All Chapters of Bound by the Cursed Moon: Chapter 651 - Chapter 660

Point of View: Kieran (Male Lead)“Hannah, look at me. You stamped half the cards in that drawer. Tell me who held the green stamp, and tell me before my daughter walks into that barn this morning and asks the council to forgive her.”I am Kieran, and I had not slept, and I had never in my life wanted so badly to be wrong about something.The clerks’ lean to sat behind the barn, a crooked shed of boards and tarred felt. It smelled of ink, wet dogs, and burnt toast. Dawn was only a gray line over the hollow. Hannah sat on an upturned crate with a tin mug between her hands, and she would not meet my eyes.“Kieran, I am an old woman,” she said. “I have been tired since before your daughter was Chair.”“I did not ask if you were tired. I asked who held the stamp.”“Who told you about the stamp?”“Briar did. Last night. She is not hiding it.”Hannah’s mug stopped halfway to her mouth. “She told you herself?”“She told her mother. Her mother told me.” I crouched in front of her so our faces

Point of View: Kieran (Male Lead)“You are the first people to cross this lake in two years, and you came because my lantern blinked. Tell me honestly. Did anyone send you, or only the stone? Because the Office never did, and I will not pretend otherwise.”I am Kieran, and I stood on a rotten landing with the lake slapping at my boots, being questioned by a woman holding a boathook like a spear.We had crossed in a flat bottomed skiff poled by Ysolt’s grandson Tam, who said nothing the entire way. Rhen sat in the bow with her jaw set. Perrin sat opposite her, hands under his arms, shivering in his mother’s cardigan. Neve and Odalys shared the middle bench and a blanket. The water was black and cold, and the far shore came toward us slowly, a single house on stilts, a leaning pier, and a post with a lantern hanging from it.The woman who held the boathook was perhaps fifty five. Weathered brown skin. Gray braid down her back. Her hands were rope hands, scarred and knotted, and she held

Point of View: Kieran (Male Lead)“Put them on the table one by one, Odalys, and say what each one proves and what it does not. I do not want a story tonight. I want five things I can hold in my hand.”I am Kieran, and I have faced armies and storms and one very angry moon, and I was more afraid of a kitchen table that night than of any of them.We had come back across the lake at dusk. Tam poled in silence, and Perrin slept against Rhen’s shoulder with his mouth open. By the time we reached the Salt Heron, the common room was empty. The landlord had banked the fire and gone to bed. Odalys cleared the big oak table, wiped it with her sleeve, and began to set things down.“One,” she said. “The promise.”Wren’s oilcloth packet lay open, the heron seal broken, the cream sheet smoothed flat.“This proves that thirteen years ago, the Watcher promised Maren Ashdown a second tender within a year. It is signed. It is dated. It is her hand.” Odalys tapped the paper with one finger. “It does no

Point of View: Kieran (Male Lead)“Do not look at me like that, Rhen. I am not turning on our daughter. I am saying I listened to Marisol, and I could not tell her she was wrong, and I am old enough to hate that.”I am Kieran, and I walked behind my wife down the wet path from the barn and felt her anger on my back like a hand.“You did not raise yours,” she said, without turning.“I raised nothing. Thirty one hands went up. I am not one of them.”“But you wanted to.”“For a moment.” I caught her sleeve. She stopped. The evening wind pulled at her hair. “Rhen, I am tired. I am old. I have carried the same fear for thirty years, that one day the Moon will ask for something we have not got. And a woman stood up and said, here is a way to carry it that does not break anyone. Do you not feel that pull?”“I feel it,” she said fiercely. “That is why I am afraid of it.”“Then we are afraid of the same thing.”“No. You are afraid of the weight. I am afraid of the shape.” She turned. Her face

Point of View: Kieran (Male Lead) “Do not dare it, Rhen. Not this time. I will not stand at a door and watch you walk into the dark after our daughter, so you will stay behind me, or I will carry you out over my shoulder.” I am Kieran, and I had never in thirty years raised my voice to my wife in front of other people, and I did it on the Ashdown porch at three in the morning. The house stood at the end of a long lane of dead hawthorn, low and gray, with a slate roof furred with moss. We had ridden hard, Dorian in front, Briar and Perrin behind him, Rhen and I last on Tam’s old cart horse, which complained the whole way. Rain had come in sideways off the lake. Every window of the house was black but one. A lamp burned in the cellar grating. It was not a steady flame. It pulsed, a slow gold and white, dimming and swelling like a breath. “That is Maren’s lamp,” said Perrin, in a thin voice. He stood on the porch step with his hand against the damp wall. He had not spoken since we le