Letter to all Moon Festival visitors:
Three hundred years ago, the Kingdom of Tenebris was cursed, and the Shroud, a darkness manifested from that curse, ensured that Lunaris, once a famed port city, was severed from the kingdom.
For fifty years, Lunaris, known as “the Isle” to its inhabitants and the “lost city” to the rest of the continent, has been ruled by two powers.
The Sages, guardians of truth, who worship the goddess Ignata and encourage the gifts the gods bestow.
And the Council, who have rewritten history to serve their own agenda and banished all mention of gods and gifts.
Both promise safety from war and freedom from poverty and pain.
Both demand memories in exchange for asylum.
But while the residents of Lunaris may not remember their lives before, or the prophecy, or the curse that lurks beyond their walls, prophecies do not forget.
And the curse is waking.
My advice? Keep your memories and stay away.
Signed,
A Renegade
Chapter One
We all live in a cage.
Some are gilded. Some are iron. And others, like ours, are made of nothing but silence and the weight of what we’re forbidden to remember. My brother’s obsession with this concept borders on madness—like everything else he finds remotely interesting.
It’s one of the many things we have in common. Along with the womb we shared, our caramel skin, dark curls, and the incessant curiosity that has gotten us both into trouble more times than I care to count. But even my obsessions have limits. Or perhaps, as Jordi likes to remind me, my limits are set by the cage I’m kept in.
As if I’ve summoned him with the thought, I feel his presence. That familiar hum of restless energy, sharp and frantic, pressing against the edges of my awareness. One of the gifts the gods blessed me with is the ability to sense others nearby, and Jordi’s is always the easiest to find.
My eyes flick from the cages lining my workspace to the door, then to the injured raven on the table. I grab it just as the door slams open. It lets out a guttural croak as Jordi rushes inside clutching fistfuls of maps.
I open my mouth to reprimand him for not knocking and for bringing those damned maps here again, but the words die on my tongue. My brother, who presses his clothes each morning and keeps his hair cropped, looks unrecognizable. Disheveled. Unshaven. With shadows carved beneath those bloodshot hazel eyes I’ve always been jealous of.
The dull ache that has made a home in my chest these last two years deepens into something sharper. Gods. If I could turn back time, I would go to our first day at Veritas University, when we were eager students who didn’t yet understand the weight of what we’d been given. When we were simply grateful not to be laborers, hauling stones to expand the Council’s already massive amphitheater.
I would find a way to avoid whatever drove this wall of secrets and resentment. It’s a futile dream, but I still wish for it each time I see him. But the gods didn’t grant me the gift to turn back time. They blessed me with curses instead.
“This must be one of your emergencies,” I say flatly.
Rather than answering, he stomps across the worn stone floor and unrolls his maps across my worktable, scattering vials and dried herbs and the careful order I’d spent the morning maintaining. The raven hops sideways to avoid being buried, letting out an indignant croak.
“I know you said you don’t want to get involved—”
“Understatement of the century.”
He pins me with a look. The same one he’s been giving me since we were children, when he’d unearth some new mystery in the library’s restricted texts and drag me along whether I wanted to go or not. Neither of us says anything as I check the wrap on the raven’s wing, running my fingers along the bandage. When I release it, it hops across the maps, leaving tiny smudges of dried blood on the parchment.
Jordi eyes it warily. “What happened to it?”
“Silent guards attacked it. The parrots, not the people.”
“Ironic.”
My lips twist in disgust. The Council may have banished mention of the gods from Lunaris, but they do love to take pages from their books. Black ravens like this one are said to report our deeds to the goddess Mortiana. The Council’s gray parrots, with their small green amulets glinting at their throats, do the same for their masters.
As far as we’re concerned, only one of the birds is worthy of fear, and it isn’t the one on my table. At least the Veritas Treaty keeps them out of our town. The Sages made certain of it.
Jordi exhales, the sound too loud in the silence of my workspace. I look up and finally meet his eyes.
“Do you agree that the Shroud has been volatile lately?”
My jaw clenches. I know from experience that each question I answer will only pull me deeper into his labyrinth. He builds them so carefully with breadcrumbs for questions and revelations that lead further from the exits. And I’m always the idiot who follows. I guess it’s the curse of being a sibling.
“Everyone knows the Shroud’s been volatile,” I say after a moment. “But that doesn’t change our agreement. No maps and no theories until—”
“After the Moon Festival,” he says before I have a chance to finish my sentence. “When you finally get your coveted title and tell me why one of the most skilled alchemists in Veritas has been stuck in a never-ending apprenticeship.”
I scowl. “I’m not ‘the most skilled’ at anything.”
“It’s sad that Mother has made you believe that.”
I glare at the maps and bite my tongue hard enough to taste copper. It’s the only thing keeping me from speaking about Sara Veneficia. She’s not our mother. Not by blood, anyway. She’s known as Sara the All-Knowing, or the High Sage, to most of Veritas, but the orphans she raised call her Mother. She’s the reason the town of Veritas exists, and why I’ve been pushing my brother away for the last two years.
