The Luna He Failed to Protect novel · Chapter 21 of 32

Chapter 21: The Charge

The round hall made a sound like a wave pulling back off stones.

Then nothing.

Morwenna rose out of the Luna's chair.

"This is my court," she said. "I'm hearing a theft."

"The Luna can't hear a charge brought against her own house," said the elder. "It's on the stones, Morwenna. Two lines under the one the girl just quoted."

He leaned on his stick and looked up at her.

"Sit down. You'll answer from your chair like anyone else."

She sat.

I'd never seen her do what she was told before.

Her hands were white on the arms of the chair.

"Name your charge," the elder said to me.

I stood in the moonlight on the stone.

"Commander Garth Coldwater," I said. "For what he did to the wolves sent to his garrison. For seven dead, for the living he broke, and for me."

I turned to the dais.

"And Morwenna Ravelston, Luna, for sending them to him knowing what he was. And paying him."

Garth laughed out loud.

Morwenna didn't.

"Witnesses?" said the elder.

"Three born in Greyhollow," I said. "And ten who held the Line."

"Then show it."

I didn't start with me.

I started with the last girl's mother.

She came out onto the floor in the same cardigan with the holes at the elbows.

She'd brushed her hair.

She held the biscuit tin against her chest.

She didn't look at the benches.

She looked at Morwenna the whole time.

She unfolded the pale blue paper and held it up so the moonlight went through it.

"My daughter begged the Luna to make him stop," she said, in a voice that never shook. "This is what the Luna wrote back."

Somebody on the benches started crying.

"Morwenna Ravelston, Luna of Greyhollow," she said. "A month before they brought her home in a box."

She walked over and laid it on the moon stone at my feet.

Morwenna didn't move.

"A grieving mother," she said evenly. "I wrote her a firm letter. I've written many."

"Yes," I said. "You have."

I nodded to the elder.

He unlocked the iron chest.

He took out the leather account book and held it up.

Garth's smile slipped, just a little.

"The commander's hand," I said. "Fifteen years. Initials, a sum, and the word received."

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