the palace was not empty, and I

oon. Let's talk

hing vast. Marek was fumbling for flint. Kairos had put himself between the dark and me, chain-marked wrists and

e chain room, and promises wer

u wore Aldric on him. You wore my mother on me." My voice didn't shake. I gripped the locket in my fist and made it true. "So eit

ugh to count a hu

urning silver, flames like moonstones - and the light they t

now, wearier, "there is only one way to be

and became a window - and through it I saw the throne room, three years ago, from

own passing. And then, at the great doors - not sealed from outside, as every story had told for three years, but *

ther's men, a young man in the silver

dr

ose shouting orders no one ever repeated - and then the doors opened from the *outside*, and five figures walked in wearing cloaks stitched all over with

eamed the boy's name, and threw her si

ollapsed int

Kairos had gone white to the l

titched-eyed ones and aimed it at every loose end of his reign - the pact-daughters, and the heirs he did not trust, and the son who had just been crowned too young. His captains broke the seal from inside. His second son gave the nod. And I-" the flames bent low, "-I was

he binding," Kai

caught me. That is the only door. And the coven will not sit idle while a Moon-daughter learns to turn weapons back on the hands that fire them. Little moon - they felt you tonight. All the way south, they felt you.

f the silv

own on the chapel floor without arrangement, like a puppe

he stitched-eye cloaks - that is Blackmire. Child, th

nder it. "Three years. Three years I have knelt in that chain chair every full moon, apologizing in my bones for a massacre I believed I had done. And the truth is I wa

o being so

the King of the Cursed Court looked at the wolfless tribute from Silverclaw, and his ruined gold e

or to anoth

or to anoth

ace changed, and t

st had settled on the only one that made them happy: the goddess had walked her daughter up the old stair, and the curse had lost the fight. Mara reported queuing at t

not come to

t the trays with ceremonial exactness. "A ch

, in ones and twos, and not one word of why. I want the Blackmire's true name, its standing, its price list, and the names of every kingdom that has bought from it in

trail ends?"

een years of lists, one burned throne room, one mother in a locket, one sister, one father, one

e Cursed Court pays

ning, some cold feather at the back of my neck kept whispering t

stronger than the night I was made. After that, t

e I could not refuse, arme

ng when Mara came in, white as the morning

ticed that she had stopped calling me child sometime in the night, and that the w

ting schemes, expecting

e words long. The

ou are. Run befor