The twin moons were burning low tonight.

Rath and Ruthe hung where they always hung, red as forge-iron against a starless sky, but something in their light felt wrong. Too thin, too stretched, like fabric pulled over a frame too large for it. I had lived in this tower for eleven years. I knew the way moonlight settled on the back of my hand, and tonight it was lying differently.

The Ember Star at my throat pulsed once. A slow, deep contraction, like a second heartbeat deciding to make itself known.

I pressed two fingers there, the old instinct. The gift had never spoken in words, not in eleven years...