Silver Shroud
1111 Words
Chapter 10: The Silver Shroud
POV: Lina Hale
The silk was cold and heavy against my skin. I stood on a low stone pedestal in the centre of my chambers while three women moved around me without making a sound. The dress was beautiful in the way that cages are sometimes beautiful. All silver thread and craftsmanship, built to turn me into something I wasn't.
Lira, a middle-aged woman with sharp eyes and hands that smelled faintly of cedar and dye, was on her knees at my feet pinning the hem. Every time her knuckles brushed my ankle, I had to stop myself from pulling away. My skin was still registering every touch like a small shock.
"A little to the left, My Luna," she said, voice muffled by the pins in her teeth.
I shifted, keeping my shoulders back the way Mira had shown me. I let my expression go soft and a little lost. "Lira, I'm sorry. The fog makes even simple things feel heavy. I remember the dress matters, but the rest of it feels like a book with half the pages gone."
Lira looked up, her face going warm and careful the way people looked at something fragile. "It is the river's toll, My Luna. Don't worry yourself. Your body remembers even when your mind is slow to catch up. You have been preparing for this your whole life."
"I know," I said. A clean, easy lie. "But the duties after the ceremony. Can you walk me through them again? I don't want to fail the pack because of a few missing months."
Lira stood and smoothed the embroidery over my hips. The silver thread ran in patterns of wolves and moon phases that seemed to move when the light shifted. "Failure is not in your blood, Selene. You are the spiritual anchor. Once the King binds himself to you, you tether the pack to the Great Mother. You lead the healing rituals for wounded warriors. You are the first voice a pup hears during their first shift, blessing the transition so the wolf doesn't swallow the child whole."
Something cold moved through me. "I do the blessings personally?"
"Of course," Lira said, moving to adjust the collar. "And the moon ceremonies. Every fortnight you preside over the lunar offerings. The pack looks to the Luna for the blessing of the hunt and the peace of the home. Kael is the strength, but you are the spirit. Without you, his power is just force with nothing behind it."
I kept my face calm and filed every word. Healing rituals. First shifts. Fortnightly ceremonies. This was not a ceremonial role that I could fake my way through with good posture and steady eye contact. This required knowledge I didn't have and abilities. I had no way of knowing whether this body still carried.
"The first blessing is five days after the coronation," Lira added, adjusting a pin near the waist, not noticing the way my pulse had picked up. "Young Petir is due for his first shift. His mother has already told half the pack that the Luna herself will guide him through it."
Five days. One week total before I was expected to perform something I had no framework for.
"Thank you, Lira," I said, keeping my voice even. "It's starting to come back. Slowly."
"Good." She signalled to the other two women. They moved in together and lifted the dress off me with a practised efficiency that made it look easy, then draped it carefully over a velvet stand and filed out without a word.
The door clicked shut.
I stood in the quiet in just my shift and let myself feel it.
The fear came up fast. Cold and oily, rising in my throat. I was a waitress from a city that didn't have wolves or moon rituals or sacred rivers. I had spent my life worrying about rent and shifts and staying one step ahead of people who wanted something from me. Now, I was supposed to anchor a supernatural nation and guide children through transformations I didn't understand. If I slipped up, if I showed even one c***k at the right moment, they wouldn't let me explain.
I can't do this. The thought was loud and clear. I am a fraud, and I am going to die here.
I walked to the washbasin and put cold water on my face. I gripped the stone edges and held on.
Then I breathed.
I pulled the fear back down the way I had always pulled it down. Packed it into a box, shut the lid, and moved on. I had jumped off a bridge into black water. I had survived twenty-three years of having nothing and no one. A silver dress and a crown were not going to be the thing that finished me.
I lifted my head and looked at my reflection.
The fear was still there. But fear had always been useful when I pointed it in the right direction.
I couldn't keep leaning on Elara and Mira. They were too close to who Selene had been. The gaps in my knowledge were going to start looking less like memory loss and more like something else entirely if I kept asking them the wrong questions.
I needed someone different. Someone inside the inner circle but far enough back that they read situations instead of feeling them. Someone who would see my fog as a problem to solve rather than a grief to sit with.
Riven was too suspicious. Kael was too dangerous.
Mira had mentioned the advisor during the palace tour. Varis. He had stayed quiet in the council meeting Kael had referenced, but he was the one who kept the history, the technicalities, the things that had been written down rather than passed through feeling and instinct. If anyone knew the mechanics of Luna's role without the emotional weight of childhood attachment, it was him.
I needed to get in front of him. I needed to learn how of being a Luna before the moon peaked, and the pack figured out their anchor had no idea what it was anchoring.
I turned to the window. The sun was going down over the forest, bleeding red through the trees. Somewhere out there, a hawk was circling the palace spires, slow and patient.
Three days to the coronation. Five days to the first blessing.
I needed a teacher who didn't know they were teaching a ghost.
I turned away from the window and started thinking through what I would say to the advisor when I found him.
It was time to get to work.
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