Chapter 5: Three Rings of Keys
Nessa's POV
The council chamber sat on the north end of the main house, and it was the only room in the entire estate without windows. The old rule, so they said, was that no one should be able to see the moon during deliberations, lest someone invoke the Moon Goddess to win an argument. I had never liked this room. It was too quiet — quiet enough that you could hear yourself swallow.
Seven elders arranged themselves in a half-circle. Rune sat at the center, with Bram standing behind him. Cassia was there too, positioned along the side wall, close to her father — Elder Wren, the most influential voice on the council, and the man who had opened every meeting for the past five years with some variation of our Luna's health has not been well.
I walked to the center of the room and stopped. No one offered me a chair. That was the old rule: the one who stands is the one being deliberated upon.
"Luna." Elder Wren spoke first, folding his hands on the table. "Next month is the Moon Rite. There is much to prepare."
"Yes."
"You have managed these preparations every year." He exhaled — a long, soft breath, the kind that was designed to sound like concern. "But your health, Luna. We worry."
I gave him a silent round of applause inside my head. First, state the facts. Second, express sympathy. Third, deliver the blade.
"So we've discussed the matter," he continued, "and we feel it would be best if Cassia took temporary custody of the three rings of keys this month — the main house, the granary, and the infirmary. You should rest. Focus on recovering your strength."
There it was.
The chamber held its silence for two full seconds. I looked down at my own waist. Three rings of keys. Maeve had walked me through each one when I first took them over, five years ago — which key opened the outer lock of the granary, which one opened the cabinet in the infirmary where the wolfsbane was stored, which one controlled the sluice gate beneath the cellar. Nineteen keys for the main house. Six for the granary. Four for the infirmary. Twenty-nine in total, and I knew every single one of them, because for five years, managing these keys had been the only thing anyone allowed me to do.
I raised my head. "Temporarily," I said. "How long is temporarily?"
Something shifted in the air of the chamber — not colder, but tighter, the way a tablecloth feels when someone gives it a sudden tug from one end. I knew I shouldn't have asked. A Luna did not cross-examine the council, and certainly not a Luna in my position. But I wanted to know. I genuinely, simply wanted to know. I was done accepting don't worry about it as an answer.
Elder Wren's expression softened into something that was almost a smile. "Well, now, that depends on —"
"Elder Wren." I kept my voice even. "I'm not angry. I would simply like to know when I'll be getting the keys back."
I surprised myself with how steady I sounded. Three days ago, my hands would have been shaking by now.
No one answered. Five of the seven elders looked away. Behind Rune, Bram dropped his chin toward his chest, his shoulders moving slightly — I knew he was laughing.
Then Cassia rose from her seat. Her voice came out soft and trembling, and the redness reached her eyes with remarkable speed. "Luna, perhaps we should just forget the whole thing. I've only just come back and I'm already causing trouble — I never should have agreed to this." She turned to Rune, and her voice shifted into something quieter, more direct. "Rune, I want nothing to do with it. Nothing at all."
It was beautifully done. I had watched this exact maneuver performed dozens of times over the past five years, only by different people, and only now — watching someone else execute it — did I finally understand its architecture. She wasn't speaking to the council at all. She was speaking to Rune, and what she was saying was not I don't want this. What she was saying was: choose.
Rune answered her, as she knew he would.
"One month," he said, and turned to look at me, his tone carrying the same measured gentleness it always did. "Nessa. Just this month. Once the Moon Rite is over, I'll have the keys returned to your room."
I looked at him. I thought about asking when the last time was that he'd said just this month. I thought about asking whether he remembered telling me, five years ago, that things would only be like this for now — and how for now had quietly become forever. I said neither of those things.
Instead, I reached down and unclipped the three rings from my belt, one by one. The iron bands knocked against each other as I lifted them free, filling the windowless room with a bright, repeating sound that felt much louder than it had any right to be. I set all three rings on the table at the center of the room.
"The innermost cabinet in the infirmary," I said. "The lock cylinder is loose. You have to press the key slightly to the left before it will turn." I looked at Cassia, who had not yet sat back down. "And the west door of the granary — the wood swells in the rain. Don't force it or the key will snap off inside the mechanism."
I stopped there. "That's everything."
She blinked, then caught up to the moment. "…Thank you, Luna."
I turned and walked out.
Behind me, as I crossed the threshold, I heard Bram murmur something low to someone nearby, and whoever it was laughed. I did not turn around. I had made a deliberate habit of not turning around — not because I didn't care, but because my memory was too good. Every unkind word spoken within my hearing over the past five years had stayed with me, preserved and intact, and so I had learned to stop collecting new ones. Not indifference. Conservation.
The whole walk back through the house, I was quietly taking stock of what remained.
The keys were gone. The position was gone. The Moon Rite no longer required me. The mind-link had never existed for me in the first place. The mate bond would never come.
When I reached the end of that list, I found two things still standing.
My name.
And the reply letter that was already written and sealed.
That was enough. I decided, somewhere between the council chamber and the kitchen corridor, that it was enough.
The kitchen was the one room in the estate I had always preferred. It was loud and warm and full of the kind of movement that didn't require anything from you — steam rising in columns, fire crackling low in the grates, the smell of something simmering beneath whatever little my senses could still detect. Maeve was at the stove, shelling beans with her fingertips. Her eyesight had nearly failed her completely, but she shelled by touch alone, and every bean came out cleaner than anyone else's.
I sat down beside her. Neither of us spoke for a long while. Then she slid a cloth-wrapped parcel across the worktable toward me without a word.
I folded back one corner. A handwritten manuscript, thicker than the copy I kept in my room, the paper older and worn soft at the edges. Old Lunar script — and an early edition at that.
"Maeve —"
"My eyes are done," she said. "It'll just rot if it sits any longer."
I pressed my hand flat over the cloth. Then she said, without preamble, "My child" — and I looked up. Her hands had gone still over the bowl of beans.
"That night," she said. "What I remember is not what they say happened."
Every sound in the kitchen continued — the popping of the firewood, the knock of a pot lid, voices calling from outside the door — but I could not hear any of it. My mouth opened. The sentence had lived in my throat for five years, and I could feel it there, just at the surface: Maeve, the truth is that I was the one who —
"I know," I said instead.
She resumed shelling. "I have no proof. An old woman's memory counts for nothing in that chamber."
"I know."
"So I won't speak of it." She paused. "And neither should you. Not now. Now it would only make things harder."
I nodded. She tipped the last of the beans into the bowl, brushed her palms together, and then said something I was not prepared for.
"Child. If you leave one day."
My chest dropped.
"Don't say goodbye to me," she said. She kept her head bowed, as though the words had come from somewhere else entirely. "Because if you do, I'll try to stop you. That's always been my worst quality."
I sat there, and my eyes burned in a way I had not felt in five years — not in the cellar, not in the council chamber, not when I had watched Cassia settle into my chair. But in a kitchen, over one quiet sentence, I nearly came apart.
I stood and put my arms around her. Two seconds, and then I let go.
"What was that for," she said, already pushing me away.
"Nothing."
I carried the manuscript back to my room. The moment I opened the door, I knew someone had been inside — not because anything was disturbed, but because everything was too orderly. The top drawer of my vanity table, which I had kept pulled open two finger-widths for five years because the wood was warped and closing it fully made a sound loud enough to wake the next room — was shut completely.
I closed the door behind me. I walked to the vanity and pulled the drawer open.
Everything was there. Nothing appeared to be missing.
I reached to the very back and swept my hand along the bottom.
The letter from Silverhollow was gone.
