BLESSED LUNA RISING

Blessed Luna chapter 3

# Blessed Luna Rising

**By Melisa Warui**

## Chapter 3: The Dance Beneath the Lanterns

The Moon Gate ceremony took an hour, and Luna did not hear a word of it.

She stood on the high stair in her ceremonial robes, white silk edged in silver thread, the keys polished and bright at her hip. Queen Isendra's herald read the ancient blessing. The crowd answered in one voice. Thousands of lanterns rose from the courtyard into the afternoon sky like a slow tide of stars.

Luna performed every gesture perfectly. She had done it in her sleep for weeks. But her mind kept circling back to a grey velvet sleeve and a soft voice saying, *Some things are best left sleeping.*

And to a man by the fountain, watching her across the crowd.

When the last lantern had floated beyond the towers, the festival truly began. Musicians struck up a lively air. Wine flowed. Nobles drifted toward the long tables laid beneath the jasmine, and the palace, for one evening, forgot its dignity.

Luna slipped away at the first chance.

---

She found Kael in the Hall of Echoes, a long gallery of pale marble where every footstep rang back a half-second late. He stood before a mural of the founding queen, a tall woman in a flowing gown, one hand raised toward a painted moon.

"She's looking at something," he said without turning. "Not the moon. Past it."

"Or at the person painting her."

"Then he loved her." Kael glanced back, and the corner of his mouth lifted. "Look at the detail in her hands."

Luna came to stand beside him. The painter had rendered the queen's fingers with extraordinary care, each knuckle, each ring. In her palm, almost hidden in the folds of her sleeve, lay a tiny key.

"I've walked past this mural every day for nine years," Luna said slowly.

"Most people look at faces. Scholars look at hands." He said it lightly, but his eyes found hers. "Though I'll admit I've been guilty of looking at faces lately."

Heat rose in her cheeks. Luna turned quickly back to the mural, grateful for the dim light.

"A key," she said. "*For one who keeps without being bound.* A Keeper's key."

"Is there a lock in the palace that matches?"

"There are four hundred and six locks in Valtheris." She almost smiled. "But the queen's key would have been the oldest design. Before the guild standardized the patterns. There's only one chamber that still uses that style."

"Where?"

Luna hesitated. "The Cistern of Silence. It's been sealed for two hundred years."

Kael's eyes lit. "Water. Dark. Connected to the moon through the tides of the old well."

"You're quick."

"I'm hopeful. It's different." He turned fully toward her. "Will you take me?"

"Tonight is the festival. Half the palace is awake."

"Then no one will notice two people missing."

It was foolish. It was reckless. It was exactly the kind of decision a careful Keeper did not make.

"Meet me at the Cloister Gate at the ninth bell," she said. "And Kael. Wear something dark."

---

First, though, there was the dance.

It was tradition. On the first night of the Rising Moon, the Keeper opened the courtyard dance with the Queen's chosen partner, and Luna had dreaded it for weeks. The previous Keeper, being seventy, had opened it with a bow and a polite shuffle. Luna had no such luck.

The Queen, resplendent in sapphire, beckoned her forward. "Keeper. Tonight I believe our guest from the north should have the honor."

A murmur ran through the crowd. Luna's eyes flew to Kael, who stood a few paces away looking as startled as she felt. Across the courtyard, Chancellor Voren watched with a thin, unreadable smile.

*She's testing us,* Luna thought. *Or protecting us. Or both.*

Kael stepped forward and bowed. "Keeper. If you'll allow it."

She gave him her hand.

The music began, a slow, swaying melody of harp and low drums. Kael's palm settled at the small of her back, light and respectful, and the silk of her gown seemed suddenly too thin. He led her into the first turn with the quiet confidence of a man who had learned to dance in crowded harbor taverns rather than ballrooms. It was not perfect. It was better. It felt real.

"You've done this before," she murmured.

"Never with anyone who looked like they'd rather be counting locks."

"I am counting locks."

"How many?"

"Four hundred and six." The lantern light slid across his face. "Though I've lost track of the number."

His hand tightened very slightly. "Good."

