Chapter 72. She Asked Millie Not to Hate the Moon, and Then She Closed Her Eyes

Chapter 72: 72. She Asked Millie Not to Hate the Moon, and Then She Closed Her Eyes

Sylvara ripped one of the threads free, and I tore myself off the floor, and we hit Aurelith together.

I got my shoulder into her gut. Sylvara’s light cracked across her face like a whip.

For one second, the lionkin staggered, her smile slipping, and we both lunged through the gap.

But still...

We were one breath too late.

Bonette fell.

She went down slowly, like a leaf, into Millie’s arms. Millie caught her and sank to her knees on the glowing floor with the little woman cradled across her lap.

The long clear blade was still in Bonette’s chest. A dark stain spread across the white of her robe.

I reached them half a second later. I fell on my knees beside them, and Sylvara dropped down on Bonette’s other side, her hands already glowing, and her face tight with panic.

She pressed her palms against the wound. Silver light flowed out of her fingers and poured into the little woman’s chest.

But... nothing happened.

She tried again. And again.

The light sputtered and died.

A thin, black thread of frost crept out from the wound where the blade had gone in, spreading across the white cloth, and I felt something cold go through me.

"It is... moonglass," Sylvara whispered. "It closes the channels."

"I cannot..." She stopped.

Tears were running down her face. "Leon, I cannot...! I am... sorry..."

Bonette coughed. I can see blood stained her lip.

She turned her head very slowly toward Millie, and she smiled.

It was a plain, tired, and loving smile... It was the smile of a woman who had been awake for twenty years.

"Highness," she whispered.

"Don’t," Millie sobbed. "Don’t talk... Please! You have to stay!"

"Hush, now." Bonette lifted a hand that trembled.

She touched Millie’s cheek, very lightly, as if she were afraid of leaving a mark. "I am... so proud of you."

"Do you know that...? I have been proud of you since the day you were born."

"Please... don’t leave me!"

"I am not leaving... I will never leave... and I will be in every moonrise." She coughed again. "But you... must promise me... something."

"Anything...! Anything all, Bonette...! But please... stay for a little longer with us...!"

"Do not look... at the moon as a curse... It is not a curse..."

"It is only... your mother’s light." Her breath hitched. "She... would want you to be happy..."

"And you have someone... who holds your hand..."

Her eyes drifted toward me. Slowly, with a visible effort, she focused on my face.

And she smiled again... faintly and tiredly.

"You... promised," she said.

I couldn’t speak... My throat had closed shut, but thankfully... I managed a nod.

"I... remember," I whispered.

My voice cracked in half. "I remember..."

I reached out. I took Millie’s free hand, the one that wasn’t holding Bonette, and I held it in mine.

I didn’t grip it... I laid it open in my palm, the way I had a hundred times, and I held it there, steady and warm.

Bonette’s eyes closed. And her smile... stayed.

A thin silver thread rose from her chest, shining like a spider’s web in the moonlight. It trembled, curled in the air, and drifted slowly across the gap between them.

It touched Millie’s heart and sank into it and... was gone.

Bonette’s hand fell from Millie’s cheek.

Nobody said a word.

The silence went on so long that I thought the whole world might have stopped.

I heard Sylvara crying, very quietly. I heard a drip somewhere, a slow and steady sound... And I heard my own heartbeat, which seemed impossibly loud.

I kept Millie’s hand in mine. And I didn’t even dare to let go.

And then... I heard a noise... It started as a hum.

At first, I thought it was inside my head, like the ringing after a loud noise. Then I realized it was coming from the room.

The glass walls were vibrating... and the pool had begun to ripple. The hum grew into a drone, and the drone into a roar, and a wind rose from nowhere... whipping Millie’s white hair around her face.

She had stopped crying.

I looked up at her. She was staring straight ahead with her mouth slightly open, and her face was blank.

Her eyes, her pale pink eyes... had begun to glow.

They brightened and whitened, going from rose to silver to a color I had no name for... with a pure, cold, brilliant shine, like the moon seen through ice.

She screamed.

"AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!"

It wasn’t a scream of pain... It was the sound of something far too big trying to get out of something very small.

It tore out of her throat in a long, rising cry, and silver light poured from her mouth and eyes and fingertips, and her body arched backward in my grip.

"RAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!"

Ding!

[Target Millie: Hidden Trait activating.]

[Host: Do not move.]

The Seal of Shadow shattered... I felt it go.

It was a silent crack, like a pane of glass splitting, and the whole room seemed to flinch. A wave of cold air rolled out from her body.

In the same instant, a second note sounded under the first, deeper and slower, and I realized that the Seal of Moon had begun to open.

She’d chosen... In the last minute of Bonette’s life, with a dying woman in her arms, Millie had decided what she would protect with everything she had.

Me. Elsbeth. Velora.

Every living soul left in that keep, and even the ones who weren’t... It wasn’t a vow.

It wasn’t a duty, but... it was a choice, made in grief, and the moon had heard it.

Light exploded through the hall.

It rolled out from Millie in a shining wave, a tsunami of pale silver fire. And it hit the Chosen first.

The three golden-armored guards were swatted off their feet like dolls and slammed into the far wall.

A chain-mage standing at the door crumpled. Crystals cracked, and I saw thin gold lines run through the Oathglass at their throats.

Aurelith went down on one knee with a cry, clutching her halberd, her crystal glowing and flickering and straining against the pressure.

Cassian was driven backward ten feet. The hem of his white coat caught fire.

But in the center of his chest... under the coat, a great jewel the size of a fist blazed up in brilliant gold, and a glittering shell of light sprang up around him.

It held...

It cracked, and it held.

’Throne Glass,’ I thought, with sudden certainty.

And me?

I stayed exactly where I was, on my knees on the glass floor... with Millie’s cold hand lying open in my palm.

The storm raged around us. White wind roared.

Pillars of silver light lashed the ceiling. And in the center of it all, a small circle of perfect stillness surrounded the two of us, a pocket of calm in the heart of the hurricane.

The wind curled around me and slid away... The light flowed past me like a river around a stone, and I had no idea why.

I knew only that a dead queen had told her daughter... twenty years ago that someone would come with an open hand.

And... that the moon had been asked.

I stayed kneeling, and I did not move.

Behind me, I heard Sylvara drag herself upright, her breath ragged. I felt her gaze on the back of my neck.

She was looking at me, then at Millie, then at me again, and I could feel her mind racing.

I looked at the corner of my vision.

[Lust Energy: 38/100]

My hands were trembling, worse than ever... My vision swam.

I was burning through whatever I had left... just by kneeling there. But the system had said ’do not move,’ and for once... I wasn’t going to argue.

Millie didn’t look at me.

She had her head thrown back, and her eyes were blazing, and a thin sheet of silver flame rolled off her shoulders like a cloak.

’Millie...’