Chapter 71: The Black Gates

The coven did not look like something built by human hands.It looked like something that had forced itself out of the earth, obsidian black from base to crown, jagged at the top the way shattered bone is jagged, every edge wrong, every angle too sharp. It rose against the sky like a wound that had never closed and the sight of it hit me somewhere beneath my ribs, a deep animal recognition, the way you recognise a thing from a nightmare even when you have never seen it in waking life.I stopped.One second. That was all I gave myself. Then I took the next step and kept moving.The moat was worse than the tower.It ran in a wide black ring around the base of the obsidian and the surface of it moved, slow rolling surges that broke and fell back without sound. The colour of it was not the black of deep water or dark sky. It was the black of something that had swallowed light on purpose and was still holding it down. No bridge. No crossing. Just the moat sitting between us and the coven w

Last Updated : 2026-05-19

Chapter 72: The Voice in the Stone

The silence after the screaming was its own kind of sound.I kept both hands on the obsidian and stood in it and let it press against me from every direction. A thousand wolves at my back and not one of them speaking. The moat had closed behind us the moment the last wolf crossed, the black energy sealing itself back into place like a wound closing over, and now there was nothing between us and this wall and the wall had nothing on it. No gate. No handle. No seam where a door should have sat.Just stone.I let the silver run along the surface the way I had let it run along the moat, feeling for the original foundation beneath Morvanna's construction, for the places where the stone remembered something different than what she had shaped it into. The obsidian was dense and cold and it did not want to be read. It pushed back against the silver the way a locked room pushes back against a key that does not quite fit, and I held the silver steady and kept the pressure even and did not force

Last Updated : 2026-05-19

Chapter 73: What Patience Looks Like

I crossed the space between us in two steps and closed my hand around his wrist before the blade touched his palm.He did not pull away. He held the knife and looked at me and his expression did not shift, the look of someone who meant what they said all the way to the bottom of it, no performance in it, no theatre. Just a man who had done the calculation and arrived at a number he was prepared to pay."It is not asking for that," I said."You do not know that.""I do." I kept my grip on his wrist. "Listen to what it said. Two sentences. Blood of a Sovereign opens the way. Give us your life and the gate opens. Those are not the same demand, Kieran. Someone put those two sentences next to each other to make them sound like one thing. They are not one thing."He looked at the wall. Then back at me. Something behind his eyes shifted, not agreement yet, but the opening of a space where agreement could come in if what came next was worth letting in."Then what is it asking for?" he said."

Last Updated : 2026-06-10

All Chapters of The Luna's Deception : Chapter 71 - Chapter 73

Chapter 71: The Black Gates

Chapter 72: The Voice in the Stone

Chapter 73: What Patience Looks Like