Page 37 of Of Iron and Moonlight

“Tonight, by Selvarath’s light, we are made strong. By Selvara’s gift, we endure.” Oorlon gestured toward the temple doors. “And by Her choosing, one among us has proven most favored of her blood.”

Gorien emerged from the threshold, flanked by priestesses in deep violet robes. His silver-white hair fell to his shoulders, smooth as poured metal. He did not look toward Oorlon or smile. He approached the altar, amethyst eyes clear and sedate.

As the priestesses moved about, arranging vessels and sprinkling oils, Oorlon spoke again. “In this choosing lies our continuance. And in continuance, our dominion.” His attention slid directly to Kora, and his smile sharpened. “Watch well.”

Kora shivered as bells began to chime, each note chasing the last until the garden sang with the sound, and from the temple’s heart, Astriyed appeared at last. It was as though the temple itself had shaped her from diamonds. Gems dusted her long white hair, her throat, her limbs, until she seemed less adorned than forged from light. Her gown, white and perilously sheer, trailed behind her like unraveling constellations. Power rippled in her wake, ice crystals blooming in delicate patterns where her bare feet touched stone.

The sight alone was enough to steal Kora’s breath. But then she saw the amulet. At the center of Astriyed’s throat hung a violet stone set in a shallow oval of silver, its rim bisected by a single vertical score, the only drop of color she wore save for her amethyst eyes.

Kora’s hand moved instinctively to its green twin beneath her gown. Her fingers found its raised edge. It seemed to pulse with the bells and that subtle hum in the air.

The priestesses raised their hands, beginning a chant in thin, cutting harmony. At once, the torches dimmed, and Selvarath’s glow became the only light that mattered. The diamonds along the High Priestess’s body caught it and transformed it into a living garment as she approached the altar and pressed her palms to the marble. One priestess knelt, adjusting the fall of the gown. Another traced a line of oil down Astriyed’s spine.

Only when Gorien stepped forward to stand behind Astriyed did Kora understand what was to occur. Every muscle in her body went taut.

“The ritual is…” Kora turned toward the baron. “Public?”

Pietre inclined his head, expression unreadable. “So there can be no question that the rite is fulfilled,” he said quietly, “and no doubt as to who the child’s father will be.”

The chant climbed higher, and the audience joined in.

Gorien’s hand settled at the back of Astriyed’s neck, reaching slightly around her throat. The other closed at the curve of her hip. He began to move.

Heat rushed to Kora’s face. Before her was a body offered in covenant to something she neither understood nor could bring herself to accept. She could hardly fathom the cruelty of demanding such a display of any female, no matter how sacred the pretense. It was not the intimacy that struck her most, but the detached acceptance with which Astriyed had approached the horror of it.

Her thoughts betrayed her, drifting to her own unconsummated marriage: the distance the duke refused to bridge, the echo of his earlier rebuke. By retreating into silence and invisibility, was this ceremony not a distorted mirror of what her own marriage threatened to become?

A brittle laugh caught in her throat. The press of bodies, the constriction of her gown, the weight of what she was witnessing—too much, and too near to him. If she could not stop what was unfolding, she would not stand to witness it.

Kora turned sharply to leave and collided with the duke’s chest, unaware he had moved behind her. His hands came lightly to her arms, steadying her as his grey eyes met hers, one dark brow lifting in silent caution. Or perhaps, concern.

It should have comforted her. Instead, the touch felt indistinguishable from Gorien’s—not in intent, but in expectation—and the cold chasm between them suddenly became unbearable. She tore herself free and fled into the quieter dark of the garden paths, where the chanting dimmed behind her and the night swallowed her whole.

Chapter 20

Gavriel

In a realm ruled by a king so volatile that even the air could not be trusted from one breath to the next, Gavriel had learned he could be certain of only two things.

The first was that the moons-cursed frost coating every surface of Norrelia would never truly melt. It clung as stubbornly at midday in the height of summer as in the dead of winter, cold drawn upward from the depths of Oraith by concentrated use of Selvara’s magic, then tempered by enchantments before it could fully exhale.

The second was that if he ever stopped performing, he would die.

Pietre’s title afforded him vast private quarters, a featherbed softer than any he had known, and permission to walk much of the castle. But only so long as Oorlon remained enthralled by the baron. Or rather, so long as Gavriel could continue to amuse.

And so, for two years, he had lived here. In a kingdom where the sun felt caged, and Gavriel caged with it. Gilded, yet bound all the same, in sorrowful companionship.

Days bled into nights and nights into days, each moment a negotiation between spectacle and survival, shadowed by the knowledge that any act might be his last. The most he dared hope for was another morning, because escape was not a possibility he allowed himself to entertain.

Until Lemierre arrived, and, for reasons Gavriel could not fathom, did not immediately hurl a proverbial tomato at his stage. This new hope was only a flicker, a spark in deep ash, but enough to make his chest ache with the memory of freedom.

It was the only thought on his mind as he waited for the ceremony to conclude. A chance to approach the duke carefully, inquire after his audience with Oorlon, and learn whether there might be a road, however turbulent, out of this moonsforsaken castle.

But then Gavriel saw the duchess, her face drained of color as the final ritual of Selvara’s festival unfolded. He watched innocence fall away, replaced by recognition of cruelty. She looked too young, too slight, to carry such knowledge.

So he faltered. His careful resolve, his singular focus on news of his future tilted. And for the first time in too long, survival did not feel like the only performance that mattered.

“I would be happy to accompany the duchess,” Gavriel offered, keeping his tone light.