The Luna Queen's Rebirth novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: What Leoric Does Next

Stonehold's archivist was a stooped woman with ink to her elbows and a cat on her shoulder.

She found the law the morning after the bridge.

"It isn't in the statutes," she said, pulling a cracked scroll from under a stack of ledgers. "It's in a hymn. My grandmother sang it."

Rhydian and I stood on either side of her desk, a careful yard apart.

We had not touched since the bridge, and the not touching had been loud.

"When the Goddess cuts a false rope, the true one shows gold," the archivist read.

She followed the line with an inky finger.

"The rejected wolf wounds. The one who was meant finds the thread."

Neither of us said anything.

The cat yawned.

"It means," the archivist said patiently, "that you are mates, my lord."

She sniffed.

"The real thing. The thread only shows once the first bond is cut."

"It was cut a week ago," I said.

"Then it is, I think, a miracle." She rolled up the scroll. "I'd say congratulations, but you look like you'd rather eat the scroll."

Rhydian laughed once, a short sound with no ease in it.

"The contract," he said to me, and stopped.

"Stands," I said.

His eyes lifted to mine, careful and amber.

"Once I'd have called it fate," I said. "This week I'm calling it a clause."

I folded my arms.

"You keep your terms, I keep mine, and we'll see what the thread wants."

"That's fair."

"Is it?"

"No," he said, and his mouth curved, and it was the best thing I had seen all week.

A horn sounded on the wall.

By the time we reached the gatehouse, three riders in royal blue waited at the barbican under a white flag.

One of them was an elder in a green robe.

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