Page 4 of Moonlit Desires

Chapter two

The Arrival

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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 sounds ridiculous 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 sits with 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.

A hush falls over the nearest tables. The newcomers are too polished, too elegant for this part of town. They look like characters from a storybook accidentally dropped into a newspaper.

The whispers start almost immediately.

"Those are Court folk if I've ever seen them," mutters a dock worker to his companion. "What're they doing this far from the border?"

"Hunting, probably," his friend replies. "Always hunting for something, that lot."

"Dangerous business, dealing with their kind," a third man chimes in. "My cousin went to work for one of the Courts. Came back with half his memories missing and a taste for raw meat."

The seamstresses exchange significant glances. The oldest among them makes a warding gesture beneath the table.

Lyra pretends to be absorbed in mixing a drink, but her attention is fixed on the strangers.

There's something about them—something in the way they hold themselves, in the careful precision of their movements—that reminds her of the hooded figure from the train yard.

Her mark throbs in response, as if recognizing its own kind.

The woman with silver hair catches Lyra staring and holds her gaze with an intensity that makes Lyra's breath hitch.

There is knowledge in that look, and curiosity, and something that might be hunger.

Lyra forces herself to turn away, hands trembling as she pours whiskey for a regular who doesn't notice her distress.

From the corner of her eye, she observes the strangers.

They speak little, and when they do, their lips barely move.

The pale man's fingers trace patterns on the tabletop—symbols that Lyra can't decipher but which seem achingly familiar.

The dark- haired man's posture never relaxes, his attention constantly sweeping the room before returning, inevitably, to Lyra.

"I don't like them," Maya murmurs, appearing at Lyra's elbow. "They're watching you."

Lyra forces a laugh. "Everyone watches the bartender. It's how you get drinks."

Maya shakes her head. "Not like that. Like they're... I don't know. Waiting for something."

Before Lyra can respond, the silver-haired woman rises from her seat and approaches the bar. She moves with liquid grace, her steps silent despite the uneven floorboards. Up close, Lyra can see that her eyes are not quite human—the irises too large, the color shifting like mercury in sunlight.

"A drink, if you please," the woman says, her voice musical and precise. "Something that burns."

Lyra reaches for the top-shelf whiskey, but the woman stops her with a raised finger.

"Not that kind of burn," she says, and smiles. Her teeth are very white and very straight. "I mean the kind that reminds you what you are, beneath the skin."

Lyra's hand freezes on the bottle. The mark between her shoulder blades flares hot enough to make her gasp. The woman's smile widens, satisfaction evident in the curve of her lips.

"I thought so," she murmurs. "You've felt the call, haven't you? The silver in your blood singing back to the moon?"

Lyra sets the bottle down carefully, aware that Maya is watching them with undisguised suspicion. "I don't know what you're talking about."

The woman laughs, a sound like glass breaking in the distance. "You will," she promises. "Soon enough. We've come to make sure of that."

She slides a silver coin across the counter—not currency that Lyra recognizes, but a token stamped with a crescent moon. The exact shape of the mark on Lyra's back.

"When you're ready," the woman says, "follow the path this shows you. We'll be waiting."

Before Lyra can protest, the woman glides back to her companions. They rise in unison, nodding to her with what looks almost like deference. As they exit, the dark-haired man casts one final glance at Lyra—a look of such mingled yearning and regret that it steals her breath.

The door closes behind them, and the room exhales, conversation surging back to fill the vacuum they've left. But Lyra remains frozen, the silver coin burning against her palm like a promise.

Or a threat.

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The silver coin burns a hole in Lyra's pocket for the remainder of her shift, its weight disproportionate to its size.

She serves drinks with mechanical precision, her mind elsewhere—in silver woods, in abandoned train yards, in the mercury eyes of a woman who knew her secret before she did.

The tavern empties gradually as night deepens, until only a handful of patrons remain, nursing their drinks in the corners like survivors of some invisible storm.

It's then that the door opens again, admitting a gust of night air and the dark-haired stranger, alone this time, his blue eyes finding her immediately across the room.

Maya tenses beside her. "Want me to call the bouncer?"

Lyra shakes her head, though her pulse quickens. "No. I think... I think I need to hear what he has to say."