Page 5 of Moonlit Desires

“Then why does the mark burn?” the figure asks softly. “Why do you run from the woods in your dreams?”

Lyra takes a step back. “What do you want from me?”

“Only what you already are.” The figure holds out a gloved hand, palm up. “You cannot cut the silver out. It grows, like hunger. Like a need.”

Lyra hesitates. Then, driven by impulse, she reaches for the offered hand. The moment their fingers touch, the pain erupts again—hot, white, blinding. She gasps, falling to her knees, the world spinning in a vortex of light and memory.

She sees the woods, real this time. The moon overhead, cold and watchful. Shadows flicker at the edges, eyes blinking open, all focused on her.

And for the first time, she feels them not as predators, but as kin.

When she comes back to herself, she’s alone. The train yard is empty, the fog gone, the sky overhead bruised and limitless.

She staggers home, the mark burning steady and sure at her back.

She knows now: there will be no hiding from what she is.

She wouldn’t want to, even if she could.

Chapter two

The Arrival

____________

Lyra arrives at the Broken Barrel an hour before her shift, the weight of the previous night's revelation pressing into her skin like a brand. The mark between her shoulder blades pulses with each heartbeat, a silver reminder that she is something other than what she believed. She unlocks the tavern door with fingers that feel foreign, as if her body is adjusting to accommodate this new knowledge of herself. The empty bar greets her with familiar shadows, but even they seem to watch her differently now.

"One of the Moonwoven," she whispers to herself, testing the words against the reality of the grimy barroom. It soundsridiculous here, amid the stale beer and dust motes, yet the constant throb between her shoulders argues otherwise.

She flips the lights, wincing as fluorescence spills across the scarred tabletops. Each movement stretches the skin around her mark. In the bathroom mirror, she confirms what she already knows by touch—the crescent has deepened overnight, its edges more defined, the silver now threaded with hints of blue. Like moonlight on water. Like something alive.

Lyra tugs her shirt lower and buttons her vest to the throat. The fabric feels abrasive against the mark, but she welcomes the discomfort. Pain is ordinary. Pain makes sense. Unlike silver crescents that appear after bar fights, or hooded figures who speak of ancient bloodlines in abandoned train yards.

By the time Maya arrives, Lyra has arranged her face into something approximating normalcy. She's polished every glass twice, aligned every bottle with military precision, and swept the floor until the worn boards gleam. Busy hands keep her mind from wandering back to the woods of her dreams.

"You're early," Maya says, eyeing the too-clean counter. "Either you're gunning for employee of the month, or you're hiding from something."

Lyra shrugs. "Just couldn't sleep."

Maya's gaze lingers on Lyra's face, then drifts to the tense set of her shoulders. "Right. Well, when you're ready to talk about whatever's eating you, I've got two working ears."

The first patrons trickle in as Lyra finishes stocking the napkins. The usual Thursday crowd—dock workers with salt-stained hands, a few city clerks with ink-spattered cuffs, the seamstresses claiming their corner booth. Lyra serves them with mechanical efficiency, her mind half-elsewhere. Every time the door opens, she finds herself glancing up, expecting to see a hooded figure approaching through the haze.

The seamstresses notice first. The oldest of them—a woman with iron-gray hair and eyes sharp as a falcon's—tracks Lyra's movements with undisguised interest.

"Something's different about our girl," she remarks to her companions, not bothering to lower her voice. "Look at how she moves. Like she's afraid she might shatter."

Her friends turn to study Lyra, who pretends not to notice their scrutiny. The youngest seamstress—barely twenty, with fingers perpetually stained by indigo dye—tilts her head.

"She's glowing," the young woman says, the observation innocent but precise. "Around the edges. Like my grandmother's silver when it needs polishing."

Lyra nearly drops the glass she's drying. She forces herself to turn away, to focus on the bottle arrangement, but her skin crawls with awareness. Is she truly glowing? Can others see the change in her?

The door swings open again, admitting a gust of evening air and three strangers who immediately command the room's attention. They move with a synchronized grace that makes the other patrons seem clumsy by comparison. Two men and a woman, dressed in clothes that would be unremarkable if not for their quality—fabrics too fine for the Broken Barrel, colors too vivid for Lythven's perpetual gray.

The tallest of them, a man with raven-dark hair pulled severely from a face of sharp angles, scans the room with eyes so intensely blue they seem to catch impossible light. Beside him, a woman with silver hair despite her youthful features carries herself like royalty slumming among peasants. The third stranger—slight, with ash-gray hair and skin so pale it's nearly translucent—keeps his gaze fixed on the floor, though Lyra senses he misses nothing.

They choose a table in the far corner, away from the windows but with clear sightlines to both doors. The dark-haired man sitswith his back to the wall, while the woman arranges herself to face the bar directly. The third stranger perches at the edge of his chair, as if prepared to flee at any moment.

---