Chapter 9: Whispers Beneath the Stone
Magnolia barely slept.
She sat in the corner of her room long after midnight, the velvet pouch clenched in her hand, pulse thrumming like a heartbeat against her skin. Whatever this relic was whatever magic lingered in its threads it wasn’t benign. It felt... aware. And hungry.
Just before dawn, she left her quarters, the estate cloaked in stillness. Not a soul stirred. Not even the guards. They must’ve rotated shift convenient. Or orchestrated.
She didn’t go to Rhett. She didn’t trust the silence that followed his every step. There was something about his calm lately that didn’t feel natural. As if he was keeping something buried just beneath the surface.
Instead, she headed underground.
Beneath the east wing, past the abandoned wine cellars and ancestral catacombs, lay the oldest chamber in the entire estate: the Vault of Luna Stones.
The door hadn’t been opened in decades. Not since Rhett’s mother sealed it after the death of the last official Luna.
Magnolia placed her palm against the ancient etching on the arch two crescent moons bound by a line of blood. Her wolf shifted inside her, pushing against her skin.
The stone trembled.
Then it opened.
Cold air rushed out, thick with the scent of bone dust and moss. Torches lit on their own, casting an eerie glow across the narrow passage.