Sol and lune, p.1
Sol & Lune, page 1
SOL & LUNE
BOOK TWO
KATHRYN MOON
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
This is a Reverse Harem Paranormal Romance and is not suited for those under the age of 18.
Created with Vellum
Copyright @ 2020 Kathryn Moon
Sol & Lune: Book Two
First publication: March 19th, 2020
Cover art by Covers by Combs
Editing by Bookish Dreams Editing
Formatting by Kathryn Moon
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work, in whole or in part, in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.
Published by Kathryn Moon
ohkathrynmoon@gmail.com
Kathrynmoon.com
Created with Vellum
Meghan,
for letting me go a little off track,
but not too much
CONTENTS
Previously in Sol & Lune
I. The New Moon Priestess
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
II. The Frozen War
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
III. The Setting Sun
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
IV. The Rising Moon
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Epilogue
Also by Kathryn Moon
Acknowledgments
About the Author
PREVIOUSLY IN SOL & LUNE
The country of Stalor’s General Dominic Westbrook and his army arrive at Lady Lumen Fenn’s Manor in Oshain during the decades-long war between the two countries. A local war veteran, Oliver Spragg, encourages Lumen to leave the Manor and go north for refuge, but she refuses to abandon her home and remaining tenants. Lumen is pressured to share Dominic’s bed—in exchange for protection from the other soldiers—and while the union is tense and uncomfortable, he eventually introduces her to passion. With Westbrook and his army is Lieutenant Gideon Jones, a terrifying warrior who is openly attracted to Lumen and her purity, as well as Healer Finley Brink, who she forms a tentative truce with when it comes to tending the injured soldiers. The best of all of the army’s men, however, is the young boy named Colin, who acts as a spy for the army and immediately develops a close friendship with Lumen.
Lumen and Dominic find a temporary balance in their relationship, but there are constant obstacles. While he compromises and allows Lumen to keep her sanctuary to the Goddess Lune, and all the silver inside, he takes every other resource her home has to offer. When Lumen’s friendship and nurturing of Colin leads the boy to make an error of judgment that costs Stalor soldiers’ lives, Dominic must act again as the uncompromising general. Lumen interrupts his punishing Colin with a cat ‘o nine tails, taking a strike to her own cheek. In reaction to her defiance and his own guilt, Dominic casts Lumen out of his bed, and into Finley Brink’s protection.
Both Gideon and Finley are protective of Lumen, neither acting on their interest in her, even when Lumen tests the boundaries of their restraint. When Finley is injured in battle, Lumen and he grow closer, eventually developing a physical relationship, this time on Lumen’s insistence. As a healer, and known for having unusual sexual habits—ones Lumen enjoys—Finley is less respected amongst the ranks and Lumen begins to feel the eyes of men on her as well as dealing with their taunts and jeers. When a few men take an opportunity to attack Lumen, Dominic catches them in time to intervene. Upon hearing the news, Finley decides Lumen would be better off in someone else’s care and takes an opportunity to serve under General Meade in a different party of the army. Lumen is once again abandoned, this time to Gideon’s care.
Despite her and Gideon’s sincere affection for each other, Lumen realizes she has lost her home and land, as well as her own self-worth and autonomy. When she discovers that Dominic is resisting pushing his army north because he does not want to leave her, her emotional stability cracks. Meanwhile, Dominic knows that it won’t be long until his men ransack Lumen’s chapel and holy silver, and decides to hide it but doesn’t tell her in the hopes it forces a confrontation. When Lumen discovers the chapel empty, she goes to Oliver Spragg and asks him to take her north at last.
With Lumen missing and Finley returned and regretful, the three men turn on each other and are forced—by Colin, best boy—to face their crimes against Lumen. Spragg takes Lumen north to the capital, where she is questioned and then imprisoned when she can give no valuable military information. Dominic and his army finally push north, and Colin learns of Lumen’s imprisonment and growing sickness. Lumen, trapped in a damp cell in the middle of winter, nears death and is comforted by the dark New Moon Goddess. Dominic, Finley, and Gideon sneak into Oshain’s capitol, rescue Lumen from the prison, and take her back to their army’s camp. She is weak, weary, and asks to be taken to the Lunar Convent in the mountains. Finally, the men agree to listen to her wishes rather than their own wants to care for her themselves, and deliver her into the arms of the Lunar Priestess. Once there she is recognized by the priestesses as being…
PART I
THE NEW MOON PRIESTESS
1
Winter lingered in the mountains, dressing the windows of the Lunar Convent with thick ice, sunlight forcing itself through and tracing watery patterns on cold stone floors. Rows of women, draped in grays and blues, rested on their knees at the front of an altar glittering with silver. The wide face of Mother Lune’s statue, smooth eyes cast down onto the bowed heads of her devotees, shimmered with candlelight, sunshine, and silver reflecting on itself.