“I should burn these maps,” I mutter.
“I’m surprised you haven’t.”
My eyes snap to his. “Don’t tempt me.”
He presses his lips together to fight a smile, but the dimples in his cheeks betray him. Despite everything—the silence, the resentment, the words we can never take back—seeing that almost-smile loosens something in my chest.
Gods, I miss him.
It’s a cruel thing, missing someone who stands right in front of you. Someone who shares your blood and your face and every memory of a childhood spent whispering secrets in the dark. It’s crueler still in a place like Lunaris, where everyone arrives alone and siblings are as rare as starlight through the clouds.
The raven hops onto a sketch of a raffin half-buried beneath the maps, and Jordi tilts his head.
“Interesting that he chose that spot.”
I laugh despite myself. “If you think this is a sign he’s trying to wake the raffin, I will summon my fire.”
“It’s illegal to summon fire indoors.”
“It’s illegal to steal from the vault, but here we are.”
He chuckles, low and warm, and I feel it in my chest. For a moment, we’re children again, sneaking into the library after dark, shoulders pressed together as we pored over forbidden texts by candlelight.
“You have to admit,” Jordi says, his voice turning wistful, “it would be nice if all it took to wake the raffins was birds pecking at their stone shells.”
I snort. “You think it would be ‘nice’ to wake a creature with a thirty-foot wingspan, poisonous talons, and the ability to summon lightning from a three-hundred-year slumber?”
He scowls. “Maybe it would only take out the Council.”
“That’s not how it works. They’d wipe us all out.”
“Either way, the curse would be lifted.”
I stare at him for a moment. “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation again.”
“It’s more important than ever.”
“I doubt that.” I turn to the row of iron cages behind me, their bars casting thin shadows across the floor. “Maybe instead of dreaming about all of us dying for the supposed greater good, you should focus on small changes you can actually make. Like taking this raven home and healing him.”
He scoffs. “And keep him caged?”
“It’s a big cage, and it’s only for a few hours.” I reach for the largest one and set it on the table with a heavy thunk. “Besides, once the healing tonic kicks in, he’ll be too out of it to know the difference.”
“You just described all the residents of Lunaris.”
The words land like a blow to the chest. I cast him a sideways glance, keeping my face carefully blank. “That’s not fair.”
“I agree. It’s not fair that they’re all in the dark.”
“They seem happy enough.”
“Happy or surviving?”
I scoff. “Is there a difference?”
He frowns. “You can’t possibly believe that.”
I bite back a response and focus on the cage. The iron bars. The rusted lock. Anything but the disappointment carved into every line of his face.
“Can you please just look at the maps?” he asks quietly.
“And that’s it? Only look at them?”
“Yes.”
It’s the resignation in his voice that makes me stop fiddling with the lock. I look at the map. My eyes land on the thick wall of darkness known as the Shroud. Even rendered in ink, it seems to pulse with something almost alive. It stretches across the north of our forest —a rift between Lunaris and the kingdom it once belonged to– like a wound that refuses to heal. Veritas scholars believe it’s a manifestation of the curse placed on Tenebris, but no one can explain why our island was spared.
Both the Veritas maps and the Council’s are titled “Isle of Lunaris,” but that’s where the similarities end. The Veritas maps show the continent above. The kingdoms, mountains, and rivers none of us will ever see. The Council’s maps show only Lunaris itself, as though nothing else exists. As though nothing else ever did.
Just as well. You can’t miss what you don’t remember. And none of us remember anything from before we arrived. Memories for asylum. That’s the price everyone pays to live in Lunaris. The cost of the perfect society. The price of freedom.
Here, we are free from war, famine, and pain. Or rather, free from the memory of such things. Free from the grief and terror that drove people to seek refuge on these shores. We still hurt, of course. Still bleed and break and lose the ones we love. But the old pain doesn’t follow us here. Not the way it once did.
I know this because I’ve felt the grief, the loss, the terror trapped in the golden brown memory stones. I’m sure if he could experience it, he’d understand why people choose to part with those memories and start a new life here. The times I’ve been foolish enough to touch them, I’ve ended up in the healing chamber for hours. Weeping for people I’ve never met. Mourning lives I never lived.
Besides, at least they got a choice. They seek Lunaris. Choose to live here. We never did. We were children when we arrived alongside twenty-three other orphans, all under sixteen. Too young to have manifested our gifts. Too young to understand what we were giving up.
Jordi refuses to acknowledge any of it. Refuses to accept that we had no say in the matter. It’s almost as maddening as him refusing to leave with me when I begged him to. Almost as bad as him standing here, showing me all the things we can’t change about this place.
The way I see it, things could be worse. We could be residents of the town below, where the Council rules supreme. At least the Sages give us choices. The freedom to learn, speak our minds, hone our gifts. The Council forbids all of that, and then some.
