The council chamber was still reeling in Marek’s absence.
His final words had scattered like embers, but the flames they’d ignited still burned. No one dared speak just yet. Not the councilors now standing awkwardly in their seats. Not the elders clinging to ancient loyalties. Not even Kael.
Only Aria moved.
She stepped forward, toward the raised dais where Marek’s chair sat empty. The seat of the High Councilor — the symbolic apex of the old rule — carved from blackened ashwood and etched with the intertwined sigils of every noble pack.
Aria climbed the steps.
Not rushed. Not hesitant.
Each footfall was deliberate, echoing against the stone floor like the ticking of a war drum.
She paused at the top, standing just in front of the chair. The chamber held its breath.
Then she turned — not to sit, but to face the room.
“I’m not here to replace Marek,” she said, voice quiet, sure. “I’m not here to rule like him, through fear, manipulation, and blood-debts.”
“But,” she continued, eyes hardening, “I will not leave this seat empty.”
Murmurs flared again, louder this time.
One councilor — Elder Rowen from Greenwood — stepped forward.
“And what right do you claim it by?” he asked. “What bond, what bloodline?”
“Mine,” she said simply. “And the truth you buried beneath treaties and lies.”
She pulled the chain from around her neck. A pendant, shaped like a crescent moon and ringed in thorns — the sigil of the lost Vale line. It shimmered in the light like memory made metal.
Elder Thorne stepped forward, cane tapping with gravity.
“She bears the mark,” he said. “The sigil was forged generations ago, passed through the bloodline. Its magic recognizes only true heirs.”
The pendant pulsed faintly, responding to her touch.
“Is that not enough?”
A hush swept the room.
One by one, eyes turned to Kael.
He stepped forward, slowly, gaze fixed on Aria.
“Do you support her claim?” Rowen asked.
Kael didn’t hesitate. “I do.”
“She was never just my mate,” he said. “She was always the Luna this realm denied.”
A flare of something crossed Aria’s face — pain, gratitude, something deeper — but she held her composure.
Still standing.
Still burning.
A voice from the gallery rose — Zara.
“If this council wants to survive the storm it created, it needs leaders who were shaped by the fire, not sheltered from it.”
Aria finally turned, facing the chair behind her.
The ashwood throne.
She studied it a moment longer, then sat.
Not like a victor.
Like someone claiming what was stolen.
The room didn’t cheer. This wasn’t a coronation. There were no flower petals, no howling choirs.
Only silence — sharp, reverent, tense.
Until one by one, the remaining councilors placed their right hands over their hearts and bowed.
A slow, reluctant yielding of old bones.
“I do not seek to rule forever,” Aria said, voice calm from the seat. “But I will rebuild what you burned. And I will make sure no Luna ever walks alone into this chamber again.”
A thunderous knock echoed against the doors.
A messenger burst in, pale and shaking.
“Forgive the intrusion,” he said, voice cracking. “But there’s unrest in the north. Greenwood forces are moving on StoneRidge. They’ve declared the council fractured — they mean to seize control.”
Aria rose immediately.
Not hesitating. Not delegating.
“Send word to StoneRidge. Tell them they’re not alone.”
“Have the Luna Guard assembled,” she added, eyes sweeping the chamber. “And someone find Evelyn. If she’s not already involved, she will be soon.”
Kael moved beside her.
“You’re leading them into war.”
“I’m leading them into a reckoning,” she said.
He met her gaze. “Then let me stand with you.”
She didn’t answer at first.
Then: “Not for me. For her.” She glanced toward the child standing at the far end of the chamber, half-hidden in the shadows, her gray eyes too wise for her years.
Kael followed her gaze.
Then nodded.
Aria turned back to the chamber one last time.
“This is no longer a seat of silence,” she said. “It will speak for the broken. It will answer the forgotten. And it will never kneel again.”
The Vale name echoed through the room like a heartbeat.
And Aria — Luna, mother, threat, and flame — stood in the seat of her ancestors, not as a placeholder…
But as the start of something no one could erase again.
