Page 49 of Stray
Applause filled the room as the colony embraced the newest queen within its ranks. As each of the candidates stepped into the water to receive her blessing, the love within the room became palpable.
For one evening, there were no divisions between prides and families, nor species common or rare. They were all one unit, celebrating and welcoming together, and Ella found herself wondering if this was what it felt like to be part of a family. What it would be like to belong to people who actually wanted her.
As the circle around the water grew sparse, it became clear they were saving the obvious choice for last.
A gracious thing, really. How was one supposed to follow the choosing of the moonmarked Empress herself?
When the time came and only Marissa was left, Ella held her breath. She couldn’t stop thinking about those coins at the bottom of the fountain, sitting and waiting for a kind of magic that just didn’t exist. She wasn’t sure whether it was relief or sadness that made her head feel so light and her heart so heavy.
Maybe a bit of both.
The uncertainty ended tonight. Everyone within the colony would know her role, just as Ella had known hers from the very beginning.
As Marissa stepped into the water, a few others gasped around the room, as if they were already watching the change happen before them.
Ella found herself curious as to just what it would look like when it did finally happen. Would Marissa lament the loss of her lustrous red locks?
Probably not. In a few days’ time, it would be stark white that all the girls were asking their stylists to emulate.
While she’d managed to keep a veneer of calm and grace all evening, Ella could see the smile of satisfaction spreading across Marissa’s face as she slipped fully into the water. She covered her chest in a gesture of modesty and closed her eyes, looking every bit the part of the various iterations of the goddess depicted in the stained glass windows surrounding the temple.
Ella waited for the moonlight to turn an even more brilliant shade as it graced her sacred skin, but even when she squinted, she couldn’t see any hint that Marissa’s red hair was even a shade lighter.
She waited.
And waited.
When the murmurs of dismay rose up around the room, she could hardly understand what was going on around her. It was just too impossible to process.
One of themhadto be moonmarked, and if it wasn’t Marissa, then who the hell was it?
Marissa finally opened her eyes and looked around at the confused faces surrounding her from above. Ella couldn’t help but pity her, standing there in front of everyone, naked in more ways than one.
As unfathomable as it seemed, any lingering possibility that the moon was going to choose her was dwindling by the second.
“What’s wrong?” she cried, her voice growing shrill with accusation as she turned toward Tessa. “Why isn’t it happening?”
The priestess was the one person in attendance who didn’t seem entirely floored by the unexpected turn the evening had taken, though even she was confused.
“The moon has not yet chosen,” Tessa finally announced. Her words, as obvious as they were, silenced everyone in the room.
For a time, at least.
“You’re lying!” Marissa seethed, no longer bothering to cover herself as she flung a finger at the older shifter. “You did this, you bitter old hag! You sabotaged me.”
“Marissa!” Blake cried in dismay from the sidelines.
Tessa didn’t seem remotely fazed by her outburst. “Would someone please escort Ms. Waterson out of the pool? The ceremony must continue.”
The uproar around Ella grew hazy and difficult to make out. She searched the crowd for Axel, as she always did when anything happened.
Or when it didn’t.
It was an involuntary response, really. Her heart always insisted on orienting itself toward him, in whatever direction he happened to be.
It wasn’t long before she spotted him, running to Marissa’s side, of course. Ella watched as he put his arms around her, his face blank with indecision.
She couldn’t help but wonder what he was thinking. If he would abandon Marissa now that she was no longer the guaranteed route to power she once had been.
