THE FORGED LUNA

Chapter 5: The Dutiful Wife

Wren Hollis had always been good at smiling. By the time the bus reached the Hale district, she had discovered she was exceptional at it.

She practiced in the dark window glass: the soft, apologetic curve of the mouth, the slight tilt of the head, the eyes lowered as though ashamed to take up space. Five years of repetition had worn the expression smooth as a river stone. It fit her face perfectly. It was the only thing that did.

*Grateful,* she told her reflection. *Be so grateful that no one ever looks at you twice.*

She collected Theo from the nursery at noon, as she always did. He came barreling across the yard with a paper rolled in his fist and his shirt untucked, and hit her legs so hard she staggered.

“Mama! Mama, look!”

It was the picture Marlene had mentioned: a gray wolf with enormous yellow flowers sprouting from its paws, and above it a lopsided sun with a smiling face. Underneath, in crooked letters, were the words FOR MAMA.

Wren knelt on the wet pavement and looked at it for a long time.

*I swear that I have no children.* The Moon had weighed those words and found them true. By every law of the pack, this boy belonged to other people, a loan returned. And her arms still closed around him as though they had been made for exactly this weight.

“It’s beautiful,” she said, and was proud that her voice barely shook. “Is that me?”

“That’s the wolf. You’re the flowers.” He said it with great patience, as though to someone slow. Then he frowned and touched her cheek. “Why are your eyes wet?”

“The wind,” Wren said. “Come on. Let’s go home.”

The Hale house sat on its hill like a cake nobody was allowed to cut, all white stone and tall windows. She had thought it grand once. Now she saw an expensive stage set, and herself the unpaid understudy.

In the bedroom she took the certificate from her coat and stood before the empty frame above the bed. Marlene’s voice came back to her, amused and sure. *Let her frame it again. A woman that desperate to be loved will hang any lie on her wall.*

Her hands wanted to tear it in half. She slid it into the frame, snapped the clasps shut, and hung it on its nail. The gray moon sat in the corner, dull as a button. Nobody would ever think to look at it again, which was exactly the point.

Gideon came home at six.

She heard the car on the gravel, then his voice in the hall, warm and easy. Wren stood at the top of the stairs with Theo’s small hand in hers and watched her husband climb toward them, tall and fair and so handsome it had once hurt to look at him. He carried a bouquet of white roses.

“There she is.” He kissed her forehead. His mouth was dry and brief, and he smelled faintly of someone else’s perfume. Wren had never noticed that before. She wondered how many times she had not noticed. “Darling, I have been sick with worry. Dunmore called me this afternoon.”

She lifted her face, wide-eyed, and let the practiced smile settle in. “Called you?”

“A terrible business at the Registry. A clerical mix-up, he says, some fault in the old archive.” Gideon sighed and shook his head. “You went all that way alone, and nobody had the decency to explain. I am so sorry, Wren. You should have waited for me.”

“I got frightened,” she said, and let her voice go small. “The room was cold, and the clerk said it would take a long time. I thought I had better come home.”

His shoulders loosened by half an inch. She saw it, and something in her chest went quiet and hard and still, like a knife being laid on a table.

“Of course you did. My timid girl.” He pressed the roses into her arms. “Don’t give it a second thought. The deep archive is being rebuilt, and a reissue will take a year, perhaps more. I will handle every bit of it.”

“A year,” Wren repeated.

“Longer, possibly. But what does a piece of paper matter, between us?” His thumb stroked her wrist, exactly where Marlene’s fingers had rested every month for five years. “You have my name. You have my home. You have Theo.”

*You have Theo.* Like a coin dropped into a beggar’s hand.

“Thank you, Gideon,” Wren said. “I don’t know what I would do without you.”

His smile deepened. It was the smile of a man who has just heard exactly what he wanted to hear, and she hated that she knew it so well. “You will never have to find out.” Then, lightly, as if it were an afterthought: “Did you ring Abernathy about the estate?”

Her heart gave one heavy thump. “I told him the paperwork was delayed. That is all.”

“Good girl. Leave him to me. Lawyers prey on trusting women.” He ruffled Theo’s hair. “Now, who wants to see Daddy’s surprise?”

Theo shrieked and bolted after him, and Wren stood on the landing with a bouquet of roses, listening to the boy’s laughter and his father’s braided together down the hall. She counted the thorns on one stem, slowly, to keep from screaming.

Dinner was a performance, and she gave the finest of her life. Gideon told a story about a board member on the ice, and Theo laughed until milk came out of his nose. Wren laughed too, and watched them across the candlelight.

The same cowlick lifted at the crown of each head. The same gray-green eyes squinted with delight. She had always called it a cousin’s resemblance. How blind she had been, and how kind of him to leave the truth lying in plain sight, because he had known she would never look.

After the bath and the story, after Theo had curled on his side with one fist under his cheek, she went to the bedroom and found Gideon waiting beside the nightstand. A small amber bottle stood open beside a tall glass of warm water.

“Marlene sent a stronger blend,” he said, tipping the bottle until the water clouded gold. “For the stress. She says your pulse has been unsteady.”

The smell reached her, honey and bitter almonds and something underneath. She had smelled it every morning and evening for five years. Tonight it was twice as strong.

“Drink it all, darling.” He pressed the glass into her palm and folded his arms, smiling. “I will wait.”

She lifted it. The first sip burned going down. She swallowed, gagged, and kept her eyes on his face, and did not let the smile slip.

His phone buzzed on the dresser. He glanced at the screen, and his whole face changed, softened and warmed in a way she had never seen it do for her. “I have to take this,” he said. “Finish that, please. All of it.”

The door clicked shut. Through the wood came his voice, dropped to a murmur. *Yes, love. She is drinking it now.*

The glass was nearly full, and the sweetness coated her tongue like oil.

On the windowsill sat a white orchid in a glazed blue pot, Marlene’s Christmas gift. *To remind you that delicate things endure,* the card had said.

She crossed the room on silent feet. She did not decide to do it. Her hand simply tipped the glass, and the cloudy gold liquid poured over the dark soil and vanished.

For one heartbeat, nothing happened.

Then the stems began to darken. Black crept up from the roots like ink through a wick, and the soil gave a faint, ugly hiss. The white petals curled inward, shriveled, and dropped onto the sill like burnt paper, and the sweet smell of rot filled the room.

In under ten seconds, the orchid was dead.

Wren stared at it, and tasted the bitter sweetness still clinging to her own tongue. She had swallowed a mouthful of that. And she had been drinking it for five years.