Chapter 3：The Reading
909 Words
By morning, the whole pack is in the courtyard.
Two guards bring Sera out. They hold her arms but try to make it look polite. Sera does not fight them. She needs her strength for the hearing.
Liri is already there in a white shawl, with a pale face and two women close enough to catch her if she sways. She looks weak, clean, and ready for everyone to pity her.
Kai stands in the Alpha's place.
Sera keeps her hands visible and her chin level. The begging part is not happening.
"Hold out your wrist," Renata says. "Let the light test your mark."
Sera pushes up her sleeve herself. No one gets to do that for her.
The mark on her wrist sits dark against her skin. It had lit once. That is what makes this impossible to explain. Everyone saw it glow when Kai chose her.
The eclipse-light falls over her wrist.
Nothing happens.
The sound from the crowd is too pleased to be surprise.
"Again," Sera says.
Renata looks at her.
"It lit once," Sera says. "You all saw it."
"A lie can glow once," Renata says. "Truth lasts."
Someone laughs.
Sera looks at the stone under her feet and makes herself breathe.
Then they bring Liri forward.
The whole courtyard changes. People soften. Guards lower their heads. Even the women who hated Sera most look ready to cry.
Liri lifts her wrist into the light.
For one second, nothing happens. Then silver spreads across her skin.
The pack gasps.
"There she is," someone whispers.
"The true Luna."
Sera hears the words and thinks of the child inside her. Five weeks old.
Liri lowers her arm. Tears shine in her eyes.
"Please," she says softly. "Don't hurt her because of me."
Oh, please.
Sera almost smiles.
The old man at the front speaks first. Sera knows him. She sat by his bed for three nights last winter and fed him broth when his hands shook.
"Hear that?" he says. "The true Luna begs mercy for the thief."
"What exactly does this prove?" Sera asks.
This time, the courtyard goes quiet enough for everyone to hear her.
Sera lifts her wrist. "Her mark lit. Mine lit too. You all saw it two years ago. If the light told the truth then, why is it a lie now?"
Kai looks at her.
Liri's face goes blank for half a second, and Sera catches it.
Then Liri drops her eyes. "Sera... I didn't come back to take anything from you."
The old man turns on Sera at once. "She survives two years in the dark, and you still make this about your title?"
"I asked what the light proves."
"The mark is the witness," Renata says.
That is all the trial Ravenhold needs. Renata does not answer Sera's question. She only points to Liri's glowing mark and Sera's dark one.
Sera could keep talking, but every word she says only makes Liri look more wounded.
Renata turns to the pack. "Seraphina's claim is void. The false bond will be severed. Before sundown, she will be cast beyond Ravenhold's boundary stones."
She looks at Kai.
Kai could slow this down with a single command. Maybe he cannot stop it, and Sera is not stupid enough to believe he would try, but he could at least say, Wait.
He says nothing.
Her hand wants to move to her stomach. She keeps it still.
I am carrying your child.
The sentence sits behind her teeth, and she swallows it.
"Cut it," Sera says.
Renata turns back.
Sera keeps her eyes on Kai. "If it is false, cut it."
The elder brings the eclipse-blade. The bond has been weak for a long time. On the worst days Sera could barely feel it; on the better ones, she told herself she was already free.
She was wrong.
When the blade falls, pain tears through her chest. She does not make a sound. She will not let them hear her cry out.
But she looks.
Across the stone, Kai's hand closes once on empty air. His face changes, then goes still again.
"Let the law be carried out," he says.
Now it is done.
Dorian comes to bind her hands. He was her father's old guard, and he does not look at her.
"Hands," he says.
Sera gives them.
The iron closes.
"Luna," Dorian murmurs by mistake.
The word hangs there. He flinches.
Sera almost feels sorry for him.
They walk her through the center of Ravenhold.
Everyone watches.
"Thief."
"False Luna."
"She should have been thrown out a year ago."
The woman whose child Sera carried through fever waits until Sera passes, then spits at her feet.
Sera keeps walking.
At the gate, she stops.
They want her to look back. They want tears. So she gives them a thin smile.
The gate opens. The boundary stones let her pass.
Behind her, Ravenhold cheers.
Sera does not look back.
She sees Soren waiting in the trees. He steps out with a folded writ in one hand and a coat in the other.
His eyes go to her bound hands, then to her face.
"Luna," he says.
For some reason, that almost breaks her.
"Don't call me that."
"They cut the bond." He lifts the writ. "They did not cancel this writ."
Sera stares at the paper. "What is it?"
"The thing they forgot." Soren looks toward the closed gate. "Not here. Walk with me."
- Writer
