The Silent Luna's Trial (Maple and Finn) novel Chapter 80

**When the Last Candle Sang to the Ocean Wind by Aurelion Kyre Solvane**

Sometimes, I found myself questioning the very fabric of my existence, wondering if those people I called my parents were ever truly mine.

The second time I encountered Isabelle, I was merely ten years old, a tender age when the world felt vast yet painfully small.

It was Christmas, a time meant for joy and laughter, and her family had come over as invited guests. Our parents had concocted a plan to whisk us away to the nearby town of Grendale for a day filled with merriment and holiday cheer.

However, fate had other plans. At the last possible moment, my parents were caught up in some unforeseen circumstance, leaving me to ride along with Isabelle’s family.

As we journeyed down the winding roads, tension hung in the air like a thick fog, and I could feel it creeping into my bones. It didn’t take long for the familiar sounds of disagreement to erupt between Isabelle’s parents. Their voices, once warm and inviting, now turned sharp and cutting, echoing off the car’s interior.

The atmosphere turned heavy, laden with unspoken words and unresolved issues. Isabelle and I sat in the backseat, our hearts racing, too frightened to break the silence that enveloped us.

Suddenly, in a moment of desperation, Isabelle reached out, her small hand grasping her mother’s arm from the front seat. “Mom, please don’t be mad,” she whispered, her voice barely audible over the rising tension.

Genevieve, however, was a tempest of fury. She swatted Isabelle’s hand away with a force that seemed to shake the very foundations of the car.

But her motion was too abrupt, too reckless. Isabelle recoiled, her eyes wide with shock, and in that chaotic moment, Genevieve’s hand inadvertently struck the face of Isabelle’s father, Killian, who was focused intently on the road ahead.

In an instant, Killian erupted, a lion awakened from slumber. He lunged at Genevieve, slapping her hard across the face, the sound echoing in the confined space like a thunderclap.

And then, in a heartbeat, his hands left the steering wheel.

A massive boulder, dislodged from the hillside, came tumbling down, a silent harbinger of doom.

Killian noticed too late. Instinct kicked in, and he yanked the wheel, but it was futile. The boulder collided with the front of the car, sending it careening off the mountain road.

When I regained consciousness after the crash, the world around me was a blur of confusion and pain. I was told that it was my cries, my desperate pleas to return and find my parents, that had distracted Isabelle’s father, leading to the tragedy that unfolded.

It was my fault, they said. That was why the car had crashed, why it had plunged off the cliff.

Isabelle’s parents died in an instant, leaving only the two of us—Isabelle and me—alive amidst the wreckage.

I was just a child, barely ten. How could I articulate what had truly transpired? How could I accuse Isabelle of twisting the truth?

“No! That’s a lie!”

Chapter 5

The courtroom erupted in chaos as my father sprang to his feet, finger pointing accusatorily at me, his voice booming with disbelief.

My mother stood frozen, her eyes wide with shock, her lips quivering as she struggled to grasp the reality of the situation.

In the midst of the turmoil, I noticed that Isabelle had quietly slipped away from the plaintiff’s bench, though her purse remained behind, an abandoned token of her presence.

“Memory cannot be fabricated,” the werewolf judge intoned, his voice icy as he gestured for the warriors to restrain my father.

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