Weakest Beast Tamer Gets All SSS Dragons novel Chapter 973

Chapter 973: Chapter 973 - Taming the Ceremony

Luna listened to all of it.

She didn’t interrupt. Larissa knew her well enough to understand that Luna’s silence during a difficult conversation wasn’t passivity, it was active processing, the internal machinery running in parallel with the words arriving from outside, filing and cross-referencing and building toward something while the surface stayed still.

Her father adjusting the truth of the Crystal Heart.

Her uncles being far more responsible for her misfortune than she had ever believed.

What Orion had laid out as though Luna were a trophy with a genetic key rather than a person with her own capacity to decide anything.

The part about Orion was where the texture of the silence changed.

Luna didn’t cry. Her eyes went still with that particular quality they had when something cold settled in behind them and took charge of the rest... Not shutting down, but reorganizing, the way a room looks different when someone has quietly decided what is going to happen next and has already started rearranging the furniture in their head.

"When is the ceremony?" she asked.

"This afternoon. Julius couldn’t delay them more than a day," said Larissa.

Luna looked at Ren and Liora, both still sleeping, for a moment.

"They still haven’t moved at all?"

"Not while you were sleeping."

Another moment of silence.

"Good." The word came out with a sharpness that had nothing resigned in it. It was the voice of someone who has made a decision and is already in the next part.

"Then I’ll have the freedom to be ugly and aggressive and act as horribly as I want without being seen by them for now." A very brief pause. "As those ’monsters’ deserve."

Larissa opened her mouth.

"I’m not going against the plan," Luna cut her off, with something that didn’t quite reach a smile but occupied the same space. "I’m going to contribute to it." She stood up. "Which is different." 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

♢♢♢♢

Liora woke two hours later looking like someone whose body had collected the full bill and who had slept exactly enough to be able to pay tomorrow’s installment.

Not recovered... But functional enough to move.

She sat up, blinked, took in the room, the common unhurried inventory of someone orienting themselves after a sleep that went deeper than usual. Her eyes moved to Ren in the next bed, who was still carrying that non-ordinary quiet, and then to Larissa, sitting in the chair Luna had occupied before.

"How long?" she asked.

"Almost thirty hours."

Liora processed that.

"And Ren has shown any signals of?"

Larissa shaked her head. "Nothing... Same as the first hour."

"What did I miss then?"

What followed was the organized version Larissa had prepared while waiting, because Larissa understood things and was capable of producing organized summaries of complex situations with the same easy instinct other people breathed with, not an effort, just a mode she operated in when it was needed.

Selphira and Victor had been treated but the improvement had been minimal. Both were still out of combat, unfortunately.

Julius had negotiated the ceremony.

Orion was marching almost in front of the castle but slowly, still applying pressure without committing to a direct engagement.

The defensive perimeter had contracted but was holding.

Luna was going to the ceremony without Ren.

Liora listened to that point and her face made the transition Larissa had calculated it was going to make.

"You left her go alone?" The voice had that quality of urgency Liora used when she was working not to raise it and the effort was visible. "Luna is going to a ceremony where her horrible uncle is trying to claim her as property, Ren is still sleeping, and she’s going alone?"

"She’s not going alone," said Larissa. "We’re going too... I was waiting for you."

"The two of us?"

"The three of us."

Liora looked at Ren.

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