Reborn Luna Hears Every Lie novel · Chapter 4 of 40

Chapter 4: The Grandmother's One Condition

I have been waiting for the right girl to walk through that door for twenty-three years.

The voice came from the bed before Sera had fully crossed the threshold, thin as paper but steady, and it stopped her mid-step. The sanctuary room smelled of dried lavender and woodsmoke and the faint copper undertone of old blood. Elder Maren lay propped against a stack of pillows, her white hair loose around a face that had once been formidable and was now mostly bone. Her eyes, though. Her eyes were clear and dark and fixed on Sera with an attention that felt physical.

Sera closed the door behind her and crossed to the chair beside the bed. She did not sit yet. She stood with her hands folded in front of her, the way she had been taught to stand before an elder, and waited.

Maren's thought reached her before the old woman spoke again, and it was not what Sera expected. It was not suspicion or hope or even curiosity. It was a tired, bone-deep satisfaction, the kind a hunter feels when the trail finally ends.

There you are.

'I know what you are,' Maren said aloud. 'Sit down, child. I have not got the breath to waste on ceremony.'

Sera sat. The chair was hard and straight-backed, and the window behind Maren let in the last of the afternoon light, long and golden through the new leaves outside. Somewhere in the sanctuary, a door opened and closed, and the sound carried through the stone walls like a heartbeat.

'You know what I am,' Sera repeated quietly. 'Tell me what you think you know.'

Maren's lips moved in something that was not quite a smile. 'I know you are the child of my daughter's daughter. I know you were taken from the birthing room before the cord was even cut, and I know the woman who carried you out was paid in silver and silence.' She paused, and the pause was a test. 'I know you have been living in the pack house as an adopted daughter, wearing a borrowed name, while a cuckoo sits in your place.'

Sera let the words settle. She had known the shape of this truth since Dov had spoken of the harmonic, but hearing it named by the one person alive who had actually witnessed it was different. It made the ground under her feet feel newly solid, and newly dangerous.

She did not look away. 'Then you know why I am here.'

'I know why you think you are here,' Maren said. 'You have come for testimony. You have come to ask me to swear before a neutral council scribe that the girl raised as Lirien is not the blood of the founding line, and that you are.'

'Yes.'

'Then I will tell you what I told the last one who came asking.' Maren shifted against the pillows, and the movement cost her; her breath went shallow for a moment before she mastered it. 'I will not swear to anything until I see the birth-cord seal with my own eyes. The original. Not a copy, not a drawing, not a description. The disc of black river-glass etched with the founding Luna's sigil. It was cut from the cord of the first Luna of our line, and it has been kept in the pack archive since before your mother was born. Bring me that, and I will give you your testimony. Before the new moon. After that, I will be gone, and my memory goes with me.'

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