All Chapters of The Luna They Erased: Chapter 21 - Chapter 25

Mira's POV"Welcome home, Captain Arden."Lady Victoria Thorne didn't raise her voice. She didn't need to. Six royal guards stood at her back in the open doorway, and the passage behind them, the stair down to the drain, the only way out, was full of steel.Her black gown was immaculate. Not a single silver hair had slipped from its knot, and the emerald at her throat caught the grey light like a cat's eye. She looked as though she had come down to inspect a badly laid dinner table.Not to collect three people whose lives she had helped destroy.Kael was on one knee beside me, both hands pressed to his temples. The brand at his throat pulsed silver, black, silver, like a second heartbeat."Step away from him, Mira," Victoria said.I didn't move.She sighed. "You always did have such difficulty following simple instructions."The familiarity in her voice turned my stomach. Only yesterday morning, she had walked beside me through the palace gardens and complained that the roses for my c

The Council chamber was not the room I remembered.The last time I had been in the east wing, it had been full of sunlight and old maps, and a junior clerk had spilled tea on the treaty of Ashford and nearly wept. Now the windows were shuttered. Black hangings covered the walls. A long table stood beneath a chandelier whose candles had burned down to crooked stumps.Kael walked me inside. The guards stayed out in the corridor. Victoria had swept off to summon the Council.The doors closed behind us.For the first time in hours, we were alone.Kael released my wrist at once and stumbled away from me, one hand pressed hard to the brand at his throat. Slowly, the silver light beneath his fingers dimmed and went out."Kael?"He didn't answer. He leaned both hands on the table, head bowed, breathing raggedly."Are you all right?""Give me a moment."I wanted to go to him. But I remembered how he had flinched when Victoria spoke the command, and I stayed where I was.After a long time, he l