POV: Everly
She didn't speak of the dream.
Not to the other servants. Not to the cook who barked orders before dawn. Not to herself but it stayed with her.
The hum of something ancient beneath her ribs. The scratch across her palm that still ached in sleep and the moon-vine blossom that had not withered.
Everly tucked the flower into the seam of her tunic where no one could see it. She didn't know why she kept it. Maybe to prove it had happened. Maybe to feel less alone.
The garden still called to her in memory. Each step through the waking world felt more… distant. She moved through the pack house like breath through a hollow reed, unseen, unheard.
At least, she used to be.
"Did you see her?" The whisper came from behind a low-stacked crate as she passed through the kitchens. She wasn't meant to hear it.
Another voice answered, softer. "I think her eyes glowed. Just for a second."
"Glowed?"
"Like silver. Like the moon."
Everly paused, fingers tightening around the basket of foraged herbs she was delivering.
They weren't talking about someone else.
She continued on, shoulders tight. The path toward the Alpha wing cut past the laundry, then down toward the back hall where the warriors kept their gear.
There, folded neatly beside the door she used most often, was a cloth, fresh and clean. On top of it, tucked carefully into the corner, lay a tiny sprig of silverleaf.
Not a mistake.
An offering.
Everly stared at it for a long moment.
She didn't touch it. Not yet.
Someone behind her dropped a tool with a loud clatter. She turned as the young boy who had started last moon bent quickly to pick it up.
"S-sorry," he stammered, then bowed. Bowed. He wouldn't meet her eyes as he scrambled away.
By midday, the tension had become a thread she couldn't untangle.
A girl in the seamstress wing called her moon-touched when she thought Everly had already walked away. Another had traced the sigil of the Moon Goddess on the wall behind Everly's path, not a warning this time, but a prayer. She found a piece of bread wrapped in waxed cloth hidden in her basin.
None of it made sense.
None of it felt safe.
She found Spirit in the far corridor near the drying herbs, humming to herself as she sorted pale roots into bowls. "You did something," Everly blurted, not meaning for it to sound so harsh.
Spirit didn't look up. "No," she said lightly. "You did."
Everly crossed her arms. "They're leaving things for me. Watching me like I'm… like I'm not me."
Spirit smiled soft, knowing. "You can't stop people from believing," she said. "Even if you don't want them to."
Everly frowned. "I didn't ask for this."
"I know."
"Then make them stop."
Spirit paused her sorting. Looked at Everly with a gaze that felt older than anyone in Ironfang. "I could," she said quietly. "But that would be cruel."
That night, Everly sat at the edge of her sleeping space, watching the curtain sway in the breeze.
She wasn't sure what she was anymore. Still a servant. Still broken. Still hiding.
But now… someone whispered her name like a story.
"I heard she has a wolf, but it hides," a girl murmured in the next chamber over.
"No," another replied. "They say she went to the forgotten garden and came back changed."
"Changed how?"
"Don't know. But she walks like someone who knows secrets."
Everly closed her eyes. The words wrapped around her ribs like threads…warm and terrifying.
She didn't want this.
Not the attention.
Not the fear.
But another part of her…deeper…didn't flinch.
She crept to the edge of the servant's hall just before sunrise, trailing her fingers along the stone wall. At the far end, where the shadows met the window's broken glass, a girl sat cross-legged on the floor, whispering.
Not a prayer to the Moon Goddess.
But a story.
"Once, there was a wolf with no name," the girl said. "She was born in silence and carried it like a cloak. She didn't snarl. Didn't howl. But when the moon called, she didn't turn away." Her voice lowered. "She didn't ask to be seen. But the forest remembered her. And so did the wild."
Another girl beside her whispered, "Is it true?"
The first just shrugged. "The Seer says truth is a choice."
Everly backed away, heart pounding. That story… it was her.
No name.
No howl.
But the forest… had remembered?
Later, as the first light of morning filtered through the trees, Everly stood by the edge of the training fields, staring beyond the border.
Toward the forest.
Toward the mountains no one spoke of.
And she whispered, "I don't want to be seen. Not yet."
But when she turned back toward the servant's hall…
She saw them.
Small. Soft.
Moon-vine petals.
Trailing in a line behind her.
And the wolves?
They whispered her name.