POV: Mara
The hibiscus hall looks different in morning light—calmer, like it has decided to be a room and not a verdict. The Luna Regent sits with a cup of something red that smells like careful sweetness. She gestures to the cushion. “Sit, Mara.”
I do, palms flat on my knees so my fingers don’t tell on me. The Regent is sweet at first sight, but in reality, she makes my skin crawl with a single look. And I don't like showing fear.
“I won’t keep you long,” she says, voice soft enough to make people tell her everything. In a dangerous way. “I’m pulling a thread. I don’t know yet if to strangle or sew.”
Aster relaxes a breath; I don't.
“Tell me,” the Regent continues, “about the kitchen routes that pass the south steps and the pantry corridor. Who uses them, when, where the blind corners are.”
I sketch the path in words: dawn bread to east yard, midday kettles to drill, late stew to map room, and always the pantry as our hinge, our throat. “Blind corners,” I add, “behind the cold-room pillar and the linen press. Jax posted a mirror, but people forget to look.”
“The suspicious ash you reported last week,” she says sharply. “Where did you find it?”
“Under the butcher’s hook.” I picture the smear—too fine for cookfire, gleam like ground shell. “Not oven ash.”
“Not oven,” she repeats, filing the fact. “And your runners—Pia, Tor—who touched the pantry crate before we caught the decoy?”
“None,” I say. “They were in the hall when I opened it.”
She nods. “I’m mapping who thinks they understand your rhythm. Patterns are kinder than faces. Faces can change.”
“Jax said the same,” I admit.
“He and I have been disagreeing for a decade about how soon to admit we agree,” she says, smiling a little too wide to be friendly. “One more question: did you see any unusual light during the qualifiers?”
The room shifts. I do not clench my jaw. “Why do you ask?”
“The Lantern Guild reported a brief anomaly in the west bank array,” she says. “Nothing permanent. Just a white blink half a breath long.”
I swallow. “Over First Aid.” I describe it: frost on the tongue, sugar after, filigree intact.
“Good,” she says—not that it happened, but that I say it clean. “You are not in trouble. For now, at least.”
A shiver runs down my spine, though I don't show signs of my internal mess. I nod once. “If I see anything again, I’ll report.”
“Tell Silvie first,” she says. “Then Jax. Then me. In that order, the city breathes.”
Silence falls—patient, not punitive. She studies me briefly the way a weaver checks tension. I tense under her gaze. “Are you sleeping?”
“Enough.”
“Liar,” she says, but it’s almost tender. “Eat a pear before bed. It tricks the heart.”
I almost laugh, though I realize quickly it'd be a dangerous idea. “Pia says apples do.”
“Pia would be right if apples were pears,” the Regent says dryly, and stands. “Keep your breath, Mara. We may need it.”
I bow with my head, not my spine. I don't show fear. When I step into the hall, Jax waits in the shadow of a column, slate tucked under his arm. He studies my face, then the hall behind me, then my face again. “Was she gentle?”
“She sews,” I say. “Doesn’t stab. Today.”
“Good.” He pivots to lead me out; his steps are the pace of a man making hallways obey. Before we reach the garden, a runner intercepts with a canvas satchel bearing the council seal.
“Mailroom,” the runner pants. “Packet from—uh—Moonfell.”
The word hits like a sour bell. Jax takes the satchel, signs with a flourish that looks too elegant for a man who sleeps in boots, and waits until the runner is gone. “Protocol,” he says, and we both hear the meaning: threats don’t get to choose their route.
He opens the satchel to reveal a sealed letter, thick, inked with a crest pressed so hard the wax bruised. He does not break it. He slides it into a flat case inside his coat, one I pretend not to know about. “We read mail that can bite before it bites us,” he says.
“I prefer that,” I answer.
“Tell Silvie I’m stealing you for a different route at dusk,” he adds, almost casual.
“Because of…?”
“Because I’m superstitious,” he says. “And because if I say because of the white flicker in a corridor, someone will hear only white.”
He leaves me with the shells singing like a patient choir.
Later, over knives and onions, the kitchen breathes gossip into steam. “The heir looked… bristly,” Pia reports, wagging her fingers like whiskers. “Not at you! At the air. Like someone moved his chair.”
“Procedure,” Silvie says, slicing with perfect economy. “He hates when information arrives without asking permission.”
“Did I do wrong?” I ask, surprising myself by needing the answer.
“No,” Silvie says. “You did useful. He can bristle at his own tail.”
At even bell, I glimpse Cael on a rampart speaking to two Shields, voice clipped, dignity restrained like a dog on a short lead. He sees me across the court. His jaw tips as if to say I know you met my mother without me, and I will survive that knowledge like I survived learning to read maps that didn’t want to be understood. He reins it in. I pretend not to see.
When the lanterns are lit, the hall grows kind again. The satchel from Moonfell sleeps under Jax’s coat like a story that hasn’t yet decided its villain.