ECLIPSE
"Eclipse Monart?" Eclipse repeated slowly, smelling a dark conspiracy from miles away.
Raven smirked as though she was revelling in a not so private joke.
Pacing around, she began to recite;
"Only daughter of the Alpha of the Monart Pack, you were born with an incurable illness. Because you were sickly, your parents didn't give you a name. Shortly after, when you were just two, your mother passed away. Being the apple of your father's eyes, he sought a cure far and wide with the promise of immeasurable wealth that would tempt even a monk.
"No one was able to cure you, so your father sent to you a Temple of the Moon Goddess in the East when you were just five years old. There, you lived out your life in obscurity. Cared and seen by only the head of the temple and your personal handmaid, you lived out your life there… that was until…." she trailed off for a most sullen dramatic effect.
Eclipse held her breath.
"During the solar eclipse last year, your illness was mysteriously cured and you became well. Believing that the Moon Goddess cured you of your illness, your father gave you the name Eclipse and had you serve an additional year at the Temple. A few months ago, you returned. And since your family was lucky enough to be chosen by the North, you're now set off as one of the brides."
Hot anger flared in eclipse's belly at the blatant lies. "Is it that you think me so unskilled I will be unable to assume and answer to a new name when I reach the North?" She asked easily, her voice masking her rage.
Raven threw her head back, cackling like a mad woman.
"Of course not," she answered, wiping away nonexistent tears, "I just thought it would make for a most puzzling climax if a woman bearing the name of the fated mate of the Alpha King suddenly appears." she cackled, finding the situation truly assuming.
"Tell me," Raven murmured, stepping closer. "Will he look at you and pretend you are her?" Her smile sharpened. "Or will he kill you for daring to exist with the same name as the woman he was once fated to?"
Eclipse remained unsmiling. Facing the Bloodhound, she said, "It seems to me Sage Raven doesn't fully grasp the importance of this mission. If she did, then she should understand that she compromises my role by asking me to assume my real name in this mission."
Ignoring the quiet rage that colored the woman's face, she continued. "Malric NorthSteed bears no love or rage for the deceased Eclipse Stones. Asking me to assume her name will only bring me his suspicion–nothing more or less."
A vein ticked in Raven's jaw. "Aren't you quite smart?" She snarled with a voice dripping with sarcasm, "You haven't reached the North, yet you're already skilled at referring to yourself as dead."
"That is because I am dead." Eclipse deadpanned, meaning the words in all the ways it mattered.
In the speed of light, the other woman gripped her neck with fingers that threatened to break into her flesh."Know your place," she whispered. "I am a Sage." Her grip pressed harder."You are not even ranked."
She might be unranked, but that didn't mean she wouldn't stand a chance against Raven in a fair fight. But she sheathed her claws because Raven was not her problem.
"Your identity has been settled," The Bloodhound commented coolly, in an attempt to dissipate the tension, "we have long prepared for it, rest assured it is as ironclad as it can be. In an arena with fifty brides, we have to make you stand out somewhat. Answering Eclipse might be the only way you can achieve this. That way, you stand a chance to get closer to him."
Raven released her abruptly. She pouted, easily summoning a smile that was beginning not to fit her.
"That was exactly what I was trying to say," she cooed, "besides, it will be fun." She added the jab.
Eclipse remained unaffected as it began to settle with her that the time was finally there.
It was finally there.
Tears she didn't know she was still capable of threatened to spill from her eyes.
The rest of the things Raven said drowned in a sea of the noise in her head as Rose appeared before her. So immersed was she in the appearance of her sister that she didn't know when Raven left.
"Seeing you this distracted makes me wonder yet again if we should be sending you on this mission." The Bloodhound grunted.
Rose disappeared, while Eclipse looked up at him.
"When I choose the bow and the arrow, you asked me to sharpen my emotions until it becomes the sharpest arrow I would ever wield."
The Bloodhound nodded curtly. "Every arrow needs a target."
"And mine has long been poised at Malric NorthSteed." She said, voice hoarse like it had been abused, "and for once, my arms have never grown tired or worn from holding the bow. Nor have I wavered from pointing at this target. So believe me when I say I am more than ready."
"I also taught you you must apply the right amount of tension to your hold lest you risk your arrow snapping into two before it's released." He said suddenly, drawing her eyes to him.
She chuckled. "Perhaps forty percent is all I have ever needed, Master."
Silence fell between them for the longest time.
Months of hardcore training and breaking and remoulding were the memories they shared together, and that violence was what tethered them to each other in that moment.
"This is nothing like the missions you've ever had." He finally said.
"I know."
"Once you depart for the North, communication might be broken for some time. In that time, you must never act rashly."
"I understand." She lied.
And he easily saw through her lie but didn't call out on it.
"You must only act as the Hollow has commanded you. Especially as a spy. Gather information first, attack later as commanded."
"I understand." She lied again.
This time he called out her lie. "No you do not, Arrow. You hold your rage too close, and that will make all the difference between a flawless attack, and a flawed one."
Eclipse had never failed any one of her missions—and some of them were tier one missions—so she was more at a loss at the Bloodhound's reluctance to trust her skills.
He turned to leave, then halted before the door. "Why did you not strike Raven when you could?" he asked unexpectedly.
"Because she is not my problem… and I wasn't sure I would have won."
"You would have won." He spelt coldly.
She perked up. "But she is sage?"
He scoffed. "That title means little to the instincts of your Ashen Wolf."
"But I hardly win against you." she protested.
His only response was a chuckle that Eclipse had never heard from him
The few days that followed that entailed her immersing into her role as Eclipse Monart was like a dream come true.
And while Raven might be a bit obnoxious, the woman knew how to do her job. So well that she didn't give Eclipse any breathing space to slip in the slightest.
"What is your name?"
"Monart. Eclipse Monart."
"Good." Raven commented in one of their sessions, "You were never given a name until last year so mentioning your surname is quite natural. It says, I have a name, but I am still struggling to adapt to it. But the way you say it… is not right."
Her whip quickly came down on her back; an act that had become one of Raven's pastimes. A chance to whip her for her faults was like a rare drug which she savoured quietly and slowly.
Eclipse didn't make a sound—she just stared at the woman pointedly. "And my fault?"
"Have you forgotten?" Raven chuckled in answer, "You are the girl who has been sick all her life. Raised at a temple, demureness should be your default. As such, every trace of defiance must be wiped away from your eyes. You do a good job. But when you stand before Malric NorthSteed, you must emit nothing but innocence. Like an unstained flower even if you are anything but."
Quiet rage rooted her in place. She was expected to fully assume the innocent girl she once was five years ago, and yet despite the fact that not much time had passed, she found she could never become that girl.
Head bowed, she stared at the floor. This role, this bloodstained path, since she has started walking it, she might as well make it to the end.
She raised her head, features softening like a witch's spell, lips relaxed, and eyes wide open and glittering like the stars.
"Monart," She breathed softly in a voice that was not like her own—a voice that sounded soft, lost, and out of place.
"My name is Eclipse Monart." She answered.
Raven smiled wickedly. "What a good girl. That is more like it, Monart."
Eclipse maintained her expression, all the while imagining stabbing the man wearing a Lycan-face-eating masquerade mask a hundred times even after he had long dropped dead.
Fine, she would smile when she met him.
And she would kill him before he ever knew why.