay in the lofts of strangers’ barns or on the damp floor of an abandoned cottage, there was nothing left to do but think, and dream.

I would see Damon’s face in the smoke again, hear his voice turning raw with panic as he called for me.

In these dreams, he always found me, sometimes burning, sometimes broken, but alive in his arms. And then I woke, clutching only empty straw or a fraying blanket, the bond between was no longer there.

Sometimes I hated him. Hated the way he had lied.

The anger felt good. It was easier to carry than the other feeling, the one that clawed me open when I remembered the warmth of his hand against my cheek, the way his voice softened when he spoke only to me.

That grief was messy. It hollowed me out, left me shivering even under a heavy cloak.

And the whispers from village to village never stopped. Even when I avoided the taverns, I couldn’t escape them.

“The Luna betrayed her king.”

“She died trying to save him. Noble, tragic.”

“She wasn’t a true Luna.”

Every tavern corner, every water well, every huddle of tradesmen in the town square…they had their version of me. All of them wrong, of course, but all of them hurt in their own way.

I told myself I didn’t care. That I only needed to keep my hood up, keep moving, keep this child safe.

But the truth slipped in late at night, when the world was quiet and my body throbbed with exhaustion. What if Damon believed them? What if, right now, he had already buried me in his heart, followed through with Elena?

The thought made bile rise in my throat. My hands pressed hard against my stomach, as though the child could anchor me in place, tether me to a new future where I was important to someone.

My body continued to betray me, slow me down. Each day my strength frayed further, the nausea and hunger gnawed deeper, my legs ached more fiercely.

When I caught my reflection once in a rain puddle, I barely recognized myself: pale, hollow-cheeked, practically a stranger with deep shadows bruised under my eyes.

I couldn’t stay in one place long. I couldn’t risk being seen too clearly. But my child deserved better than this wandering ghost of a mother.

One night, I curled in the corner of an empty hunting cabin, the roof half-collapsed, moonlight slanting through gaps in the beams. My hands shook as I pulled the blanket around my shoulders, whispering into the dark.

“Please,” I begged of Ruby. “Please come back to me. I don’t want to do this alone.”

Nothing. No flicker of warmth, no spark of her voice. Just the lonely echo of my own whisper.

Tears burned in my eyes, but I pressed my lids together to keep it contained. Crying wouldn’t feed me. It wouldn’t protect the child. It wouldn’t change the fact that I had no one.

I shook myself back to a sense of control. “I’ll keep us safe. Somehow. Even if it kills me.”

The words trembled, but they were the only promise I could make. And the only thing keeping me alive.