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“I thought I never meet you again, but yet, when I heard you two got a territory and decide to y… home… She whistle “Only you could do that, Luna” She smile knowingly and I just rolled my eyes.

Lira’s medicine tasted like the underside of a stone that had learned sunlight.

It sat bitter on my tongue and then melted, a slow, steady warmth unfurling through the ces the poison had tried to im.

The worst of the nausea had passed; what remained came and went like a tide, a reminder more than a threat.

Lira called it the hum. “It will grumble,” she’d said, fingers cool at my pulse. “But it will do as it’s told.”

The house learned the cadence of my recovery the way a body learns to breathe around a bruise.

Monica’s footfall outside the door every hour, exactly.

Audrey’s shadow passing by the threshold whenever a corridor creaked.

Maria scolding anyone who tried to bring flowers before she sniffed them herself—“If the Luna sneezes, I will salt the culprit like cod.”

Lira, who had moved into the room across the hall, sliding in without knocking to re at my color and decide whether the world had earned my presence for another hour.

Through it all, Francesco.

He worked in the same room when he could, maps unfurled on the desk, quill gnawing through paper like a disciplined storm.

When he had to leave, he kissed my knuckles as if they were a seal on a letter he’d entrusted to a careful

messenger.

The bond, greedy and grateful, tugged and answered, our days a call and response of proximity and vow.

I pretended to sleep the first time I heard the whispers.

Not the household’s steady, useful gossip–who’d taken extra bread to the ward, which rooster had finally learned manners, the baker’s girl who had epted the stable boy’s gand with a dignity that made Maria weep into her apron.

No. These were the whispers of people who stand just beyond a door and hope the wood will eat their words before a king hears them.

“…poor thing…”

“…the Luna is sweet, but…”

“…his weakness. Everyone knows it now.”

“…a king shouldn’t-”

:

Thest one shushed the others. “You want your mouth to be the next thing salted? Hush.”

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I opened my eyes to the ceiling and let the ache have me for a heartbeat. Not the ache in my belly. The one that lives where the first rejection left its nails. It would have been beasy /bto harden. Easier still to slip anger on like armor and go downstairs with a speech sharpened to a point.

Instead, I reached for the little sprig of rosemary Monica had left on the nightstand. I rubbed it between my fingers until the scent rose, green and stubborn. Love is not a weapon to be hidden, I told myself, and it is not a weakness to be scorned. The people who needed to learn that would not be taught by a lecture. They would be taught by the sight of us standing together while the world tried to arrange us apart.

The door eased open.

Audrey slipped in, made of quiet angles and watchfulness. “How’s the hum?” she asked.

“Sulking,” I sighed. “It will live.”

“Good,” she said, relief so subtle most people would have missed it. “Um.. We have a man.” A flick of her eyes toward the hall. “Marlow has him. Salt–shed hands. Rope burns. The smell you described.”

Is that…..

Thest bit was mine–the taste the children had given Maria in words she could not forget: wet, like the river in your mouth when it isn’t supposed to be there.

“He’s here?” I asked.

She nodded “Below, not the ward. The room by the bread ovens. Maria insisted.”

I sighed “Of course she did.” I swung my legs off the bed and waited to see if the world tilted. Yes, It didn’t. “Okay, I’ming.”

“You are not!” Lira’s voice, from the doorwayi, /imade even Audrey’s spine straighten. Lira’s gaze swept me, sharp and satisfied. “You will being–tomorrow. Not todayi./ii” /i

Great…. The person I can’t defeat in my condition.

“But, Audrey just said-“I try to give her a reason.

“I heard,” Lira interjected without let me finish my words. “You heard, too, when I said you will be alive tomorrow if you behave today.”

Damn it, Lira!

I lifted my hands in surrender.

“Then you go,” I told Audrey. “Ask with his kind of gentleness. Marlow can practice restraint by letting you

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speak first,”

A rare half–smile ghosted across Audrey’s mouth.

She nodded “I’ll start the questions as if he were a skittish horse. If that fails, I’ll be Marlow

“Don’t be Marlow,” Lira said dryly. “We’ll need himter”

Audrey left without a sound.

Lira mixed something in a cup that steamed and smelled like secrets. I took two sips and scowled. “Ugh… Tastes like regret.”

“Good that you still able to taste something,” she said calmly. “You haven’t had enough of that to satisfy me

I sighed as I leaned back on pillows and counted my breaths while the potion worked. Ten in, ten out. Ten circles with a spoon, the man had made the child count. Ten hums to stitch a poison under a sweetness.

