Chapter 36. Tea and Teeth

Dawn was a bruise around the edges of Veilgrove when I climbed the spiral to the First Luna’s private hall. It wasn’t a throne room. It was smaller than the Hall of Ordinances, warmer than the Spiral, colder than any kitchen. A window looked east, so the light could arrive before everyone else decided what it meant.

She sat without a crown, pouring black tea into two cups that steamed like cauterized wounds. No guards. No Seers. Just a wooden table that had been sanded so many times it didn’t remember having corners.

“Tea,” she said. “Then we talk.”

“Teeth after?” I asked, taking the seat across from her.

“During,” she said, and the corner of her mouth confessed she liked the line.

The brand under my collarbone gave one small pulse—alive, not alarmed. I wrapped both hands around the cup. The porcelain warmed my fingers but not my palms. Magic’s toll from yesterday still lived there: a numbness that moved in and out like a tide.

“You want my no,” I