Chapter 28. The Heat of Two Moons

The city finished singing and left a quiet shaped like a held breath.

Lora must have let hers go.

Not sleep exactly—more like a truce with the room—because when the bell on the shelf trembled without ringing and the water in the basin slid silk-slow across her ribs, her eyes were open before the sound happened.

The crescent beneath her skin had cooled during the night to a polite glow. Now it brightened as if someone had decided morning should come sooner than it was scheduled. The second crescent—Dusk—kept its fine, silver nerve. Dawn—old heat—answered from deeper bone, warm enough to argue.

“No,” she told them both, because practice made boundary. “You can talk. You don’t get to shout.”

They didn’t agree or disagree, because that would have required manners. A small eddy turned in the basin, circling the place where her wrist had touched the linen. Outside the glass, the canal held a gray that wasn’t absence—more like the city was thinking and didn’t