The Cursed Luna's Tenth Awakening novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Seer's Law

Nessa tells Sabine the Luna's law: the tenth life is the last and the book closes at the next full moon; then her Beta Harlan arrives under a white banner and says he held the east gate.

They brought Nessa to me before dawn.

I heard her before I saw her, her stick tapping on the stone and a guard telling her to hurry.

She came through the door with a bowl of broth and a roll of clean linen under her arm.

Nessa Brill was the oldest woman in my pack and the smallest, with a silver plait down her back and a left eye gone milky white.

She had read the moon for my mother and for my grandmother before her.

She looked at me for a long moment, and then at the roots of my hair.

"Nine," she said.

My breath left me.

"You know."

"I have known since you were born," Nessa said. "I never thought I'd see the tenth."

Rorik stood in the doorway with his arms folded.

He had agreed to this on one condition, that he hear everything said in the room.

He had not slept, and it showed under his eyes.

Nessa glanced over her shoulder at him, shrugged, and settled on the stool with her back to the Alpha of the Ironclads.

She unwrapped the linen and began to clean the line of dried blood under my jaw.

Her hands were gentle and I wanted to cry.

"Tell me," I said. "Everything."

"There is a law of the Luna," Nessa said. "It is old and it is not kind."

"Go on."

"When the Luna of Moonflare dies at the blade of war, she wakes again at the thaw, with the same morning and the same breath."

"I remember nothing in those mornings."

"The Goddess takes the memory. It comes back only when the steel touches you again, and then all of it at once."

I nodded, because that was exactly how it had been.

"How many times?"

"Nine lives, and a tenth," Nessa said.

She looked at the bowl in her lap for a moment before she went on.

"The tenth is the last. When you die in it, the Goddess closes the book and you stay dead."

Behind her, the Alpha did not move.

"How do I stop it?"

"The same way you've already started, child. By doing something no Luna did in the other lives."

"I spoke to him."

"Yes."

"That's all?"

"That is the crack," Nessa said. "The rest is for you to find."

I looked at her good eye and her cloudy one and thought she was hiding something.

I could not tell what.

"Why me?" I said. "Why did the Goddess do this to me?"

Nessa dipped the linen in water and did not answer.

When she finally spoke, it was quietly.

"The Goddess does not curse without a reason, Sabine. But that is a question for another day."

"Nessa."

"Eat your broth."

I wanted to push her, but there was a more urgent thing to ask.

"Is there a time limit? Does the tenth life run out?"

"By the moon," she said.

"Which moon?"

"The next full one. At that moon, whatever is not mended stays unmended. The book closes either way."

In the doorway, Rorik shifted his weight.

"Fourteen days," he said.

"Yes," Nessa said, without looking at him. "Neither of you has more."

His eyes went to me and held there.

"You gave me that number last night," he said. "You didn't know."

"I guessed."

"You guessed the full moon."

"I looked out the window and counted," I said.

It was a flat lie, and it was the first I had told him.

I do not know why I told it.

Something told me that the less he heard from me about the Goddess, the longer I would live.

He studied my face a moment longer.

Then he let it go.

Nessa pressed the linen down and tied it, and I sat there with my wrists bound in my lap, feeling a little less alone than I had in nine lives.

Boots sounded in the passage.

Joren came to the door and pushed past his brother without apology.

"A rider," he said. "At the main gate under a white banner. Moonflare."

"One rider?"

"One. Says he's here for terms and he's asking for his Luna."

I went cold.

"Who?"

"A big man with a grey beard. He says his name is Harlan Crowe."

Nessa's hand tightened on my wrist.

I did not look at her.

I could hear the horn again in my head, high and clear, and the sound of hooves going the wrong way.

"Bring him," Rorik said.

"Alpha," Joren said, "it's a trick."

"Then I'll see what it is."

I tried to stand, and the chains at my ankle caught me up short.

There was a long wait.

Then footsteps came down the passage, unhurried and warm.

Harlan Crowe stood in the doorway with rain on his cloak and the same kind smile he had worn every morning I had known him.

His eyes found me, and his whole face softened.

He put one hand over his heart.

"Luna," he said. "Thank the Goddess you live."

"I held the east gate as long as I could."

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