Chapter 362

She sat. In the chair across from my desk, with the posture of someone who was going to conduct herself with dignity regardless of the indignity of the past thirty seconds if it killed her.

4

I reached into the drawer on the left side of my desk and produced a single white sheet of paper, which I slid across the desk toward her with the smooth efficiency of someone conducting a routine administrative exchange.

Sera looked at it.

The document was simple. Clean font, centred text, one sentence that occupied the middle of the page with the confident spaciousness of something that knew it deserved the room it was taking up:

*Luna Aria is better than Sera.*

Below it: *Please read aloud, to the Luna’s satisfaction, before proceeding with your request.*

Celine made a sound from the window area. She converted it, impressively quickly, into something that could be interpreted as a small cough. She was staring at something outside with the intensity of a woman whose continued employment in this household depended on her maintaining composure for approximately another ninety seconds.

I waited.

Sera looked at the paper. Looked at me. Looked at the paper again.

1

The calculation was happening again. I could see it – the same process as the curtsey, working through the available options and arriving at the same conclusion with the same grim inevitability. She needed authorization for her treatment, She needed it from me. The medical situation was not optional and wasn’t improving. Ivory had made it comprehensively clear that the authorization process existed and would be followed.

Sera picked up the paper.

She set it back down.

Picked it up again.

“Luna Aria,” she said, in a voice that was doing something extraordinary in terms of controlled loathing, “is better than Sera.”

“To my satisfaction,” I said, pleasantly.

A pause that lasted one full second during which Celine may have briefly left her body.

“Luna Aria is better than Sera,” Sera repeated, slightly louder and with slightly less of the undercurrent of imagining my death, which I chose to count as improvement.

“Thank you,” I said. “You can put that down.”

Sera put the paper down with a specific placement that communicated a great many things she wasn’t saying aloud.

I returned to my notes. Turned a page. Made a notation about something in the inspection documentation that I’d been meaning to follow up on. Let the silence in the room accumulate for a moment in the natural way of someone who was doing several things and would get to the next one in the appropriate order.

From the window area, I could feel Celine vibrating.

I read another half page of inspection notes. Made another notation. Turned to the coalition correspondence and reviewed the first letter in the stack with appropriate attention.

Sera was sitting across from me. I was aware of this in the peripheral way.

I turned to the second coalition letter.

Five minutes passed. It might have been six.

“I’m here,” Sera said, “regarding the authorization for my medical treatment.”

“Mmm,” I said, not looking up from the coalition correspondence.

Another thirty seconds.

“The authorization,” Sera said. “For Ivory’s treatment. Which requires your approval.”

“I heard you,” I said, still reading.

I finished the coalition letter. Set it aside. Picked up the next inspection report and reviewed the first three items. Made a note. Considered the fourth item. Made another note.

I looked up.

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12:16 Thu, Mar 26

Chapter 362

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+20 Free Coins.

Sera was looking at me with the expression of someone who had been practicing patience for the past ten minutes and had used most of their reserves doing the curtsey and the paper.

I looked at her for a moment with the measured attention of someone who had arrived at a conclusion through careful review.

“No,” I said.

Sera stared at me. “No?”

“The request is denied,” I said.

“On what grounds,” she said, and her voice was doing the controlled thing again, the effort of it visible in her jaw.

I set down my pen. “I don’t like the attitude,” I said. “And I feel-” I paused, appearing to search for the word, “—unsafe.”

“Unsafe,” Sera repeated.

“It’s a consideration,” I said. “As Luna, my sense of safety in my own territory when conducting official business is a legitimate factor in administrative decisions.”

“That’s not a legitimate basis for—”

“Additionally,” I said, “I want to be transparent with you about something.” I folded my hands on the desk. “The lunar power that I developed during the Hunt – the kind that collected four fragments, as I’m sure you’re aware – is still in the early integration stage. Which means that certain responses are more reflex than conscious. Startled reactions, emotional escalation triggers, that sort of thing.” I looked at her with genuine pleasantness. “I would hate for something to go wrong. I would hate to find myself with an unexpected discharge and you with a gaping hole in your chest. That would be a terrible outcome for everyone.”

Sera looked at my hands. At my eyes, which were probably doing the thing they did when the power was close to the surface. At the desk between us, which was a modest amount of furniture to put between yourself and someone describing involuntary lunar energy discharges.

She took a breath.

And then she leaned forward.

The composure shifted into something colder, more calculated, the specific gear change of someone who had decided that the pleasant approach had failed and the weapon approach

was next.

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12:17 Thu, Mar 26

Chapter 362

27

+20 Free Coins

“I think,” she said, “that you should know something. About the people you’re trusting here.”

I waited.

“Ivory,” she said. “The healer you’re apparently so comfortable with. The one giving you training tips and making rules for your benefit.” She held my gaze with the directness of someone placing a weapon on the table between you so you can both see it clearly. “Did you know she arranged your entire presence here? That before you came to Shadowmere, before any of this, she wrote to my mother proposing you as the candidate to break Kael’s curse? That she identified your bloodline and facilitated your removal from Damon’s pack and engineered the bond that brought you here?”

I looked at her.