BLESSED LUNA RISING

Blessed Luna chapter 4

# Blessed Luna Rising

**By Melisa Warui**

## Chapter 4: The Watcher in the Dark

The footsteps stopped at the top of the stairs.

Luna did not breathe. Beside her, Kael's hand stayed warm around hers, his thumb resting against her knuckles with a calm that steadied her more than she would have admitted. In the black water below the inscription, the faint glow pulsed once, softly, like a sleeping heartbeat.

A shadow moved along the cistern wall. Then a voice, young and unsteady, whispered into the dark.

"Keeper? Keeper Averin, is that you?"

Luna's shoulders loosened a fraction. She knew that voice. She opened her lantern's shutter just enough to throw a thin gold line across the steps.

A boy of nineteen stood there in the grey tunic of a palace page, his face pale, his hands knotted in the hem of his sleeve.

"Tobin," she said. "What are you doing here?"

He flinched as though she had struck him. "I'm sorry, Keeper. I wasn't spying. I mean, I was. But I didn't want to."

Kael stepped forward, his voice level. "Who sent you?"

Tobin looked from one of them to the other, and his courage visibly drained away. Luna crossed the steps and took him gently by the shoulders.

"Tobin. Look at me. No one is going to hurt you. Tell me the truth."

"The Chancellor's steward," he whispered. "He gave me a silver coin and said to follow you tonight. Only to see where you went, and to tell him." His eyes shone with sudden tears. "My mother is ill, Keeper. The coin pays for her medicine. I didn't think it would matter."

Luna closed her eyes briefly. It always came back to this, the way power reached down to the smallest and weakest and made them carry its burdens.

"It matters," she said quietly. "But I understand why."

"You aren't angry?"

"I'm angry at the man who sent you. Not at you." She released him. "How long have you followed me?"

"Since the Moon Gate. I saw you leave the Hall of Echoes with the northern scholar. I tried to stay far behind, but you walk so quietly, and I lost you twice, and then I heard the bronze door." He swallowed. "Did I ruin everything?"

Luna glanced at Kael. His expression was unreadable, but he gave the smallest nod.

"No," Luna said. "Here is what you'll do. Tomorrow, you'll tell the steward that you followed us to the Hall of Echoes and lost us in the crowd. Nothing more. And you will bring me your mother's name, and I'll see that the palace physician visits her."

Tobin stared. "Keeper, I can't repay that."

"You already have. You told the truth when it cost you." She straightened. "Now go. Take the servants' stair, and don't stop for anyone."

The boy bowed so low his forehead nearly touched his knees, then fled up the steps and into the dark.

---

The silence that followed was strangely gentle.

"That was well done," Kael said at last.

"It was necessary." She let out a long breath, and only then noticed that her hand was still in his. She did not pull it away. "The Chancellor has eyes in every corridor. I should have known."

"You couldn't have. Not about Tobin." He studied her with an expression she could not quite name. "You could have frightened him. Most people in your position would have."

"Fear makes people lie. Kindness, more often, makes them honest." She glanced at the pool. "It's cheaper, too."

He laughed softly, and the sound echoed up into the dome like a bell. "You're remarkable. Do you know that?"

Luna looked down quickly. "We should look at the water."

The glow had not faded. It rose now from the pool's floor in a slow pulse, pale silver, matching the rhythm of the moonlight in the shaft above. They knelt together at the edge. Beneath the surface, the carved letters shimmered, and below them a smaller line had appeared that had not been there before.

"It's reacting," Kael whispered. "To what? The moon? You?"

"Us." She said it before she could stop herself. Then, more carefully: "The first riddle said *one who keeps without being bound.* The second said *bring the one who walks beside you.* Perhaps it recognizes something."

"Or perhaps it was waiting."

Luna leaned forward and read the new line aloud, her voice dropping to match the quiet of the chamber.

