BLESSED LUNA RISING

blessed Luna chapter 7

# Blessed Luna Rising

**By Melisa Warui**

## Chapter 7: A Narrow Place

They ran.

Down the servant's stair, through the narrow spiral of the western wall, Luna's lantern shuttered and her free hand locked in Kael's. Above them, boots hammered stone and a voice bellowed orders. Torchlight flickered through gaps in the old masonry.

"Left," Luna whispered at a fork in the dark. "Then down eleven steps. Watch the fourth. It's cracked."

Kael did not argue. He followed her through the black with perfect trust, and Luna, who had never in her life let anyone else lead her through her own palace, found that she did not mind being the one who led.

The passage ended in a tiny chamber behind a tapestry, the old linen closet of a long-dead chatelaine. It was barely larger than a wardrobe, lined with empty shelves and smelling of lavender and dust. Luna drew Kael inside, slid the hidden latch shut behind them, and pressed a finger to her lips.

The footsteps passed. Torchlight slid beneath the door in a thin gold line and moved on. A guard's voice, muffled and irritated, said, "Nothing in the east corridor. Try the gardens."

Silence returned, slow and heavy.

Luna realized she had stopped breathing.

---

The closet was very small.

She stood with her back against the shelves, and Kael stood before her, one hand braced on the wall beside her head, the other still tangled in hers. There was nowhere else for him to be. In the thin gold light from the door crack, she could see every detail of his face: the faint scar through his left eyebrow, the dust on his cheekbone, the rise and fall of his chest.

He was breathing quickly. So was she.

"Are they gone?" he whispered.

"Not yet." She did not know why she was whispering back. "Guards double back. Wait a hundred heartbeats."

"A hundred."

"At least."

He nodded. Neither of them moved.

Luna counted, because counting was what she did. At *twelve*, she became aware of the heat of his body through her thin cloak. At *twenty-three*, she noticed that his thumb was moving, very slightly, over the back of her hand. At *thirty-one*, she lost count entirely.

"Luna," he breathed.

"Hmm?"

"I should say something sensible."

"Please do."

"I can't think of anything."

A laugh escaped her, soft and helpless, and she pressed her free hand over her mouth. Kael's eyes crinkled. His forehead dropped, lightly, to rest against hers.

"You're not helping," he murmured.

"I'm being very quiet."

"You're being very *warm.*"

She could not say which of them moved first. Perhaps it did not matter. Her hand left her mouth and found the front of his shirt, and his mouth found hers in the dark, slower than in the cistern, deeper, each moment drawn out like silk through her fingers. His hand slid to her waist, then up her back, drawing her closer. She tasted wine and honey and a quiet, restrained hunger, and she answered it without shame.

When at last they parted, she was dizzy. His breath came uneven against her temple.

"That," Kael said hoarsely, "was not in a riddle either."

"I'm beginning to think," Luna managed, "that the riddles are the least of our problems."

He laughed against her hair. "Keeper Averin. You're a menace."

"I'm a professional." She lifted her chin, though her face burned. "And professionals do not kiss scholars in linen closets."

"Evidently some do."

"Evidently some do," she admitted, and kissed him once more, briefly, because the closet was dark and no one would ever know.

---

When the hundred heartbeats had passed, they slipped out into the quiet of the lower gallery. The festival still thundered in the distance: laughter, drums, the clinking of a thousand cups. No one had noticed two cloaked figures climbing from the walls.

Luna escorted Kael to the Scholar's Wing, though she did not go in. At his door, he turned and caught her hand once more.

"The mirror. The third figure. Did you see it clearly?"

"Grey robes," she said. "A smile. A man, or tall woman. I couldn't tell."

"The Chancellor wears grey."

"So does half the court. And the Chancellor was in the great hall at the ninth bell. I saw him through the window." She shook her head. "Perhaps the mirror shows what we fear."

"Or what the founding queen wanted us to see." Kael frowned. "She was clever. She wouldn't have built a warning without a reason."

"We'll consider it tomorrow." She squeezed his fingers. "Sleep, Kael. You've earned it."

"And you?"

"I have the locks to check."

"Luna." His voice was warm. "You can't keep guarding the whole palace alone."

"Watch me."

"I'd like to," he said, so simply that she nearly forgot to breathe. Then he kissed her knuckles, lightly, and let go.

---

The Keeper's tower was cold when she reached it.

She climbed the last turn of the stair, removed her cloak, and stood a moment in the dark, her lips still tender, her pulse still too fast. She had spent twenty-seven years believing she was complete in her solitude. It was not a lie. But she was beginning to understand that completeness and wanting were not enemies.

*Free heart,* she thought. *Not empty heart.*

She lit a single candle and crossed to the window, looking out at the moon, three days past new and growing fat. Six nights, now five. The full moon would come whether she was ready or not.

A faint sound made her turn.

Something white lay on the floor just inside her door, where there had been nothing when she left. A folded square of parchment, sealed with plain grey wax.

Luna's fingers closed around the hilt of the small dagger at her belt, a Keeper's blade, kept more for ceremony than use. She crossed the room slowly and checked the door. Locked. The hinges undisturbed. She had carried the only key.

She knelt and picked up the note. The wax bore no seal. Inside, in a spidery, careful hand, were four lines:

*The Chancellor is not the only one watching.*

*Do not trust what the mirror shows you.*

*Trust the one who gave you the key.*

*Come to the east balcony at midnight. Come alone.*

Luna read it three times. Then, with a cold prickle at the base of her neck, she thought of the old Keeper on his deathbed, pressing a small dull key into her palm.

*Keep it close. You'll know when.*

Her mentor had been dead for six weeks.

She raised her eyes to the window, to the dark, silent courtyard and the glittering sprawl of the festival beyond it. Somewhere out there, someone had walked through a locked door to leave this note, and had known exactly when she would return.

Midnight was thirty minutes away.

Luna set the parchment on her desk and smoothed it flat. Then she buckled her dagger back at her hip, drew her cloak around her shoulders, and went to find out who in her palace knew more about her than she did.

---

*End of Chapter 7*