They moved together beneath the floating lanterns, and for a few minutes the court vanished. There was only the music, the warmth of his hand at her back, the steady rhythm of his breathing, the way he looked at her as though she were the only fixed point in a spinning world. Luna had been admired before. She had been desired, once or twice, from a careful distance. But no one had ever looked at her like this, with such complete attention, as if he were memorizing her.

"Luna," Kael said quietly, as the dance drew to its close. "Whatever we find tonight, or don't find, I want you to know something."

"What?"

"This isn't only about the legend anymore."

The final chord faded. The courtyard applauded. Luna stood very still in the circle of his arm, her heart pounding, and understood with sudden clarity that she was in serious trouble.

She stepped back and curtsied, perfectly composed. "Master Dorsen. A pleasure."

But her hand trembled as she let go of his.

---

At the ninth bell, the Cloister Gate stood silent and shadowed. Luna waited in a dark cloak, a small lantern shuttered at her side.

Kael arrived without a sound, wearing black from collar to boot. He looked like part of the night itself, and for a moment Luna forgot to speak.

"Is something wrong?" he asked.

"No." She cleared her throat. "This way. Stay close, and stay quiet."

The route to the Cistern of Silence ran through servants' passages and forgotten corridors, places only the Keeper knew. Luna led, and Kael followed, and the narrow stairs forced them close together. Once, when a loose stone turned under her foot, his hand caught her elbow and steadied her. He let go at once. She felt the place where his fingers had been for the next fifty steps.

At the end of a long, curving passage, a heavy door of green-stained bronze waited in the dark. Luna lifted her lantern.

"The Cistern of Silence," she whispered. "Sealed by order of Queen Marveth, two hundred years ago. No one has opened it since."

The lock was ancient, shaped like a crescent moon. Luna studied it. Then, slowly, she drew from beneath her collar a chain she had worn for nine years, from which hung a small, dull key she had never known the purpose of. Her mentor, the old Keeper, had pressed it into her hand on his deathbed. *Keep it close,* he had said. *You'll know when.*

She fitted it into the lock, and it turned.

Kael exhaled behind her, a sound almost like a prayer.

The door swung inward on cold, still air.

---

The cistern was vast.

A great domed cavern opened before them, its walls lined with pale stone, and in its center lay a perfectly circular pool of black water, so still it looked like glass. High above, a single narrow shaft pierced the dome. Through it, the moon shone down in one silver column, striking the pool dead center.

Luna's breath left her.

"*Where the moon sleeps,*" Kael whispered.

They descended the wide steps to the water's edge. The silver light turned their faces pale and strange. Luna knelt and touched the surface, and ripples spread outward in perfect rings. Beneath the water, barely visible, something gleamed.

"There's an inscription," she said. "On the floor of the pool."

Kael crouched beside her. "Can you read it?"

She leaned closer, shading her eyes. The letters were old, formal, and impossibly delicate. Slowly, she read aloud:

"*The moon does not give to the hand that grasps. She gives to the heart that keeps. Return when the moon is full, and bring the one who walks beside you.*"

Silence settled over the cistern.

Luna looked up. Kael was already looking at her, close enough that she could see the silver reflected in his eyes.

"*The one who walks beside you,*" he repeated softly.

"It may only mean a companion," she said, too quickly.

"It may."

"It may mean a scholar. Or a guard."

"It may." He did not look away. "But I find I don't want it to."

Luna's heart stuttered. She should step back. She should stand, brush off her cloak, and remind them both of the dangers of the hour and the palace and the Queen's letter.

She did not move.

Then, far above them, a stone scraped.

Both of them froze. A faint sound drifted down from the passage, the soft, careful tread of someone trying very hard not to be heard.

Luna's hand shot to her lantern and snapped the shutter closed. Darkness swallowed the cistern, except for the single silver column of moonlight and the pale face of the man beside her.

"We weren't followed," she breathed. "I checked every corridor."

"Then someone was already waiting." Kael's voice was a low, steady thread in the dark. His hand found hers and closed around it. "Luna. Whoever that is, they know we're here."

Footsteps moved closer.

And in the black, still water, something beneath the inscription began, very softly, to glow.

---

*End of Chapter 3*