Chapter 144: The Unfolding Truth XXIV

Third Person POV

The hall was frozen.

Not the kind of frozen that came from cold. The kind that came from a room full of people all processing the same thing at the same time and none of them fast enough.

Every eye had locked onto the platform. Onto the white-haired woman standing beside the new Alpha. Onto the veil lying discarded on the stone floor between them.

The priestess had not moved from the spot where she had stumbled back.

The council members stood with their mouths half-open, words forming behind their teeth that had not yet found enough air to become sound.

The murmuring started from the back and moved forward.

Confused. Low. The particular quality of sound that happened when something unexpected landed in the middle of something sacred and the crowd could not decide whether to celebrate or revolt.

Helen stood in the center of all of it.

The white gown was still on her body. The moonlight from the high windows was still in her hair, catching every strand, making it glow against the dark stone of the hall. Kai’s hand had been warm in hers a moment ago. He had let go.

She looked out at the crowd.

At the confused faces, the open mouths, the council members were already shifting and exchanging looks. At the elder who had been standing in the corridor two days ago with his satisfied expression, watching the other woman’s hand on Kai’s arm. That expression was gone now. Something else had replaced it entirely.

Helen looked at all of it.

And then she smirked.

One corner of her mouth, lifting just enough, just for a second. Quick and small and completely unbothered.

The expression of someone who had done something she had been planning and had watched it land exactly where she intended.

The crowd did not know what to make of it.

Against the wall near the side door, two identical faces turned toward each other.

They knew exactly what to make of it.

They had helped.

****

Three hours earlier.

Helen stood up from the dressing table.

The kitten made a sound from the bed. She did not look at it. She crossed the room toward the twins, who were still standing near the door exactly where Kai had left them after walking out. Alisa’s face was fully wet, making no effort to manage it anymore. Ellisa’s face was doing the thing it did, not crying, technically, but only because of a significant amount of internal effort that was showing around the edges.

Helen stopped in front of Alisa.

"Can you stop?" she said. Gentle. Not unkind.

Alisa blinked. A tear ran down her cheek anyway.

"You are overdoing it," Helen said. "It is too much."

Alisa sniffed. Loudly. She went to wipe her nose with the back of her hand and made the whole situation worse. A small hiccup came out of her. Then another, her shoulders shaking with it, her whole body slightly trembling the way bodies did when the crying had been going on long enough to make everything calm.

Ellisa watched her sister with an expression that was aiming for exasperation and kept landing somewhere softer.

"You are a mess," Ellisa said.

"I know," Alisa said. Another hiccup.

"It is fine," Ellisa said. Quieter. "I am not going to point it out."

Helen looked at both of them. Alisa’s shaking shoulders and Ellisa’s jaw held a little too tight. The way they stood close without thinking about it, shoulders nearly touching, the same face carrying two different versions of the same thing.

She breathed in.

"Girls," she said.

They looked at her.

"I am not leaving."

Alisa’s hiccuping stopped.

The silence it left behind was enormous.

"What?" Alisa whispered.

"Are you serious?" Ellisa said it louder. The softness she had been trying to hide disappeared entirely, replaced by something brighter and more alert.

Helen’s face was steady. She was not playing with them. Her grey eyes were clear and decided and looking at both of them directly.

"I am not leaving," she said again. "But I need your help with something."

The look that passed between the twins lasted half a second and carried a full conversation. Their heads turned back to her at exactly the same moment.

"You have been wondering what I am," Helen said. "Haven’t you?"

They nodded. Same speed. Same angle.

Something at the corner of her mouth moved. Small. Almost a smile.

"Tonight," she said, "you will find out."

With that, she walked toward the door. She did not look back to see if they were following.

They followed before she even took three steps.

****

The corridor was long and empty and the torches along the walls threw warm light across everything, shadows moving slowly on the stone as they walked. Their footsteps were the loudest thing in it.

Ellisa was practically vibrating beside her.

"I don’t even know what we are doing yet," she said, grinning at the ceiling, "and I am already completely here for it."

"You love anything involving breaking rules," Alisa said beside her.

"So?" Ellisa said.

They stopped outside a door Helen had chosen. Not her own room. A different one, larger, with carved framing along the edges and voices coming through the wood from the other side, women talking in the low efficient way people talked when they were working toward a deadline, the rustle of fabric, the sound of something being adjusted and adjusted again.

Helen put her hand on the handle.

Alisa hesitated. "Helen. What exactly are we doing?"

Helen pushed the door open.

The room inside was busy. Several women were moving around a central figure, their hands full of pins and white fabric.

The woman in the middle was young, standing on a small raised platform, her arms slightly out at her sides while two attendants fussed over the hem of her white gown. A veil lay on the nearby table, carefully arranged, waiting.

Everyone stopped when the door opened.

A servant at the front of the group stepped forward. Her face had gone pinched and tight, the expression of someone whose professional territory had just been entered without permission.

"You cannot be in here," she said. Sharp and certain. "This area is restricted before the ceremony. If anyone interferes with the future Luna’s preparation, it is considered a bad omen. I need you to leave immediately."

Helen looked at her.

Then past her, at the woman on the platform in the white gown. At the veil on the table. At the attendants with their pins and their careful hands, all paused and watched.

She stepped into the room.

"I need everyone in here to stop what they are doing," she said. Her voice was calm and even and carried no force in the way voices usually carried force, no sharpness, no threat. Just words, spoken clearly. "Take that dress off her. Leave this room. Forget that any of this happened."

The servant opened her mouth.

And then she turned around.

Without another word. Without arguing, without questioning, without any of the resistance a person offered when told to do something they had not agreed to.

She walked to the woman on the platform and began unfastening the white gown with the smooth efficiency of someone executing a task they had been set.

The other attendants followed. They moved together, quiet and coordinated, hands working, fabric folding, the gown coming apart and being laid carefully across the bed.

One by one they walked out of the room.

The door closed.

Silence.

Ellisa and Alisa had not moved from the doorway. Had not breathed, as far as Helen could tell. They were staring at her the way people stared at something they had witnessed with their own eyes and were still not fully convinced their eyes were reliable sources of information.

"What," Ellisa said. Her voice came out much smaller than usual. "What in the world was that?"

"Those women," Alisa started. Then stopped. Then she tried again. "They just...they walked out without saying anything, they didn’t even..."

Helen picked up the white gown from the bed. She held it against herself and turned toward the long mirror on the far wall. She checked the length. The fit. The way the fabric fell.

"Who wants to help me dress for my Luna ceremony?" she said.

Ellisa came back to herself first.

The grin spread across her face slowly and then all at once. "You are the best sister-in-law I have ever had," she said.

"You have never had a sister-in-law," Alisa said.

"That does not make the statement less true."

Alisa shook her head slowly. But she was looking at Helen differently now, the fear she had been holding since they walked in here beginning to crack at the edges, something else coming through underneath it.

"Helen," she said, quietly. "What did you do to those women?"

Helen looked at her own reflection. The white hair loose around her shoulders, the black streak at the front, the grey eyes that had stopped apologizing for themselves sometime in the last hour without her consciously deciding to stop.

"I controlled their minds," she said.

Simply. The same way she might have said she opened a window.

Ellisa pointed at her immediately. "Okay but what ARE you. Are you a witch? A sorceress? An elf? A forest spirit? A..."

"Ellisa," Alisa said.

"I am asking a completely reasonable question."

"Let her breathe for a second."

"I am letting her breathe, I am just also asking a question while she breathes, those two things can happen at the same..."

"I am a nine-tailed fox."