In the hallways, footsteps padded in near silence, novitiates performing the necessary chores as the priestesses sat in meditation for the new moon observances. Their lips pressed together as they went about their work, eyes fixed to their hands or feet to avoid sharing glances, adding logs to fires to keep the worst of the winter chill from settling in stone rooms.
Deeper, in the heart of the convent, in a room without windows and with no candle shining and no silver gilding, Lumen Fenn crouched in front of the stone Dark Mother, shroud carved to imply the bone-thin Goddess beneath. In the hall behind the sealed door, a novitiate’s steps slowed and softened from their previous quick scamper, as if they could feel the heavy and hypnotic state of the lady’s devotion as they passed the door. Lumen herself felt the same weight, the stare of the shrouded Goddess like a hand on the top of her head. Her legs were numb beneath her, body hollow, thoughts empty. Information trickled in—the women traveling through the halls, the shifting fragrance of thyme in bone broth trickling in under the door and signaling that evening was near and supper would be waiting at the first appearance of a crescent moon. Just as easily as it arrived in her mind, Lumen let it pass, the steady drum of her own heartbeat serving as a ticking clock and a drowning sound to shoo away any intruding worries.
“When did he say he’d be back?”
“Shh, you know she’s in there. Quarter moon.”
“Will it be done by then?”
The Mallen sisters. Lumen’s lips threatened to frown, and she tried to fall into the sound of her own heartbeat, waiting for the devotionless novitiates to move on.
“Only started.”
“But—”
“Enough. Or the New Moon Priestess will hear you.”
The title was given with a heavy amount of sarcasm and scorn, and the leather soles of slippers scuffed roughly in punctuation against the stone outside the door as the sisters traveled deeper into the convent.
Lumen’s teeth dug into her chapped lip, trying to force the pinch of pain into a distraction from their words. She’d heard others call her by the title in whispers when no one realized she was within earshot. Or perhaps the convent thought she was deaf. Women rarely spoke to her, which meant Lumen was rarely expected to speak, and she found herself sinking into the silence and finding relief in it. Here, finally, she was permitted to exist, and the only expectation of her time and body belonged to Lune. High Priestess had never spoken to her on the subject of the New Moon Priestess position, and she didn’t feel worthy of the honor, n
The convent was not the relief Lumen had quite expected, overfull with displaced women who no longer had homes to retreat to. The older priestesses were kind and sincere, but there was a wave of simmering anger that lingered in the halls. Lumen saw it like sunlight, pricking at her skin, trying to invade her own emptied emotions.
She released a slow sigh, turning her head gently back and forth on her neck and wincing at the noisy crack of stiff joints. Activity was picking up in the halls, stone carrying the echoes to the door of her favorite chapel room. The first sliver of the new moon must have risen. Lumen began slow stretches, shuffling to her side and holding her breath as blood rushed down to her calves and feet with hot needle pricks. On the last new moon, a novitiate had been sent in to help Lumen stretch and hobble her way down to the kitchens to eat with the others. Sure enough, again the door cracked open, spilling orange firelight from the hall torches across Lumen’s dusty, blue-gray skirts.
“Ellery says I’m to bring you down to supper, so we’d better hurry before my sisters slurp it all down themselves.”
In the doorway, ankles rolling to and fro as the girl twisted the skirt of her robes in her hands, was the youngest Mallen sister, Neave. Lumen studied the shadow the girl cast in the room as she raised her hands over her head and wriggled her stinging toes in her slippers, muscles protesting with an ache Lumen almost relished.
“Can’t carry you myself,” Neave continued, her volume a little too loud for the first rising of the new moon.
Lumen nodded and stifled a groan in her throat as she stumbled up to her feet. Despite Neave’s claim, the young girl hurried forward and caught Lumen around her waist as her body failed to hold her up. Neave’s shoulder dug into the side of Lumen’s chest, the pair of them still a little thin after a long lean winter. Something about the girl’s frame under her arm—and perhaps her direct manner of speech—reminded Lumen of Colin with a pang of memory that she struggled to force down again. She had her family’s bright red-blond hair, and her skin was still brown from summer even so late in the year. There were slivers of that secret sunlight only Lumen could see clinging to the young girl too, although they didn’t scratch at Lumen’s eyes the way others did. It was a strange phenomenon she’d discovered since arriving. Finding those who seemed to shimmer with Sol’s Fire. It usually made her stomach clench and turn, her skin hot and feverish and crawling, but looking at Neave was gentler, almost pleasant.
