The Luna Queen's Rebirth novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Second Bell
Burned on a pyre her mate lit for his mistress, Seraphine wakes a year early with every memory and rejects Leoric first, in front of the whole court. The bond tears, and the mistress does not look surprised.
They tied me to the stake with my own wedding ribbons.
The ribbons were silver, and Perdita had picked them out herself.
I stood on the pyre in the Courtyard of Stones and watched four hundred wolves look away from me.
"Luna Seraphine poisoned my pup," Perdita said.
Her voice shook, and her hand was flat on her stomach where the pup had lived.
She had practiced that shake in a mirror. I knew, because I had watched her do it.
"There was a vial in her chamber," said the elder beside her. "The Ashen sigil is on the glass."
I had never seen that vial in my life.
I looked at Leoric.
He stood in royal blue with the silver circlet on his head.
He was my mate, and I had loved him since I was nineteen.
"Say it wasn't you," I said.
"Seraphine." He sighed, like I was tiring him. "Don't make this worse."
His gold wolf could not meet mine. I felt it hiding behind his eyes.
A servant brought the torch.
Leoric took it, looked at it, and then he turned and held it out to Perdita.
"You should be the one," he said.
She took it with both hands and cried the whole way across the stones.
The wood caught at my feet.
I screamed at him then, and I did not scream for mercy.
"I curse this bond," I said. "I curse every night I spent loving you. May the Goddess take it back."
The smoke closed over my face, and the last thing I heard was a bell.
It rang once, small and brass, from somewhere far away.
I woke with my cheek in a pillow that smelled of lavender.
I lay still, and I did not breathe, because I was afraid the pain would start again.
There was no pain.
The ceiling above me had a crack shaped like a river.
I had counted its bends every night as a girl.
I sat up and looked at my hands.
They were whole. There was no soot under the nails.
My room at Greywater lodge was exactly as I had left it.
The plain quilt was there, and the knife rack, and the window with the stuck shutter.
The bell was ringing again from the east tower, the Moon Goddess's morning bell.
It rang twice.
My heart went cold, because I knew what the second ring meant.
I went to the window and shoved the shutter open.
In the yard below, my father's riders were saddling for the road to Aldermere. They wore their good grey cloaks.
A banner hung from the gatehouse with a silver moon on it.
The Binding Rite was today.
I had stood in that courtyard once before, at twenty-four, in a pale dress.
A mate bond had burned in my chest, and I could not stop smiling.
That was a year before I wore the crown.
That was four years before I burned.
I put my hand against my own throat and felt my pulse. It was fast and strong and mine.
The door opened without a knock.
My grandmother stood there with the brass bell on its cord around her neck.
Anwen was seventy-one, thin as a candle, with milky eyes that had never needed to see me to know me.
She looked at my face and went very quiet.
"You've got the look of someone who has already been burned," she said.
I could not answer her. If I spoke, I would start to scream.
"Dress," she said. "Your father is waiting. We ride in an hour."
She went out, and I stood in the middle of my old room with my hands shaking.
I could choose again.
I could walk into the Courtyard of Stones and take his hand, and wait four years for the torch.
I put on my charcoal riding leathers instead, the ones no one wears to a Rite.
I tied back nothing and let my black hair hang to my waist.
By dusk the courtyard was full.
Four hundred wolves stood in rows, and the elders sat on their carved chairs.
Leoric waited at the altar stone in his royal blue, handsome and certain.
Perdita stood at the edge of the crowd in a cream gown with a thin gold chain at her throat.
She was the healer's apprentice, and she was holding a tray of cups.
Leoric smiled at me and held out his hand.
My bond lit up. Every cell in my body leaned toward him.
I remembered how it felt to be that stupid.
"Seraphine Greywater," said the priestess. "Do you accept your fated mate before the Goddess?"
I walked up to the altar stone and did not take his hand.
"I, Seraphine Greywater, reject Leoric Falk as my mate," I said, loud enough for the back row. "I break the bond, in the Goddess's sight."
The bond ripped out of my chest.
It felt like a rib being pulled, and I stayed on my feet.
Leoric's wolf screamed out of his mouth, a sound no man should make.
Four hundred wolves gasped as one.
Only Perdita stood very still, with the tray steady in her hands, and she was not surprised.
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