"I have brought mummy, Moon Goddess," the boy announced, his small voice carrying through the vast space with surprising authority.
"Let her come in."
The voice did not simply speak. It moved through everything, through the walls, the clouds, the ground beneath their feet, as though the moon itself had chosen to use words. The great gates responded slowly, parting with a deep resonance that Hazel felt in her chest, and from beyond them poured a light so white and absolute that it swallowed everything.
They stepped inside.
When Hazel's eyes adjusted, what she found stole the breath from her lungs.
The court stretched further than any enclosed space had a right to. Lining the entrance on both sides stood rows of young girls, each one draped in shimmering white, their grey eyes holding revolving silver rings that caught and scattered light like living mirrors. They were utterly still, utterly serene, the Moon Goddess's pure angels, time travellers sent down to walk among the living. They watched Hazel pass without expression, without judgment, simply watching.
At the far end of the court, elevated on a throne carved from white stone threaded with veins of gold, sat the Moon Goddess.
She was overwhelming in the way that true power always is, not loud, not aggressive, simply undeniable. Her gown fell around her in layers of white that seemed to be made of light rather than fabric. Her hair cascaded in rivers of gold all the way to her thighs, moving slightly as though touched by a breeze that existed only for her. And her eyes, pure gold, ancient and depthless, fixed themselves on Hazel the moment she crossed the threshold.
Two guards stepped forward immediately.
"Bow before the Moon Goddess," one instructed, his voice low but firm.
Hazel looked at them. Then past them, directly into the gold eyes of the goddess herself.
She did not bow.
"I will not," she said simply.
The court shifted. The angel girls stirred almost imperceptibly.
"This is the Moon Goddess," the guard pressed, disbelief threading through his composure. "Protector of the land. Goddess of the wolves, the witches, the wizards, the demons and the vampires. You would do well to show respect."
Hazel's gaze did not move from the throne.
"I know who she is." Her voice was quiet but it carried. "And I have a question for whoever sits on that throne claiming to protect us." She took one step forward. "If you are truly our protector, if you watch over all of us, then why does injustice run so freely through our packs? Through our lives?" Her voice did not rise but something in it sharpened. "I am not speaking of punishment for wrongdoing. I am speaking of people who have done nothing, people who were born into cruelty and left there."
She pressed on, each word deliberate.
"I faced injustice the moment I entered this world. I was marked as wicked. Cursed. The sister that darkness followed. And I was not alone in that. There are countless others carrying the same weight, born into suffering they never chose, crying out prayers that disappear into silence." Her eyes finally blazed. "And what is done? Nothing. You sit on your throne and you listen and you send your time travellers and you do absolutely nothing. You take first born daughters from their families to serve you and call it sacred." Her voice dropped to something raw and certain. "Is that not injustice from the very source that was supposed to prevent it?"
The court had gone absolutely silent.
Then the Moon Goddess rose.
She descended from her throne with steps that held no urgency whatsoever, each one slow and deliberate and filled with a grace that made the ground itself respond. Beneath every footfall the surface rippled outward in gentle waves and from each ripple rose chains of butterflies, white and gold, lifting silently into the luminous air around her.
She walked toward Hazel and she did not stop until she was close where they could each feel each other's breath.
You loathe me." The Moon Goddess's voice came like moonlight through water, soft, slow, inevitable. "That is why, in all your years under the silver skies of Silvermoon, I have never once heard your voice in prayer, Hazel Sapphire."