Chapter 74 Seventy six
Her hair fell like night made liquid. Her eyes were the moon without warmth. She wore no crown. She wore the easy arrogance of one who had been bowed to first and then learned to pretend she didn’t like it. The drops of silver hovering above the bowl trembled as if pleased.
“Children,” she said, the word precise and obscene, “you always pick the most expensive doors.”
The High Priestess did not lower her hand. “You were not invited,” she said. “Leave the living to their decisions.”
Lunaris looked at the Priestess and smiled in a way that made Eamon’s sword hand sweat. “You invited me when you were twelve,” she said. “You have very poor memory when it inconveniences your courage.”
She turned her gaze to Sienna, and the room made its choice to adore or die. “My echo,” she said, soft, as if greeting a reflection after a long illness. “You bleed beautifully.”
Sienna straightened. Ryder’s grip tightened reflexively and then eased because she lifted a finger, a queen teaching a dog restraint and a man obedience and herself everything.
“Separate us,” Sienna said, and her voice did not shake. “Or tell me you never intended mercy and I will write your law without you.”
Lunaris’s smile deepened, which is to say she showed more cruelty or more love; no one could tell. She looked at Ryder then, as if only now noticing the boy she had given a man’s work.
“You carry well,” she said.
He held her gaze as long as men can. “I was never asked.”
“That is why you are good at it,” she murmured.
The silver drops wavered, eager, like pups hungry for a command. Outside, the drums hit a new cadence. The Citadel wall answered with a low, dull thud. The Temple of Balance did not admit sound from the world, but tonight it allowed a single note to pass, like a judge reminding a courtroom of the gallows outside.
Lunaris lifted her hand.
The silver drops aligned above the bowl, neat as beads on a string.
“Price,” Sienna said, not forgetting bargains even in the mouth of gods. “Say it before you make me pay.”
Lunaris tilted her head, as if charmed that a woman had brought an abacus to a sacrifice. “If I sever you,” she said, “you live. He dwindles. The war finds a quieter road. You hate me properly.”
“And if you refuse,” Sienna said.
“Then you learn how long a woman can hold a man she loves without drowning,” Lunaris said gently. “And the world remembers what it forgot it wanted.”
“Pick,” the High Priestess hissed, face white with the work of holding stone to its function. “Pick before she picks for you.”
Sienna’s blood, bright and impossible, sang. Ryder’s hand burned. Eamon’s men looked at a god and did not ask forgiveness.
Sienna opened her mouth to say the thing that would end or begin what the world had considered inevitable.
The dome cracked.
Not a line on stone. A sound in the sky, as if the moon itself had laughed and split a tooth. Wind knifed through the vents. The torches flared back with blue hearts. The silver drops shivered, lost the neatness, fell.
Lunaris closed her hand.
The drops froze an inch from the bowl and hung there, defying gravity because gravity had decided to behave itself tonight and she had not.
She looked at Sienna with a tenderness so enormous it could only be weaponized.
“I will not choose for you,” she said. “You wanted sovereignty.”
She extended her hand across the basin, palm up, the oldest invitation.
“Pay,” Lunaris whispered. “Or love. You don’t get both.”