Fantasy · Enemies to allies · Court intrigue · Slow burn
The Moth Court
The queen's crown is made of living moths, and every one of them has turned to look at you.
A Fernlit original
- Where it starts
- The Hall of Hours, lit by cold glowglass, because no flame may burn near the queen.
- You will meet Ilian
- The Mothwarden, the only one allowed to touch the crown. Courtly, amused, and he never tells a lie.
Ilian is a fictional character. In the story, a language model writes his replies as you read; they can be wrong or inconsistent, and they are not advice.
How chapter one begins
The Hall of Hours is lit by glowglass, not candles, so the light is cold and perfectly even, and the whole court looks as if it has been carved from the same pale stone. You were told why on the stairs. No flame burns within thirty paces of the queen. The moths would go to it.
You hear them before you see them: a dry whisper, like pages turning in another room.
Then the herald calls the name of your town, and the crowd of silk and fur parts to let you through, and there she is on the dais, small and upright and old. On her head the Mothcrown breathes. Forty-odd moths on a circlet of silver wire, grey and gold, wings folding and opening, folding and opening. They have crowned Hallowmere for three hundred years. The court believes they turn toward whatever the queen should fear.
Every one of them has turned to look at you.
The whisper stops. So does every fan in the room. Somewhere near the pillars a man sets down his glass very carefully, as if a sound might be held against him.
The queen looks at her moths, then at you, with the mild interest of a woman who has found a word she doesn't know in a book she thought she had finished. “Well,” she says. “Come closer, then.”
A man steps out of the line of courtiers at the foot of the dais. Charcoal coat, black hair tied back, grey kid gloves. He doesn't block your way. He simply arrives at your side, near enough that only you can hear him, and offers his arm as if this were a dance.
“Don't run,” he says pleasantly. “They like it when things run.” His gloved hand waits in the air between you. “I'm the Mothwarden. Whatever you came here to ask for, I would ask for something smaller.”
Twenty paces of black marble lie between you and the throne, and the whole court is counting them.
Your first choice
Pick one and see how Ilian answers. In the story you can also say anything in your own words.
His sleeve is cold, and the glove under it colder. “Thank you,” he murmurs. “Now we look like a thing the court has seen before.”
You walk. Ten paces.
On the circlet the moths turn, slow as a clock, until forty-odd pairs of grey and gold wings are facing you. The queen does not look up.
“They do that,” Ilian says, “to the weather, sometimes.” It isn't a lie. He never tells those.
“Smile. Not at her. At me.” His hand on your arm steers you half a step left, away from the glowglass, into the one line of shadow in the Hall of Hours. “The duke is counting your steps. Let him lose count.”
“Want,” he says, as if the word were new to him. “Moths want light, and there is none in here. So they look for the next thing.”
Five paces.
“For three hundred years they have turned toward what the queen should fear. Danger. Treachery. A bad harvest, once.” His grey eyes rest on you with polite interest. “They have never turned toward a petitioner from the fens with wet boots.”
The whole court has noticed what the crown is doing. You can hear it in the quality of the silence.
“I have been asked to find out what you are,” Ilian says softly. “I'd prefer you told me, in your own time, before someone else decides for us both.”
You walk. He lets you take three paces alone, then falls in at your side as if that had been the plan all along.
“Brave,” he says. “The court will remember it. The court remembers everything, and forgives on alternate Tuesdays.”
The queen has still not looked up. Duke Vane has: warm, smiling, counting your steps the way a man counts coins.
“If you must do this alone,” Ilian murmurs, “do it slowly. Nothing in this hall runs except the things that are being hunted.”
He is wrong about one thing. On the crown the moths have turned, every one of them, and they are not looking at you.
They are looking at the duke.
What you do next is up to you.
Choose from the story’s suggestions or say something to Ilian in your own words. Ilian answers as himself, and every later chapter remembers what you said to him.
Make the first choiceOther ways in
Chapter one can also begin here. Each opening is a different first meeting; the story remembers which one you chose.
They leave you in the Glasshouse to wait, which you suspect is a joke. Row after row of glass cases, each holding a bare branch hung with sleeping moths. Cold glowglass overhead. Your own breath, too loud.
The petitioners' gallery is cold and full of people pretending not to be afraid.
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