The door opened again.

This time, Marlow.

He shut it behind him and leaned, for just a moment, as if the wood knew how to hold the weight of a tired

manb. /b

“Well?” I asked.

He nced at Lira, who made a shape with her mouth that meant don’t waste time with preambles.

“We have our salt–hand,” Marlow said not long after. “He says he’s a fisherman who never learned the water. Lies. His calluses are wrong fors. They’re right for knots.”

I nodded “Who paid him?” I asked.

“A man with a voice that wasn’t his,” Marlow said, thoughtful. “That’s how he described it. Says the man spoke as if he was tranting for someone who didn’t want to be seen.” Marlow’s mouth went wry. “I asked if the man hummed. He went pale.”

Could it be…

“Dorian,” I said. Not a guess. A line drawn between two points and a third that had been waiting.

Marlow nodded once. “I guess, but not him in person. His kind. Paid well. The salt–hand is stupid, not cruel. He didn’t know what sat in thest egg. He thought he was earning coin for bread and children. He cried when he found out.”

Lira made a small sound that could have been sympathy in a different life. “Fools are more dangerous than viins,” she muttered quitely.

“Where’s Francesco?” I asked him.

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He point with his head “Alpha is in the kitchen,” Marlow exined. “He wanted toe upstairs first. I told him if he left the room where the man could see him, the man would never stop shaking long enough to be useful.”

I snort. God, that image hurt me with a strange kind of pride.

The king who terrifies knows when to stand behind a door.

Marlow crossed his arms. “Audrey thinks someone else fed the salt–hand timings and routes.”

I frown and stare at him closely “By someone inside?” Iment. “Close enough to know when the kitchens are quiet. Close enough to know that I like roses and cakes?”

Well.. She has the same thought as me. fn2b8d Chapters first released on /fn2b8d

He nodded. “Or close enough to watch the square without being watched.”

Yes, the traitor wasn’t a surprise.

“We’ll find them,” I said, steady. “We name them. We choose” punishment not for spectacle, but forw.”

Marlow’s eyes softened. “You always make a better crusader than a judge.”

“I don’t want to be either,” I said. “I want to be the woman who waters the rosemary and counts the children when theye home. Failing that, I’ll settle for being the Luna who insists we don’t be what we rece.”

He opened his mouth–probably to say that insisting on anything in a world like this is worth more than most rulers give–but the door swung and Francesco filled the frame.

He was stripped to shirtsleeves again.

Not deliberate humility this time–utility.

His forearms were braced with leather; the scars there caught the morning.

He crossed the room and kissed me as if the people in it could vanish and returnter. When he straightened, the glint in his eyes steadied to warm metal.

“Eine,” he said, and I loved the way my name sounded when his voice finally found rest in it. “Looks like they’reing.”

I frown..

What? Who?

“Dorian?” I asked In shock.

He shook his head. “Not yet. But his friends–the three he uses when he wants to call the thing a council without doing any work.” His mouth twitched, amusement without joy. “They sent word at dawn. The hawk flew before your hum slept.”

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I breathed out slow. “They’ll want answers. And they’ll want to say the word weakness with their eyes on me.

“They will,” he said, honest like a de with a nodded. “Which is why you will not be there”

What?

Silence, then, brittle as spun sugar.

“Francesco,” I said, and let his name hold warning and plea. “I am not a jewel to tuck away whenpany

“Company,” he repeated softly, as if tasting the wrongness of the word. “This isn’t a neighbor with a basket of figs. These are men who would crack your rib to count how well I bleed.”

“I know,” I sighed. “Which is why I have to stand beside you.”

Lira cleared her throat. “If I say no, will either of you listen?”

“No,” we said together, which made Marlow mutter a swear that sounded like a blessing.

Francesco brushed a stray hair behind my ear. “You were nearly taken from me in our garden with sugar. The words were bare in his mouth, unadorned pain. “Humor me in this.”

“I will not let them teach our people that a Luna hides,” I said stubbornly. “They will make that lesson intow if we let them. And we have been building a different kind ofw.”

He closed his eyes, just for a beat, then opened them into surrender that wasn’t defeat. “Not the hall,” he said. “Not at first. The square. The well. Where we stood two nights ago. I want eyes on the sky as well as the door.”

I nodded my head “Done,” I said, and the relief moved through me like warm water.

Lira made a face that meant, if you die, I will be inconvenienced, and then set to mixing another draught as if control over herbs could be traded for control over kings.

We will prepared.