All Chapters of The Red Luna: The Queen of the Flames: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

54 Chapters

Chapter Ten

ROWENASefa did not ask for volunteers. She simply looked up from her preparation table that morning, swept her gaze across the acolytes assembled in the Medicine wing, and said "Rowena" in the tone of a woman who had already made her decision."The Vellmoor," she continued, sliding a folded piece of parchment across the table toward me. "Everything on that list, and nothing that is not on that list. Be back before the evening bell."I took the parchment without comment. Around me I could feel the other acolytes intentionally not look at me. I had been inside the fortress walls for long enough that the idea of open air felt almost foreign. But I maintained my demeanour in order not to show this. "Go through the eastern gate and follow the mountain's base," Sefa added, already turning back to her work. "You will find it."I was halfway down the corridor with my gathering basket when I heard footsteps behind me; unhurried, slightly too casual to be accidental."You are following me," I

Chapter Eleven

THANEThree days had passed.I found Eldra in the archive room, which was where she always was when she did not want to be found. She looked up when I entered without knocking and said nothing, which was her version of an invitation.I closed the door behind me and stood before her table."The three days are up," I said."I am aware of what day it is, Thane.""Then you have something for me."She set down her quill with the deliberate patience of someone who had decided before the conversation began exactly how much she was going to give and exactly how much she was going to keep. "I have findings, yes. Whether they are for you is a different matter.""It is my wall, Eldra.""It is Eldoria's wall. Your clan is its custodian. There is a distinction."I pulled out the chair across from her and sat. If she was going to make me work for it I was going to be comfortable while I did. "Then as custodian of the wall that was breached in my territory, I am asking for a full account of your fin

Chapter Twelve

ROWENAThe Information Wing did not look like a place that kept secrets. That was the first thing I noticed.It was well lit, almost aggressively so. With oil lamps at every station, no dark corners or no shadows were permitted to accumulate anywhere for long. The shelves were organized with a precision that bordered on devotion, each scroll and bound record labeled and dated in a uniform hand. The four keepers who ran the wing moved between the stations with the brisk efficiency of people who had grown accustom to the practice. It was the most controlled space I had encountered in the Sanctuary. Which told me, more clearly than anything else could have, that this was exactly where the things worth finding were kept.I had been assigned to the copy station, transcribing trade records from deteriorating parchment onto fresh ones, a task that was tedious enough to be beneath the senior acolytes' attention and close enough to the main archive shelves to be useful to me. I kept my head d

Chapter Thirteen

THANEJulius had been at the foot of my bed again.I had lain there after waking and stared at the ceiling and refused to think about the corridor. Then I got up, dressed, and went to the council chamber, which was what I did when there was nothing useful to be done about a thing. †††††††††††††††††††††††††The council session had been running for two hours and was supposed to concern the eastern trade route disruptions that had been cutting into the clan's winter supply lines for the better part of a month. Commander Reyn had prepared figures. The head steward had prepared a counter proposal. I had read both documents before entering the chamber and had a position on neither of them because my concentration was in pieces and had been since the corridor and I was too disciplined to let that show so I asked questions instead and let them talk.Eldra sat at the far end of the table. She had not been invited. She had arrived with her keeper Soren at her shoulder and t

Chapter Fourteen

THANEThey had put him in the guardhouse at the wall's northern section, a low stone room with a single torch and no windows, which was either instinct or wisdom on the part of the men who found him. Either way it was the right call.I smelled it before I opened the door.Not the man. That was the problem. Seven years of knowing Donric Wenn, his particular scent as familiar to my wolf as the stone walls of my own fortress, and there was nothing. The door opened and where Donric Wenn should have been there was only cold. Still and absolute, the way caves smell when they have not held living air for a very long time.My wolf recoiled. I did not let it show.Eldra entered behind me and stopped just inside the door. I heard the small sound she made, not quite a breath but not quite a word.Donric was standing in the center of the room.I had known this man since he was a boy of fifteen presenting himself for wall duty with his father's sword strapped to a back too narrow to carry it prope

