The Luna You Betrayed Is No Longer Yours

Chapter 46: Chapter 46 The Cost Of Shame

_Author’s POV_

Maelis had been in pain for three days before she admitted it.

That was her way, endure first, acknowledge later, never let the acknowledgment become a request if it could possibly be avoided. But by the third morning, when the pain in her leg had moved from persistent to the kind that woke her before dawn and kept her there, she called for Elira.

Elira came and looked at her mother-in-law’s leg and then sat for a long time in the chair beside the bed without speaking.

The medical account, the one Rowena had extended to year’s end, covered the treatment costs. That was not the problem. The problem was the specialist.

Maelis’s condition required a specific consultant who did not take standard pack insurance and whose fees had previously been processed through an account that no longer existed in its previous form. The account that had covered those fees had been Ashthorne money, administered through a fund Rowena had established in the second year of the marriage.

That fund was gone.

Elira sat with that reality for a morning. Then she went to find Elvira.

Elvira did not want to go.

She made this clear in the entrance hall of the Varkos estate while Elira put on her coat.

“It’s humiliating,” Elvira whined.

“Yes,” Elira said.

“She’s going to enjoy it.”

“I don’t think she will, actually,” Elira said. “But that’s not the point.”

“The point is we’re going to walk into her family’s house and ask her for money.” Elvira’s voice had the particular edge it got when she was covering embarrassment with indignation. “After everything. After the wedding. After she emptied this house and took everything and.....”

“Everything she took was hers,” Elira said, in a tone that closed the subject. “And Maelis needs the specialist. That’s what we’re doing.”

They arrived at the Ashthorne estate mid-morning.

The gate was opened by a security guard Elvira didn’t recognize, which told her something about how quickly the household had been reorganized since Rowena came home. The driveway was maintained and the garden was manicured and the house itself looked exactly like what it was, the residence of a family that had recently remembered its resources and was using them properly.

Elvira hated it.

They were shown into the east sitting room and offered tea, which Elvira declined and Elira accepted, and they waited for seven minutes before Rowena appeared.

She looked, Elvira thought with the specific resentment of someone who had been hoping for the opposite, entirely well. Composed, neatly dressed, carrying a small notebook that suggested she had come from work rather than having arranged herself for this specific meeting. She looked like a woman who had a full day happening and had allocated a portion of it to this.

“Elira,” she said, with genuine courtesy. “Elvira.”

“Rowena,” Elira said.

Elvira said nothing.

They sat. Elira explained the situation with the straightforward dignity. Maelis’s condition. The specialist. The gap in the available funds.

Rowena listened without interrupting.

When Elira finished, the room was quiet for a moment.

“I can help with the specialist fees,” Rowena said. fгeewebnovёl.com

Elvira exhaled, relief moving through her before she could manage it.

“As a loan,” Rowena continued.

The relief reconfigured.

“The full amount, released immediately, at a standard interest rate.” Rowena opened her notebook. “I’ll need collateral. Something of equivalent value held against the loan until repayment.” She kept her voice entirely businesslike, the way she spoke when she had decided that warmth would be misread as weakness. “Once the paperwork is in order through both our attorneys, the funds transfer the same day.”

The sitting room was very quiet.

Elira looked at her hands. Something moved across her face, not surprise exactly, more the expression of someone receiving what they had expected and finding it no easier for the expectation.

“Collateral,” Elvira said. The word came out flat.

“Standard practice for an unsecured loan between parties without an active financial relationship,” Rowena said. “I’m sure you understand.”

“An active financial relationship.” Elvira’s voice sharpened. “We had an active financial relationship for three years. You funded this family for three years and now you’re talking about collateral like we’re strangers walking in off the street.....”

“That relationship ended with the marriage,” Rowena said. “What I’m offering now is a separate arrangement with its own terms.” She looked at Elvira steadily. “If you’d prefer not to, I understand. There are other lenders.”

“This is revenge,” Elvira said. “You’re doing this deliberately. Sitting here in your family’s house acting like.....”

“Elvira.” Elira’s voice was quiet but final.

“She’s clearly enjoying this, mum!”

“Elvira.” Elvira gritted her teeth. “That’s enough.”

Elvira stopped, jaw tight, eyes bright with fury.

Rowena looked at neither of them in particular. She looked at her notebook instead, not caring about what they thought.

“I’ll have my attorney contact yours,” Elira said, standing. “About the collateral arrangement.” She paused. “Thank you, Rowena.”

“I hope Maelis feels better soon,” Rowena said, and she meant it. That was the thing Elvira would never understand and Elira could see clearly, the warmth was real. It coexisted with the terms without contradiction, because Rowena had simply learned to separate the two things that most people kept tangled.

She cared about Maelis. She was also not going to give this family anything for free again.

Both things were true. Neither one cancelled the other.

They were shown out. The drive back to Moonreign was silent for ten minutes.

Then Elvira said: “You let her do that to us.”

Elira looked out the window.

“You just sat there,” Elvira said. “She laid out those terms like we were nobody and you thanked her. You thanked her.”

“Yes,” Elira said.

“She humiliated us!!!”

“She offered us a loan we don’t deserve on terms that are entirely fair.” Elira’s voice was very quiet. “She didn’t have to offer anything. She chose to help Maelis even after everything and she set terms that protect her, which is what any reasonable person would do.” She paused. “I thanked her because she earned the thanks.”

Elvira stared at her mother.

“Three years,” Elira said. “She was in that house for three years and she held it together and I said nothing when I should have said something and I watched Kaelen do what he did and I said nothing.” She looked at the window. “I am not going to compound that by walking out of her house with my chin up like she owes us something. She doesn’t.”

Elvira opened her mouth.

“Not another word,” Elira warned her daughter.

And the car was silent.

She would never be in support of the bully her family was bullying Rowena. She stood for fairness alone. The loan was already fair enough. Rowena was a goddess sent.