I look at the map the Sages commissioned Jordi to draw, which shows the continent above as it appeared three hundred years ago. It’s impossible to draw anything accurately without a current reference, and even the merchants from neighboring islands can’t get past the Shroud to the kingdoms above. But at least the continent is there. At least someone acknowledges it exists.
The older map bears a small flame where the Temple of Ignata once stood. A monument to the goddess we’re taught to revere. The one who lit the Undying Flames in every kingdom and appointed Sages to guard her ancient secrets. Most of the Veritas maps still honor that ground, but it’s missing from the map Jordi recently finished.
The biggest difference isn’t the missing flame, though. It’s the Shroud. On the older map, it looks more like a shadow. Less like a wound and more like a fading scar.
And cutting through the darkness … a path linking Lunaris to the land above. My heart climbs into my throat when I check the date in the corner. Circa 280 A.S. Twenty years ago. My eyes snap to Jordi’s.
“What does this mean?” I whisper.
“Notice there’s no mark where the temple once was.” He points at the empty area in the forest and pulls out the map commissioned a few years ago. “This one has it.”
He lays out more maps. One after another in quick succession. The flame appears and disappears across the years like a guttering candle. Finally, he sets his recent map beside the twenty-year-old one.
“There’s nothing there,” I say. “And as the Sages graciously pointed out when they extended my apprenticeship and granted you the title of Official Mapmaker for the Veritas Order, the temple was there until the Council demanded it be torn down, as per the Veritas Treaty.”
Jordi scowls. “You know Freida and Anala had nothing to do with your apprenticeship being extended two years. That was all Mother, and I will never understand why you continue to roll over and take her lashings instead of fighting back.”
I scoff. If he knew the extent of my defiance, he’d be proud rather than annoyed. But it’s best he doesn’t. Mother’s ire is a hurricane. I’d rather shove the people I love into its eye than let them be torn apart by its winds.
Two years. That’s what she promised. Even she can’t go back on her word. Not when I made her repeat it in front of the other Sages.
“It doesn’t matter. My two years will be up at the end of the Moon Festival.”
“I know, but you could speak to Anala and Freida—”
“No.” The word cuts through the air. “Last time I tried that, I ended up teaching alchemy to first years. I just need to keep my head down until the Moon Festival is over.” My gaze drifts back to the map. To the Shroud. To the path that shouldn’t exist. “No matter how curious I am about this.”
“What about the Undying Flame? Do you really think they moved it?”
I shoot him a bewildered look. “You’ve sat in front of that Flame enough times. You know it’s there.”
He slams his hands on the table. The raven and I both jolt. “You’ve sat in front of it! I’ve sat beside you, sick to my stomach, praying you heal quickly because they demand too much of your emotive gifts.”
The words hit like a fist to the chest. I swallow hard. “At least we know we have gifts. The Council’s residents wear their amulets day and night. They don’t even know what they’re capable of.”
He scoffs. “Most of our gifts.”
My spine stiffens.
“The year we arrived was a Reckoning year. I think that’s why the temple isn’t marked on it,” he says suddenly.
The mention of the Reckoning gives me pause. I frown as I study the map again. It occurs every ten years and is the only time the curse on the kingdom of Tenebris can be lifted. It should be important.
Instead, our texts gloss over it like an afterthought. Maybe it’s because the Reckoning is marked by the blood moon, and in Lunaris, the sky belongs to the clouds. We get eight hours of sun before the darkness rolls in. We’ve never seen the stars, and the moon is little more than a rumor, glimpsed through brief tears in the gray.
The only acknowledgment of the Reckoning comes at the Veritas Ceremony on the first night of the Moon Festival. But the festival is annual. It just happens to coincide with when the blood moon supposedly rises.
“Are you saying this is a Reckoning year?”
“Yes.”
I point at the lighter Shroud on the twenty-year-old map. “And this was one too.”
“The Shroud shifts. I’ve read texts about it. Old ones, buried in the restricted stacks.”
I flip through the maps beneath. “Where’s the one from ten years ago?”
“Gone. Forty years ago, too.” His jaw tightens. “They’re hiding something. Either the Reckoning itself, or they don’t want us near the Shroud right now. Probably both.”
“They have scholars who study the Shroud.”
“From afar. And they’re forbidden from going near it in the months before the Moon Festival.” He taps the map. “During the Reckoning, the trees within the Shroud move. That’s how the pathway forms.”
“Wouldn’t we have felt it? The ground would tremble.”
His lips twist. “That’s what Naima said.”
I huff a laugh. “Goddess strike me, Jor.”
“The laborers have seen strange lights in the sky.”
“What kind of lights?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t—”
The door crashes open. The raven croaks. Two students barrel in, still wearing their maroon houndstooth skirts and white knee-highs, hands pressed to heaving chests. Soot streaks their faces. Twin expressions of horror.
I glance from Mara to her quiet friend with the blue hair. “What happened?”
“The Shroud,” Mara gasps. “The guards … come quickly!”
I grab my healing kit. Jordi shoves the maps into the bottom drawer where I keep my things.
We run.
