He Chose Her, So I Refused to Become His Luna novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Terms

At Hester's cabin Dara and Tobias set rules for the seven nights, and the Ashfall elder's summons arrives: oathbreaking, in six nights.

My grandmother's cabin sits on the Cold Creek side of the water.

She moved there sixteen years ago, after my father died, and she has never once crossed back.

Tobias drove me there in his truck, and Maisy followed in the Subaru with the heater still running.

Hester stood on the porch with her cane and her cropped white hair, in the yellow light of the door.

She looked at me and at the quilt in my arms.

"Inside," she said. "Both of you. You're letting the rain in."

She sat me at the kitchen table and put a bowl of soup in front of me.

I could not lift the spoon.

The pull under my collarbone had settled into a steady ache, and each breath tugged at it.

"Tell me exactly what you said," Hester said.

"Gran, I'm tired."

"Exactly, Dara. Every word."

I said it again, and her face did not change as I spoke.

"Three heirs?" she asked.

"Tobias, the Iron Ridge heir, the Low Pine heir."

"And each one said witnessed."

"Yes."

She turned her head and looked at Tobias, who stood by the door with water running off his jacket.

"Good," she said. "Then it's done properly."

She did not say anything else, and when I asked what she meant, she told me to eat.

Maisy hugged me hard at the door and promised to be at the clinic first thing and keep her ears open.

"Celia had no mark on her," she said into my hair. "I'll tell you tomorrow. I want to be sure first."

Then she was gone, and it was only the three of us and the rain.

Hester went to bed. She left the porch light on.

I stood in the kitchen with the quilt over my shoulders and could not make myself lie down.

"There are rules," Tobias said from the doorway.

"What rules?"

"For the seven nights. Mine, not yours." He kept his hands in his pockets. "You can tell me to take them back."

"Go on."

"One. You're a guest on Cold Creek land, and nobody from Ashfall crosses the creek to you without your say."

"All right."

"Two. I don't come through that door unless you open it."

"Three?"

"No claiming. No mark, nothing that could be read as one. You're still bonded to him until the seventh night, and I won't be the reason it goes badly."

"Four," I said.

He looked at me. "You tell me."

"No touching that isn't needed. Not by you, not by me."

"Four," Tobias agreed, and something moved in his jaw.

"Why are you doing this?"

"Because I said witnessed," he said. "I meant I'd stand behind it."

"You stood against that wall for ten minutes and said nothing."

"I know."

"You let him put that paper on my knees."

"I know that too," Tobias said. "Not tonight, Dara. Ask me again when you can stand without holding the table."

I was holding the table. I let go of it, and my knees shook, and I sat back down.

He went out onto the porch and shut the door softly behind him.

The first night was the worst I had ever had.

The pain came in waves from my collarbone down through my ribs, and each one was a little longer than the last.

At two in the morning I was on the bathroom floor with my cheek against the cold tile, because it was the only thing that helped.

I thought about the yellow walls and the boxes.

I thought about Celia's hands folding small blankets into thirds.

I did not cry loudly. I did not want Hester to hear.

Through the wall of the cabin I could hear the porch boards creak as someone shifted his weight.

He did not knock and he did not come in.

Every time a wave hit me, the boards creaked once on the other side of the wall.

I fell asleep on the tile sometime near dawn.

The sound of a car on the gravel woke me.

I got to the window with the quilt around me.

At the edge of the creek, where the Ashfall road ended, a gray sedan sat with its lights on.

An old man in a black coat stood beside it. He was the elder of the Ashfall Council, and he had known my father.

He did not cross the water. He held out a folded paper toward the cabin, and Tobias walked down the slope to meet him halfway.

The elder said something short.

Tobias read the paper. His shoulders went still.

When he came back up the steps, he knocked on the frame and waited for me to open the door.

"It's from the Council," he said. "A Moot has been called for six nights from now."

"What's the charge?"

He held the paper out to me.

"Oathbreaking," Tobias said. "You're charged with refusing the Luna's rite after you swore to stand for it."

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