Luna Priestess

The Vow

It was Maren.

I knew it the second I saw the horse, before I even saw her face...that particular grey mare she’s ridden for as long as I’ve known her, and the way she sat it, spine straight, like slouching was a personal insult to the Goddess.

She swung down off it in the pack house courtyard without waiting for anyone to help her, which told me everything about her mood before she said a single word.

“Elder Maren.” Kaius had come out to meet her himself, which surprised me. “We weren’t told to expect a visit.”

“That’s because I didn’t announce one.” Her eyes found me over his shoulder, and something in my chest went cold. “Lyra. A word. Alone.”

Kaius glanced at me. I gave him a small nod, telling him it was fine, though I wasn’t sure it was.

Maren didn’t say anything else until we were in the small study off the main hall, door shut, just the two of us.

Then she rounded on me with a look I hadn’t seen since I was eleven years old and got caught sneaking into the archive after curfew.

“Show me your Sight,” she said.

“Maren...”

“Show me. Now.”

I didn’t argue. There’s no arguing with Maren when her voice goes flat like that.

I closed my eyes and reached, the same way I’d reached a hundred times over the last week, hoping against hope that this time it would answer.

Nothing.

I opened my eyes. She was watching my face, and whatever she saw there told her everything she needed to know before I even said the word.

“Nothing,” I admitted. “Still nothing.”

Her jaw tightened. “How long?”

“Since the summit. I told you that.”

“I mean, how long has it been getting worse?”

I didn’t answer right away, and that hesitation was answer enough.

“Lyra.”

“It’s not getting worse,” I said.

“It’s just...different. I’ve been feeling things I shouldn’t be able to feel. The Ember Moon. I thought maybe it was nerves at first, but it’s not nerves, Maren, I know what nerves feel like.”

Her face did something I’d never seen it do before. It went pale.

“You’re Hazing,” she said. Not a question.

“I think so. Yes.”

She turned away from me and pressed both hands flat against the desk, head bowed, like she needed a second to hold herself up.

I’d seen Maren furious. I’d seen her disappointed, stern, cold as the Temple stone in winter. I had never once seen her look like she needed to sit down.

“Maren, you’re scaring me.”

“Good,” she said, without turning around. “You should be scared. I have spent nineteen years trying to make sure you never had to be, and it appears I’ve run out of ways to manage that.”

“What does that mean?”

She turned back to face me, and for one moment, before she got her expression back under control, I saw something underneath the Elder, underneath the mentor, something that looked almost like grief.

“There was a Priestess,” she said slowly,

“before you were born. Her name doesn’t matter right now. What matters is that her Sight failed the same way yours has...no warning, no explanation, in front of witnesses she couldn’t control. The Council investigated. They found evidence she’d broken her Vow, and lied about it to protect herself.”

My stomach dropped. “What happened to her?”

Maren’s eyes didn’t leave mine. “They executed her. For treason against the Temple, and for endangering the Court through a broken oath. It was quiet. Most wolves alive today don’t even know it happened.”

I felt like the floor had tilted under me. “Maren, I haven’t broken my Vow. I haven’t touched anyone. I swear to you...”

“I believe you,” she said, and the relief that went through me lasted exactly as long as it took her to finish the sentence.

“For now. But belief isn’t going to save you if the rest of the Council sees what I’m seeing. A Priestess who can’t hold her Sight. A Priestess who Hazes like an ordinary wolf. A Priestess whose scent has started changing around a specific Alpha.” Her eyes sharpened.

“Yes. I know about that too. Word travels faster than you’d like, even from Ashen territory.”

“It’s not what it looks like.”

“I don’t care what it looks like or what it is. I care about keeping you alive long enough to figure out which one it actually is.” She reached out and gripped my shoulders, hard, the way she used to when I was small and needed shaking out of a tantrum.

“You listen to me. From this moment forward, you do not touch that man again. Not his hand, not his shoulder, nothing. You do not let yourself be alone with him. And you pray, harder than you have ever prayed in your life, that whatever is happening to you resolves itself before the Council convenes to ask why their new High Priestess can’t perform a border blessing without collapsing.”

“And if it doesn’t resolve itself?”

Maren’s hands tightened on my shoulders.

“Then I will do everything in my power to protect you,” she said.

“But I need you to understand something, Lyra, because I have never lied to you and I’m not going to start now.”

“What?”

“There are members of this Council,” she said quietly,

“who would rather see you dead than see the law broken. They believe an example was made once before, and that it worked. They believe it should work again if it needs to.”

I couldn’t speak. I just stood there, her hands still gripping my shoulders, the fire unlit in the grate behind her, and understood for the first time exactly how much danger I was actually standing in.

“I don’t want that to happen to you,” Maren said, softer now, the sternness cracking just slightly at the edges.

“I have watched you grow up since you were a baby left at our gates with nothing but a scrap of cloth to your name. I am not going to lose you to the same law that took her.”

“Took who?” I asked. “Maren, whose name are you not telling me?”

Something shuttered behind her eyes, fast, like a door slamming.

“That,” she said, “is a conversation for another day. Right now, I need you to promise me you’ll stay away from him.”

I opened my mouth to promise.

What came out instead was silence, because some traitor part of me already knew I couldn’t keep it, and Maren’s face, watching me not answer, told me she knew it too.