All Chapters of The Luna's Deception : Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

The vault door gave way under my hands, and the sound that poured out of it stopped every question in my throat.Light. Hundreds of small lights, trapped behind glass, lining the walls in rows that stretched further back than the torchlight could reach. Each jar held a flame that moved like it was breathing, pulsing in a rhythm too slow to be fire and too alive to be anything else.Kieran stepped in beside me, his hand finding mine without either of us deciding it. "Sera. What is this."An answer arrived in me before I could ask myself how. "They are Lunas," I said. "Every one who came before me and lost."The nearest jar sat at eye level, its light thin and silver, flickering the way a candle flickers right before it dies and never quite finishing the motion. I stepped closer. The light inside moved toward the glass, toward my hand, like it recognized something in me before I recognized anything in it."The Council did this," I said. "Morvanna and Kaelen. Every Luna who challenged

I reached for the black stone before either of us could think better of it.The air around the pedestal shifted before my fingers closed on anything. Cold first, then a weight pressing down on the room like something enormous had just leaned close to listen. Kieran pulled me back a step, and this time I let him.Two shapes formed out of the dark behind the pedestal, shimmering at the edges the way heat shimmers over stone in summer, except this was the opposite of heat. Morvanna took form first, tall and composed even as smoke, and beside her Kaelen solidified with his arms crossed, watching me the way a man watches something he has already decided to own."Little wolf," Morvanna said. "You have been busy.""You knew we would come here," I said."I knew you would come here the moment the Sovereign chose you." Her voice carried no anger, only a patience that unsettled me more than shouting would have. "I simply did not expect you to empty my vault before taking my heart.""It was nev

The stone broke apart in my palm before I felt any resistance give way.Not shattered. Crumbled, the way old ash crumbles, dust sliding between my fingers before I could register the weight leaving my hand. For one full second, nothing happened, and I thought I had simply destroyed a rock.Then the scream came.It tore through the vault walls, through a distance that should have swallowed any sound long before it reached us. Kieran flinched, hands going to his ears too late to block any of it. I recognized that voice even distorted by pain, even stretched past anything I imagined a voice could stretch to.Morvanna."That is coming from the Coven tower," Kieran said, breathing hard. "Sera, that has to be miles from here.""It does not matter how far," I said. "She is not going to survive whatever that stone was carrying."Her spirit had already begun to unravel in front of us, outline stretching thin and translucent, mouth open on a scream that matched the one echoing through the wal

I marched the Council out of the tower before any of them found time to plan an escape.Alexei walked at my left, Kieran at my right, Shadowpine warriors forming a loose line behind the robed prisoners so none of them mistook the walk down to the village for anything but what it was. Nobody spoke. The only sound was boots on frozen dirt and the occasional clink of a chain one of the warriors had looped loosely around wrists that had never once been bound before that morning.Word had already reached the village by the time we arrived. People stood outside their homes in the gray early light, some still in sleep clothes, others already dressed for work they had not expected to do that day. I recognized faces from the Neutral Plain, from the courtyard, from nights I had spent listening to stories about what the Council had cost this village long before I understood any of it myself.I stopped in the center of the square and let the prisoners bunch together behind me, exposed, with now

The dagger came from behind the wine table, too fast for anyone to shout a warning first.I felt it before I saw it, a shift in the air behind me sharp enough to prickle across my shoulders, the same instinct that used to warn me half a second before silver wire connected with skin. I turned, already too late to stop what was already in motion.The feast had been going for hours by then, the village finally allowing itself something close to celebration after days of tearing down and rebuilding. The rider who interrupted the memorial had delivered his news hours earlier, word of scattered Council loyalists fleeing toward the eastern border, nothing urgent enough to pull me away from the first real rest this village had earned in longer than anyone could count. My guard had dropped exactly enough for someone to notice.A woman I did not recognize lunged out from behind the table, robe torn and travel-stained, a blade in her hand that caught the firelight with a faint green sheen alo