Elira moved like a shadow through the palace corridors, the stolen cloak folded close to her chest. Her hands trembled not from cold but from the weight of what she carried, a small act of rebellion wrapped in dark wool and silver braid.
Each step felt like a theft and a prayer. The cloak smelled faintly of Alpha Gonzalo, smoke and spice and the faint trace of his skin where he had draped it aside and it was a shock of ordinary possession in a world that had been rearranged by cruelty.
She had not expected to find the cloak in Gonzalo's chambers. She had cleaned rooms before, wiped a cup from a lord's fingers, gathered crumbs from beneath a sash. The work had been small and bone aching and honest. Today, she had been sent to sweep the main hall, and under the great chair the cloak had been folded like a thing put down hastily. For a breath she had stood and stared at it the way someone stares at a memory. Then she gathered it, wrapped it to herself, and left, the sound of her footsteps swallowed by the palace's normal hush.
Gonzalo did not notice. He was hunched over a table strewn with maps and inked sketches of terrain. The beta stood opposite him, a taller man with a keen jaw and a voice that had the habit of being listened to. They spoke in low, deliberate voices of strategy, the Dark Blood rogues, their recent raids, where they hid and how they were likely to strike. Plans were a strange comfort, a map became a promise that the world was a thing one could name and then try to command.
Vanya lingered at the edge of the war room, an extra shadow in the doorway, and watched the two men fold words into tactics. She liked the feel of power that came in assembling a plan. It was different from the petty satisfactions of cruelty, it had the long reach of governance.
She watched the lines on the map and then, with a small movement that was nearly invisible, shifted her attention to the servants who moved like small, obedient vessels in the outer rooms. Her eyes found Elira through a lattice of doors, noticed the younger woman's bent head, the careful fold she carried close. Vanya's mouth twitched with a quickness that meant she had seen more than she let on.
Elira should have been careful. She should have known the palace had eyes in unexpected places. But the cloak had been the sharpest of temptations, a small, private emblem of dignity and protection... and when ordinary courage surfaces, it often does so without the slow, considered faculty of reason. She moved through the passages with the kind of speed that belongs to people who have practiced being invisible. The cloak was a warmth against her ribs.
Vanya's watch did not creep, it shortened a step and then another until she was within sight. She did not call out. She waited, the ease of a trap. The Luna liked such moments, to see how small rebellions play themselves out when stripped down by the architecture of power. She stepped forward at the moment Elira turned a corner near the kitchens, and the guards who flanked her were already in motion.
"Elira," Vanya said, voice like midwinter air. There was no accusation in it at first, it was the tone one uses to name a small animal before pulling at it. Elira froze as if someone had reached through her. The cloak slid lower in her hands, a dark, conspiring shape.
"Luna," Elira breathed, tiny and immediate. The word did not buy mercy. Vanya's smile, small and practiced, was a blade she held without effort.
"You have grown bold," Vanya said. "You move like a person who thinks she owns this pack." She stepped closer and the circle of guards tightened like a net. A guard reached for the cloak, and Elira's fingers clenched around it as if it were a newborn and the world were trying to take it.
"Give it," Vanya ordered. There was no need for violence yet, the shape of command was enough. Elira swallowed and handed the cloak up as if she were giving up a child. The fabric slid across palms that had not been taught to treat such things tenderly.
Vanya turned the cloak over in one hand like a judge turning a verdict. The silver braid flashed. Her eyes traced the patch by the hem, the faint wax mark Liora had described in a whisper the night before. She put her face close to the cloth and smiled in a way that meant she had found an answer in small things.
"You took something that did not belong to you," she said. "You took something for Liora, did you not? From the woman who refused and challenged your Luna and earned her punishment. For the one who killed my child..."
Elira's face crumpled. "I— Liora asked—" Her voice cracked. Vanya lifted a finger, a precise cut through the air.
"She asked," Vanya repeated. "Liora asks for the cloak. How noble of you. But nobility is a luxury here. You will learn the cost."
The guards closed like a tide. One grabbed Elira's wrists and jerked them back. The boy's grip was not cruel, brutality need not be theatrical to be destructive. Pain bloomed white-hot through Elira's hands where the cords bit. She gave a sound, small and involuntary.
Vanya's voice dropped to a cold, intimate volume. "Tie her to the other side of the tree," she said. The order was a wedge. The soldiers obeyed with the practice of those who have been given the duty to be useful. They led Elira through the courtyard where the moon had begun to pull its silver veil over the grounds.
There were torches set to distance the night and men who moved in the periphery to spare no angle of the spectacle. Liora watched, her face a pale mask in the dark. The ropes were fast in hands that had rehearsed them, knots were made and jerked tight. Elira's feet brushed the packed earth and then were pulled up a little as her arms were strapped above her head. She gasped when the cords cut across her wrists. The tree's rough bark bit her back, and the moon carved lines across a face that had been small and determined not so long ago.
Vanya took her place at the center of the courtyard and folded her hands. The older women gathered like audience members who had bought their own permission to enjoy the show. They had been given a task and the sanction to do it, they would not look away. Vanya had learned long ago that cruelty is easiest when a community buys into it by giving labor and laughter.
"Elira," Vanya said softly, as if prolonging the sentence might let it be savored. "You
will learn the language of obedience."