“You know you’re allowed to move around, don’t you?” Neave snarled, dragging Lumen towards the door as both their stomachs growled in harmony.
Lumen reached her free arm out, setting her fingertips just over Neave’s lips without touch and receiving a scowl in return.
“It’s a bunch of nonsense,” Neave continued in a steady mumble. “And I’m not a novitiate. Just got dragged here with my mother and sisters.” A few women were at the far end of the hall, and they glanced briefly back to Neave and her luggage of Lumen before hurrying away without a second look. Neave hissed at their backs. “There’s the Mother’s generosity in action for you.”
Lumen shook with restrained laughter and finally found some steadiness, doing her best to hold herself up and keep up with Neave’s eager pace to the kitchen.
“Anyway, moon’s up,” Neave said, shrugging off Lumen’s arm. “You can talk again.”
It took three tries to clear her throat of the dust she’d let gather there over days of quiet, but Lumen managed some words for the girl. “I like my silence.”
Neave’s mouth popped open, her eyes narrowed. For once, the girl was at a loss of words, either out of respect or simply stupefied by Lumen’s claim. They reached the door of the dining hall, and Lumen’s fingers nudged briefly against the girl’s shoulder. Today, she missed touch, or maybe she missed Colin. Other days, she cringed when one of the sisters reached for her.
The tables of the dark hall were crowded with women, blue draped heads and voices murmuring like songbirds gathered around seed in summer, their hands passing plates and bowls up and down the line. Lumen’s stomach growled, but the feeling of hunger was so distant now, her thoughts disconnected from the ails of her body.
“Here, sister,” one of the novitiates said softly, and Lumen twitched, resisting the urge to thrash herself out of someone’s hold, as she was guided to an empty seat near the head of the table. She was placed between the priestesses and refugee women, and already a priestess was filling her bowl with stew. A chunk of bread floated in the center, stale crumbs softening in hot liquid.
Why should you eat better than the novitiates? she wondered. Even in the face of the food, hunger was a background sound. She’d gone so long on nothing, to have again seemed like an error rather than a luxury.
“There’s mold on my slice!”
The Mallen women were across the table from Lumen, noses wrinkled toward the bowls. Imogen Mallen’s fingers were pinched around a hunk of bread, broth dripping to the table’s surface as she gaped up the line of the table to the High Priestess.
“Just tear it away, Im,” the middle sister said on a sigh.
“It’ll have ruined the whole bowl by now,” Imogen continued, voice rising in pitch.
Lumen winced, cheek turned away from the family. They shone in the dim room, flecks of light hovering around them, heat licking off their skin in her direction. They carried sunlight on them in a place that was dedicated to the moon.
“Did you escape Stalor’s army so early that you have enough ego in you to complain of generosity?” one of the other novitiates hissed in the family’s direction.
Imogen bristled, arching over the table. “You’ve no idea what lengths I’ve taken—”
“Enough, Imogen,” Myra Mallen, the matriarch of the family, bit out. She stole the bread from her daughter’s finger and dropped it into her own bowl, scooping out an overflowing bite on a spoon.
Imogen’s jaw clenched as she stared down at the cooling stew, shoulders up to her ears. There was heat in Lumen’s chest, her hands clenched to fists at her side as anger clogged her throat with barbed thorns that dug into her muscle and bound her from screaming. Even here in Mother Lune’s house, she wasn’t safe from the fire.
Stars floated on the surface of the ale in Dominic’s cup. They shifted and swirled as he tipped it one way and then another, the heat of the bonfire nicking at his knuckles.
“We need more supplies.” Danvers stood at his back.
Dominic frowned into his cup. Was this his first or his fifth for the night?
“Again?” he grunted. “You went a week ago.”
“Two weeks,” Charlie corrected. “It’s up to you if we starve or not.”
Dominic rolled his eyes. They were already starving, or hadn’t Charlie noticed? “What do we have to sell?” he asked. He’d taken strange lengths to keep the pair out of Lumen’s silver after Colin and the others had refused it. He couldn’t say why he didn’t sell it now that she was out of his reach. Only that maybe…maybe someday she would have need of it again, and he owed it to her to be sure that it was there.
“A town just north cleared out. We found enough there,” Charlie said.
It didn’t seem like a proper answer in Dominic’s mind, but the simple truth was he didn’t care what Danvers and Charlie did at this point, whether it was spying or shopping.
