Melanna shook her head. “I was made for more than prayer and solace. The goddess told me so herself.”

Her lips twitched in sympathy beneath the half mask. “Did she, savim? Or is that merely what you wished to hear?”

“I will be empress one day, and I will pass the throne to a daughter. I can do neither from behind a lunassera’s mask.”

“But there is much you can do, savim. Gifts only the lunassera can give.”

Across the sanctum, the dying man gave a last fitful exhalation. His attendants slid the ring from his hand, refilled the goblet, and moved on.

Melanna stifled a sigh. The lunassera meant well, but she didn’t understand. She was too much a part of tradition. “I’d sooner bring death to our foes than offer dreaming mercy to our own.”

“It is the goddess’s desire that we do both, if called to. Our sisterhood served your grandfather’s great-grandfather as bodyguard. At least, until he was wed. The new princessa did not approve of her husband living ever in the company of women.”

Melanna frowned in surprise. “Lunassera do not bear swords. Women do not bear swords.”

“The sword does not make the warrior.” She shrugged. “And we are not women, savim. We are handmaidens, and it is not the same. How else could we be with the army, where no woman treads?”

Somehow, Melanna had never considered that. Her whole life, she’d accepted that lunassera accompanied armies simply because that was their role. She’d never considered why. Just as she’d only moments before renewed her assumption that the sisterhood prized beauty for beauty’s sake.

“What is your name?”

“Sera, savim.”

Melanna snorted. Sera meant sister in the old language. A sister in the sisterhood. Likely she’d been marked for this path from birth. A daughter given in wedlock to the goddess needed no dowry and would make no father poor. Slavery was no shame if it fuelled holy purpose.

“Why are you telling me this, Sera?”

“Because times change, and we with them. If your place is not with the lunassera, it may be that the place of the lunassera is with you.”

Melanna’s frown deepened as she struggled to keep pace with realigning assumptions. “And how will I know that? How will you?”

“By the goddess’s gift, savim. You must learn your place.”

You must learn your place. The second time Sera had spoken those words. On the first, Melanna had taken them as admonishment. Now, she wasn’t so sure.

“You must be mad.”

Viktor regarded Anastacia with as much patience as he could muster. Which, at the end of a long day, was not a very great deal.

“Far from it. You want to be free of Branghall. This makes it possible.”