The Luna Queen's Rebirth novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: What a Rejection Costs

The court demands she take it back by moonset, her grandmother learns the truth, and Seraphine walks out at midnight to the one king who owes Leoric nothing.

The pain arrived a breath after the shock wore off.

It folded me in half on the altar stones, my forehead almost touching the cold floor.

I had expected it to hurt. I had not expected it to feel like a second death.

"Seraphine!" My father pushed through the rows, his grey cloak snapping behind him. "What have you done?"

He was the Alpha of Greywater, fifty-six years old, and I had never seen his face go that white.

"Taken back what's mine," I said into the stone.

Leoric made a sound behind me, half a laugh and half a gasp.

His gold wolf was still shrieking in his throat.

He pressed a fist to his chest.

"She's overwrought," he told the elders. His voice cracked on the last word. "It is the Rite. It has happened before."

"It has never happened before," said the oldest elder.

He was a stiff man in a green robe who had once told me a Luna's first duty was to be quiet.

The priestess of the Moon Court came forward with her silver staff.

"The Goddess heard it," she said. "I felt it break."

The courtyard buzzed.

Leoric straightened his circlet with a shaking hand and turned to the crowd.

"I am the Alpha King," he said. "I do not punish a woman for nerves."

He spread his hands to the crowd.

"Let her take it back before moonset, and we will say no more."

It was a merciful speech. He had always been good at those.

The elders nodded. My father looked at me with such pleading that I almost felt sorry for him.

"Take it back," he said quietly. "Please. We can fix this."

"No," I said.

I stood up with one hand pressed to the hole in my chest, and I said it so every row could hear.

"I will not be bound to him. Not by moonset, and not by sunrise."

Behind the crowd's heads, I saw Perdita set her tray on a stone bench.

She did it slowly. She was watching Leoric's face.

The elders took me away.

They put me in the herb room off the Moon Hall kitchens.

There was a guard at the door and a pitcher of water I would not touch.

The pain came in waves, and each one left me weaker than the last.

I sat on a sack of dried yarrow and counted my breaths.

I had reached four hundred and nine when the door opened.

My grandmother came in alone, leaning on the frame.

She had bribed the guard with a look. She had been doing that since before I was born.

"Sit," she said, though I was already sitting. "You were burned."

I stared at her.

"Not hurt. Not frightened," Anwen said. "Burned. I rang the bell this morning and the Goddess answered with a woman's scream."

"Grandmother."

"Don't lie to me, child. I am too old and I have paid too much."

I told her, because there was nobody else.

I told her about the ribbons, the vial, the torch, and Leoric's face when he gave it away.

My voice held until I reached the part where Perdita cried across the stones.

Anwen listened with her eyes shut and her hand on the bell.

When I finished, she sat very still.

"Four years," she said. "You were given four years back."

She shook her head slowly.

"And you spent the first day breaking a bond the whole realm calls holy."

"I'd do it again."

"I know you would." Her mouth twitched. "Good. Now what is your plan?"

"I don't have one."

"You have a head. Use it."

She leaned closer.

"Stay in Aldermere tonight, and the elders will cage you at Greywater until you say the words."

"Then I run."

"To where?"

The window above us showed a slice of the courtyard, where torches were being lit for the feast.

Past the wall, on the river road, a column of riders in black coats was making camp under a northern banner.

"Hollowmark," I said.

"Rhydian Carrow came to talk about the border passes."

Anwen smiled.

"Your mate insulted him on the steps this afternoon. He has four thousand riders and no reason to love the Alpha King."

"He doesn't know me."

"Then give him a reason to learn your name."

She took the bell from around her neck and put the cord in my hand.

"It rang for you," she said. "Do not waste it."

I closed my fingers around the warm brass.

The guard at the door was a young man who had been told not to let me out.

Nobody had told him how to stop my grandmother from opening it.

I walked past him with my cloak over my arm and my chin up.

"Luna," he whispered, and I saw he did not know whether to bow.

"Not anymore," I said, and went down the back stairs into the dark.

The feast roared above me, all music and laughter.

Nobody noticed a woman in grey slip out through the wine cellar.

I crossed the Courtyard of Stones in the moonlight.

I did not look at the place where the pyre would stand.

I climbed the east wall the way I had as a girl and dropped into the river grass on the other side.

Eight hundred paces north, a hundred fires burned under the Hollowmark banner.

I started to walk.

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