Chapter Fifteen

ROWENAI was already awake when she knocked.I had been sitting at my window for the better part of an hour, watching the sky above the mountain do nothing in particular, the way it does in the hour before dawn when the dark has run out of reasons to stay but the light has not yet committed to arriving. The dreams had pulled me up again. Not a new one this time. Just the burning hall, replaying with the patient insistence of something that needed to be understood.I opened the door before the second set of knocks.Eldra stood in the corridor with a single candle and no keeper at her shoulder, which was the first unusual thing. The second was her face. The authority was still there but something underneath it had shifted overnight; something that made her look, for the first time since I had known her, like a person carrying weight rather than a woman who had decided weight did not apply to her.She looked at me for a moment. Then she came inside and closed the door behind her.She did

Chapter Sixteen

THANEI heard the horses before the gate watch sent word.Twelve riders. The Crossfall banner, a black wolf's head on grey, visible through the watchtower window before I had finished reading the messenger's note. I stood at the window for a moment longer than necessary and then set the note down and went to meet him.Varyn Crossfall had not changed in the two years since I had last seen him. He was silver haired and broad shouldered, with the kind of face that had always made rooms settle around it — unhurried eyes, a mouth that defaulted to something close to warmth, the bearing of a man who had spent his entire life being the steadiest person in any crisis. He dismounted in the main courtyard with the ease of someone half his age and looked up at me on the steps with an expression that managed to be both respectful and paternal simultaneously. "Thane," he said.Not my lord. He had never called me that and I had never asked him to. It had always felt like the one honest thing betw

Chapter Seventeen

ELOWENThe maids never knocked before entering my chambers. They had learned years ago that I was always already awake, already dressed, already done with whatever the morning required of me before they arrived with their trays and their careful deference. I did not know if this impressed them or unsettled them. I had stopped trying to tell the difference.I was at my embroidery frame when Maret came in with the breakfast tray, her eyes dropping to the floor the moment she crossed the threshold the way they always did. Lady Elowen. Would you like the fire built up. Shall I open the shutters. I answered without looking up from the thread I was working — a pattern of silver wolves running the border of a wall hanging Thane had neither asked for nor would likely notice, but which I was making anyway because the pattern was difficult enough to require my full attention and my full attention was the only thing I had to give to something some days.That was the truth of my life in Ravenshal

Chapter Eighteen

THANEThe messenger found me in the war room.I knew from his face before he opened his mouth. I could already tell the quality of it. The particular expression of a young man who has been told to deliver certain news quickly and has spent the entire run here trying to find a way to deliver it that will not get him killed."Celdric," I said.He nodded. "The northern section, my lord. He went alone this morning to look at the breach. The guards found him on the ground near the wall. They are bringing him now."I was already moving before he finished his statement. †††††††††††††††††††††††††They came through the eastern gate with him between two junior guards, his arms across their shoulders and his head down and his feet finding the ground with the unsteady determination of a man fighting unconsciousness through sheer stubbornness. I met them in the courtyard and took one look at his face — grey, sweat-damp, a tightness around his mouth that was not pain exactly but

Chapter Nineteen

ROWENAI woke later than I had in weeks.The sliver of sky through my window was already pale with midmorning light; past the water carry, past the first wing rotation, past the hour at which Sefa would have expected me. I lay still for a moment and took inventory the way I always did, moving through my body the way you move through a room after a storm to assess what had shifted and what had held.Everything held. But the tiredness was unlike any I had known before — not the tiredness of labor or poor sleep but something deeper, something that lived in the bone and the blood, as if whatever had moved through my hands yesterday had drawn from a reserve I had not known I was spending. My hands were still faintly warm. I pressed them together and felt the pulse of it, low and steady, and understood that this was not going away. Whatever threshold I had crossed in that room yesterday, I had crossed it in one direction only.The suppression was thinner. I could feel its edges now in a way

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