Chapter 2

I did not move out of the way.

Not because I couldn't. After a thousand years of living, there was not a soul in this palace fast enough to touch even the hem of my robe if I chose otherwise.

But I suddenly remembered the last time I had been struck. More than four hundred years ago.

A Lycan Queen, just as entitled, just as blind to her own smallness. She had stormed through my door the same way. Called me the same names.

She later spent an entire night on her knees outside my chamber, forehead to the ground, begging me to put in a good word for her with the King.

The slap landed.

My cheek burned.

I lay against the chaise and let it hurt, and I thought: four hundred years, and these people have learned absolutely nothing.

The Luna froze after hitting me.

"Why didn't you dodge?"

I looked at her. I didn't answer.

Something in my gaze unsettled her. Her humiliation curdled into rage, and she lunged forward, grabbing my collar.

"What kind of look is that? I hit you and you look at me like that?"

Elara was frantic on the other side of the room — trying to push past the much larger attendant, unable to break through, her voice cracking with tears.

"My Lady! You can't do this! You really cannot — she's not — she isn't—"

The attendant moved before Elara could finish. A single strike, precise and brutal. Elara crumpled to the floor, unconscious.

The fist I had tucked inside my sleeve tightened.

A thousand years. I had made my peace with loss long ago. The handmaidens in my life came and went like tides — each one a brief shimmer in the long river of time, and then gone.

But that did not mean I would stand by while they suffered for serving me.

The Luna noticed my reaction. Her eyes lit up as though she had found something delightful.

"Oh. That hurt you, didn't it?" She released my collar and strolled to where Elara lay, nudging the girl's face with the toe of her shoe. "She's just a handmaiden. Is she really worth your feelings?"

"Luna." My voice was even. "Does the Lycan King know what you're doing here today?"

She paused. "The King? He's in council with his advisors right now. No time to worry about something as small as you."

"And even if he knew — do you really think he'd pick a nameless, titleless thing like you over me?"

I said nothing.

She seemed to remember something then, and turned to her attendant with a curious frown. "Actually — how long has she been in this palace? What exactly is she?"

The attendant smiled nervously. "My Lady, I looked into it. She has no rank, no title. Everyone in the palace calls her the King's... outside mistress."

The Luna's face transformed.

She laughed until her sides shook. "A mistress? An outside mistress? All this time I thought she was someone, and she can't even claim the lowest rank among the mistress!"

I rose slowly to my feet.

She took one instinctive step back. "What do you think you're doing?"

"Only trying to tell you something, Luna," I said, unhurried. "You are eighteen. That is a young and beautiful age — a time when life has given you everything and asked nothing in return. You grew up cherished. Nothing has broken you yet."

Something almost like pride crossed her face. "Naturally. My father and brother gave me everything I ever wanted."

"Which is exactly why," I continued, "you do not yet know which words must never be spoken, which lines must never be crossed, and which people must never be provoked. You need know which is your power and rights boundry."

"Leave room with your respect, Luna. The bridges you burn today are the ones you may need to cross tomorrow."

She stared at me for a moment.

Then she laughed again, high and sharp. "You — a mistress without even a name to call your own — are lecturing me about power and rights?"