Chapter 6

Before the Moon-Eclipse Rite, I went to Moonlight Hall one last time.

Seraphine Voss thought the punishment in the snow had finally ground the defiance out of me, so she deliberately allowed me half an hour with the two children.

Before I entered, Matron Sable pierced my wrist with a silver needle to test whether I carried moon-blood that could awaken the mother-child bond. They confiscated my hairpin and perfume sachet and even ripped open the hidden pockets in my lapels, but they did not find the two thin moonstone slivers sealed behind my hollow tooth.

Every adult Silver Moon priest retained one wolf tooth that had never fully emerged. The night before, I had Lucian hollow mine out, then split the moonstone into two thin slivers and seal them inside it. As long as I did not take wolf form, that trace of moon-breath would not escape.

To see my own children, I had to prepare as though I were infiltrating an enemy camp. I added that absurdity to the account as well.

Rowan hid behind his wet nurse, his three-year-old wolf ears pressed anxiously flat against his hair. He did not recognize me, but he stared unblinkingly at my mouth, drawn to the moonstone hidden there.

The moonstone from which the first sliver had been cut had rested against his brow when he was born. Sealed within the sliver was the first breath of the bond between us.

I did not force him to address me. While crouching, I slipped the first sliver into a hidden seam in a little wolf woven from silver thread, then set it on the floor. "This is for you. If you are ever afraid, hold it and follow the moonlight to find me."

He approached hesitantly, nose twitching as he tested my scent. The instant his fingers touched the silver-thread wolf, the dark mist in his eyes cleared for a heartbeat.

"Your scent..." he whispered. "I have dreamed of it."

His wet nurse immediately reached for him. I raised a hand to calm her but did not touch him. I only asked what he had seen in the dream.

Rowan glanced furtively toward the door. "A very big silver wolf. She sang in the snow and told me not to be afraid."

It was the moon ballad I had often sung while carrying him. Black Moon sorcery had suppressed the memory, but it had not erased it completely.

I softened my voice and sang the next line. Rowan's ears slowly lifted, and his lips began to move with mine. He did not know where the words came from, yet he missed not a single one.

Willow turned away to wipe her tears. I shook my head at her. Seraphine Voss had eyes everywhere; any reaction too obvious could cost Willow her life.

My heart felt as though it had been seized in a fist, but I still smiled as I said, "Then remember the dream."

My daughter was not yet old enough to speak. When I lifted her, the silver bell startled a shiver from her; then she clutched my lapel tightly. While the wet nurse's back was turned, I sewed the second moonstone sliver into her swaddling clothes.

The second sliver would serve as a ward for her life channels. If the bond-severing bell was used again, it would absorb the obsidian taint before the poison reached her. Under daily exposure, the sliver could hold no more than three months of contamination.

Rowan's sliver worked differently. It lay dormant inside the silver-thread wolf, preserving a path for the mother-child bond and waking only to the moon ballad. Unless someone sealed it away from moon-breath, it would not spend itself like his sister's ward.

As if she had heard my thoughts, my daughter babbled and tightened her grip on my clothes. A faint silver gleam crossed her brow before the black mist covered it again.

I kissed the top of her head. It was the first time I had ever kissed my daughter or held her without the bell forcing her away.

Seraphine Voss soon returned. She saw the silver-thread wolf in Rowan's hand. Her smile did not change, but her nails bit into her palm.

"The Moon-Bound certainly knows how to win a child's affection."

"I only came to say goodbye."

Seraphine Voss's gaze stilled. Then she stepped forward and straightened my collar. The gesture looked intimate, but her nail traced lightly over the nape of my neck, testing whether my moon-breath had weakened.

"You seem greatly changed of late," she said.

"Anyone who has come close to death twice will eventually understand a few things."

I meant the two births, but she plainly heard another implication. After studying me for a moment, she abruptly mentioned that Rowan had cried out for a silver wolf in his sleep the night before and demanded to know whether I had done something.

I deliberately let my eyes redden. "I cannot even enter the children's chambers. What could I possibly do? If the Wolf Queen still mistrusts me, then do not summon me again."

Seraphine Voss believed tears were proof of weakness. Once I looked like the woman she remembered, she relaxed instead.

"Goodbye?"

I lowered my eyes with a smile. "My father wants me to enter seclusion at the Moon Altar. I doubt I will be able to visit often after this."

She was visibly relieved and even, in a rare show of gentleness, allowed me to hold my daughter a little longer.

Before leaving, I looked back once.

Rowan stood by the door, secretly tucking the silver-thread wolf against his chest. My daughter rested over her wet nurse's shoulder, her silver-gray eyes following me all the while.

No tears came.

In my heart, I told them: Wait a little longer.

Your mother is not going away to die, and she is not abandoning you.

She is going to become someone who can bring you home openly, with her head held high.

The moment I returned to Moon-Tide Hall, I made two accounts of the visit. I gave Mira a written copy to carry out; I spoke the other into a moon-sound stone and kept it beside my mirror, ready to record whatever happened on the night of the eclipse before I sealed it inside my double. I also stitched the moon-crystal casket holding the birth evidence into my outer robe. If I died that night, those records would serve as evidence left by the dead. If I escaped alive, they would prove that Seraphine Voss had already suspected the mother-child bond was reviving before my disappearance.

Before bed, Willow risked sending one final message: the Wolf Queen had ordered fire arrows prepared. If Moon-Tide Hall fell into chaos on the night of the eclipse, the Royal Guard was permitted only to fight the flames; no one was to be allowed out alive.

I burned the note over the lamp.

The game had reached a point from which there was no retreat, but I felt no panic. I had walked every escape route myself. Every ally knew the limits of their role. No one needed to die for me.

The only thing I could not rehearse was how much it would hurt to leave my children behind.

But pain had never been a reason to stop moving.