"*On the night of the full moon, the sleeper wakes. Only the free heart may open the door.*"

"The free heart," Kael repeated. "Not the loyal one. Not the obedient one."

"A strange condition for a palace guardian."

"Is it?" His eyes held hers. "A queen who loved the moon built a gift that no one could take by force or ambition. Only by choice. Only by someone who gives without being compelled."

Luna thought of her own life, the years of service, the careful independence, the vow she had built around herself like a wall. For the first time, the wall seemed less like protection and more like a question.

"When is the full moon?" she asked.

"Seven nights from now. The last night of the festival."

"Seven nights."

"It's enough time," Kael said, "if we're careful."

"And if the Chancellor isn't."

"He will be. But so will we." He rose and offered his hand. She took it, and he drew her to her feet. They stood close together in the pale silver light, neither of them stepping back.

---

"May I tell you something I haven't told anyone?" Kael asked.

Luna nodded.

"When I left the coast, I made myself a promise. I would find the Blessed Luna, bring it home, and not let myself want anything else until my people were fed." He looked at the water, the moonlit dome, the ancient carvings. "It was easy. I had no room for anything else."

"And now?"

"Now I've been in your palace for a single day." A rueful smile. "And I keep finding myself wanting things."

The cistern seemed very quiet. Luna's pulse was a soft, steady drum in her ears.

"What sort of things?" she asked.

"To know why you hide the page and the key and everything you love behind a locked door. To know whether you've ever been caught off guard." His voice lowered. "To know what it would feel like to be someone you trusted."

Luna felt the words move through her like warmth through cold hands. She was twenty-seven, the Keeper of Valtheris, and nine centuries of unbroken caution had never prepared her for a man who simply said what he felt.

"I'm not easy to know," she said.

"I'm a patient man."

"The palace is dangerous. The Chancellor is dangerous. And you aren't telling me everything about why the Queen sent you."

His expression shifted, just slightly. A shadow crossed it, there and gone. "No," he admitted. "Not everything. Not yet."

"Then why should I trust you?"

"You shouldn't. Not blindly." He took a half step closer, and his voice became very soft. "But I'd like to earn it."

For a long moment, neither of them spoke. Luna could feel the distance between them, small enough to cross in a breath. She saw his gaze drop briefly to her mouth, and saw him lift it again with visible effort.

She should step back. She knew she should.

Instead she reached up, slowly, and touched the side of his face. His skin was warm and slightly rough beneath her fingers. He went completely still, as if afraid that any movement might break the moment.

"Seven nights," she said quietly.

"Seven nights."

"Then let's begin by being honest about what we don't know."

"Luna." It was barely a whisper. "I'd like to start with this."

He kissed her.

It was gentle, unhurried, and utterly sure. Luna's eyes closed. The world narrowed to the warmth of his hand sliding to her waist, the quiet strength of his breath against hers, and the soft pulse of silver light moving across her closed lids like moonrise.

When they parted, they stayed close, foreheads nearly touching.

"That," Luna said unsteadily, "was not in the riddle."

His laugh was low and warm. "No. That was entirely my own idea."

---

They climbed out through the bronze door together, and Luna locked it behind them, her hands remarkably steady for someone whose entire world had just tilted.

At the end of the long passage, a light waited in the dark.

Teodric stood there with a lantern, his white beard silver in its glow. He looked at Luna, at Kael, and at the small space between them, and his weathered face did something rare. It softened.

"Keeper," he said gravely. "The Queen has asked for you. Both of you. Immediately."

Luna's stomach tightened. "At this hour?"

"At this hour." He hesitated. "She did not say why. But the Chancellor is with her. And Keeper..."

"Yes?"

"He carries a sealed writ. I saw the stamp." Teodric's voice dropped. "It names Master Dorsen."

Kael's hand, still lightly at Luna's back, went rigid.

She turned and looked at him, and for the first time since he had ridden into her courtyard, she saw real fear in his eyes.

---

*End of Chapter 4*