Chapter 22: The Moon Court Rises

They crowned me on the Hill of Black Stone, on the step where the Moon Court's gate had stood.

Eleven days had passed since the Iron Hall, and in that time the survivors had swept every stair of the burned keep.

The ash was gone from the courtyard.

The old woman's people had hung white cloth along the broken walls.

A thousand of them stood in the yard.

They were thralls and survivors and wolves from every pack, and they had come to see it.

My mother stood on the top step in a plain white dress.

She held the bent silver circlet in both hands.

"Linnea of the Moon," she said, in the voice that had made the torches turn. "Daughter of Ilse. Do you take this Crown?"

"I do."

"Will you keep it from iron?"

"I will."

"Will you bow to no wolf who hasn't earned it?"

"I will."

She lifted the circlet and set it on my head.

It was light, and warm, and it fitted my head.

The yard went silent.

"Look at her," my mother said to the yard. "The Moon Court is awake."

The old woman struck her staff on the stone.

The old King of Fenmark came up the steps first, with the black collar on his throat and a bucket in his hand.

He put the bucket down, and went to his knees, and bowed his head until it touched the stone.

"Fenmark swears," he said. "Fenmark kneels."

The Eastern King came after him, and the young King of the Marsh, both in plain coats, without their rings.

They knelt side by side.

"The East kneels."

"The Marsh kneels."

They had come to do it, of their own will.

I had not said a word.

Three kings knelt before me on the black stone.

Then I looked down the steps.

Evander Kray stood at the foot, alone, in the plain shirt of a man with nothing.

His head was bare.

He had not worn the High Crown since the day he walked out of Greyhollow.

He climbed the steps slowly and stopped before me.

"Linnea of the Moon," he said. "I've no gold, and no fort, and I gave my ring to your people."

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