The courtyard reeked of smoke and fear. The rogues had come in silence, shadows slipping along the hedges, blades catching glints of torchlight. Their leader had been clever, striking at the very moment the crowd's eyes were blinded by devotion. But he had underestimated one thing—Liora.
She had not hesitated when the first scream broke the air. Her dagger had leapt into her hand as if it had waited its whole life for this moment. She vaulted from the wall, her cloak snapping like wings, and landed hard among the intruders.
The first rogue lunged. She caught his wrist, twisted, and drove her blade across his throat. Warm spray coated her arm, but she did not falter. A second came from the left—broad shoulders, teeth bared. She ducked low, swept his legs, and rammed the point of her dagger into his ribs. He fell choking, blood bubbling between his lips.
The drums had stopped. The chants had died. All eyes turned, but not in worship this time. They turned because they saw a storm moving through flesh and steel.
Liora's hair clung to her face, slick with sweat and the stench of iron. A third rogue lunged with an axe, but she was faster. She spun, caught him at the knee, then the throat, slicing twice in one fluid motion. The man crumpled before he could cry out.
By the time she faced the last of them, their leader, a man with scars carved like rivers into his cheeks. The courtyard was already painted in red. His eyes widened when he saw his men sprawled dead at her feet.
"You…" he spat, but his words ended in a grunt as Liora's dagger flew. It sank into his chest, right between his collarbones. He stumbled, wheezing, and collapsed beside the offerings he had come to steal.
Silence followed. Silence heavy as the grave.
Liora stood amid corpses, her chest heaving, her blade dripping. She had saved them—every child, every elder, every priest, every worshipper gathered in the courtyard. Without her, the rogues would have carved the stronghold into ruin.
For a heartbeat, she let herself believe they would see her now.
But the silence cracked, not with her name on their lips, not with gratitude but with a single cry:
"Vanya! Where is the Luna?"
The crowd surged, not toward the woman standing among bodies, but toward the raised stone where Vanya stood, untouched. Priests scrambled to her side, mothers pressed forward, men formed shields around her with their bodies.
"She is safe!" one of the guards shouted.
"Praise the Moon, she is safe!" echoed another.
The people wept, laughed, and fell to their knees not for Liora, but for Vanya.
Liora staggered back, her bloodstained dagger suddenly heavy. Her arms ached, her chest felt tight, but not from the fight. She had imagined…naïvely, foolishly…that saving their lives might carve her name into their memory again. Instead, they brushed past her as if she were smoke, a necessary shadow that had already outlived its use.
She was invisible. Again.
Her throat burned. She wanted to shout, It was me! I saved you! But the words never left her lips. To beg for recognition would only make her smaller. And so she stood there, surrounded by the dead she had slain, while the living rushed past her to worship the one who had lifted no blade.
Vanya. Always Vanya.
A hand touched her shoulder. Soft, trembling.
"Liora," Nyssa's voice whispered. The healer's eyes were wide with awe and sorrow, her face pale beneath the torchlight. "What you did was…I am proud of you."
"Don't." Liora's voice was flat, sharp as broken glass. She shrugged Nyssa's hand away. "Don't speak to me."
Nyssa flinched. "I only meant…"
"You meant to comfort me?" Liora's laugh was bitter. "To pat my head and remind me that even shadows have their place? No. Go back to your Luna."
Nyssa's lips parted, words faltering, but she obeyed. She turned and walked away, her shoulders slumping under the weight of rejection.
Liora watched her go and felt the distance between them stretch into something irreparable. Once, Nyssa had been her friend, her confidant. Now, even her pity was unwelcome.
The bodies around her seemed to fade. The world blurred until only one figure remained clear—Gonzalo.
He stood beside Vanya, speaking to priests, calming the panic, ensuring order. His posture was strong, commanding, the kind of stance that steadied nations. Even with blood smeared across his temple, he looked like the man she had once believed in—the man she still believed in.
And that was the cruelest cut of all.
Because no matter how they sidelined her, no matter how they silenced her, no matter how many times her heart was sliced open by neglect, she could not summon hatred for him. Revenge, once a fire she had nursed, was now ash in her mouth.
Each time she looked at him, she loved him more. Each second she fought the urge to hate, the love only deepened, insistent, unstoppable.
Even when he did not look her way.
Even when his hands held Vanya's shoulders.
Even when his voice called Vanya "my Luna."
She loved him. Against her will. Against her pride. Against her survival.
And that love was the cruelest prison of all.
She turned away, unable to bear the sight, when another scream ripped across the courtyard. This time it was no worshipper. It was a servant—one of the young women from the river kitchens. Her voice carried pure panic.
"The child!" she wailed. "The Luna's child…the heir—she drowned! She drowned in the river!"
The courtyard exploded.
"No!"
"Moon, no!"
"The child—where is she? Where is she?"
Torches swung wildly as men and women scattered, some toward the river, others toward the kitchens. Priests clutched their beads and muttered frantic prayers. Mothers pulled their children close, as though the water itself might reach for them.
Vanya collapsed against Gonzalo, her hands clawing at his chest, her face white as milk. "Our daughter…no, it cannot be…"
Gonzalo's expression cracked for the first time that night. He seized the servant by the arms. "What did you see?"
The girl sobbed so hard she could barely speak. "He was playing by the riverbank. The nurse turned her eyes for only a moment then…then she was gone. The water took her. They…tey cannot find her…"
The courtyard convulsed in chaos. Some dropped to their knees and begged the Moon for mercy. Others rushed toward the gates, their voices breaking with orders and panic. Children cried, elders wept, and the guards scrambled to form search parties.
The miracle of survival had lasted mere moments. Now the stronghold tasted despair.
Liora stood frozen. Her dagger was still in her hand, blood dripping onto the stones. She should have felt triumph at this unraveling, some small shard of vindication. But she felt nothing but a hollow ache.
The child. Innocent. Blood of Gonzalo.
And gone, perhaps forever, into the hungry dark of the river.
The world spun. Gonzalo shouted orders, his voice breaking, his body trembling even as he tried to hold Vanya upright. He looked like a man who had fought wars and lost more than any battlefield could take.
And still…still Liora loved him.
Even as the pack plunged into panic.
Even as the river swallowed the heir.
Even as her own heart cracked deeper than the night.