Shattered Sanctuary: The First Luna's Severance novel · Chapter 3 of 24
Chapter 3: Border Talks
Jessamy leads the treaty talks and fumbles, and Rosalind quietly supplies the numbers. Hamish offers refuge and she refuses, then she overhears what Dalton plans for her at the Blood Moon Gathering.
The autumn border talks began at two, in the long room off the ballroom where the treaty maps hung.
Jessamy sat at the head of the table with Dalton beside her.
Rosalind sat at the foot with the clerk, a stack of folders in front of her that she no longer owned.
Hamish Wescott sat across from Jessamy with one boot on his knee, waiting for a bus.
"Let's begin with the river crossing," Jessamy said brightly.
She had a clean new notebook and a very good pen.
"Ironridge has used the lower ford for twelve years," Hamish said. "We pay in winter grain. You tell me the terms are the same?"
"Yes," Jessamy said. "The same."
She smiled at Dalton, who nodded without looking at the page.
Hamish let the quiet sit for a moment.
"How many sacks?"
Jessamy's pen stopped.
"The usual amount."
"Which is?"
"Four hundred," she said, and then, "Or six."
Someone at the table coughed into a fist.
At the foot of the table, Rosalind's hand moved on its own.
She wrote one number on a slip of paper, folded it and slid it to the clerk, who slid it up the table.
It landed under Jessamy's elbow.
She opened it under the notebook.
"Five hundred and twenty," she announced. "With forty more if the ford floods."
"That's what I have," Hamish said.
His gray eyes lifted past Jessamy and rested on the foot of the table.
They stayed there a heartbeat longer than they needed to.
The talks went on for an hour.
Jessamy asked about the patrol overlap on the north ridge, and a second slip went up.
She asked about the culvert, and a third.
By the fourth, Dalton had gone quiet, and Hamish had stopped pretending not to notice.
When the table broke up, Rosalind stayed behind to roll the maps.
"Luna."
Hamish stood in the doorway, alone.
"I'm not the Luna of this room anymore," she said. "You can ask Jessamy."
"I did. She said you'd handle the maps."
He came in and took the other end of the map she was rolling, without being asked.
"I've sat across from this pack for twelve years," he said. "I always thought Dalton was the quick one. It turns out he had a wife."
She didn't answer.
"There's a house on my side of the river," Hamish said. "Four bedrooms, a good stove, nobody in it. Come over whenever you're done being polite. No one will ask you why."
His voice was even, and not unkind.
Rosalind tied the maps with their cord.
"Thank you," she said. "But I don't leave. I finish."
He studied her for a long moment.
"Finish what?"
"I'll tell you when I'm done."
For the first time, one corner of his mouth moved.
"I'll be in the guest rooms till the Gathering," he said. "Six weeks is a long time to wait for an answer."
He left.
She stayed with the maps for a while after, listening to the dull ache where the bond used to hum.
She went out through the side door and cut through the library, because it was the one room nobody used at that hour.
She stopped when she heard Dalton's voice behind the stacks.
"I told you, Jess. I'll name you at the Blood Moon."
Rosalind stood very still between two shelves.
"Name me what?" Jessamy asked.
"Luna. Beside me, in front of every pack."
"And Rosalind?"
There was a pause, and the soft sound of a drawer closing.
"She'll sit beside us and hold my hand like always," Dalton said. "She won't make a scene. She never has."
"You're sure?"
"She loves this pack more than she loves herself. She'll stay for the pack."
Jessamy laughed, low and pleased.
"Then we won't need to ask her for anything at all."
Rosalind pressed her palm flat against the shelf.
The wood was cool and the dust on it was thick.
She felt her pulse in her fingertips, steady and slow.
Twenty years, and he had never once asked her what she wanted.
He had only ever asked for her hand.
She turned and walked out of the library without a sound.
In the corridor, a girl from the pup school ran past with a basket of apples and said, "Luna!" and Rosalind smiled at her.
It was an easy smile and it held.
Then she went to find a pencil, because she had a ledger to mark for Jessamy before supper.
She would hold his hand at the Blood Moon, all right.
She just wouldn't be holding it for him.
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