Chapter 111
FAYE
Claim
For a long moment the room felt too small for the weight of the choice he’d just thrust at me. I blinked, hearing the blood in my ears. “Me?” I asked, because the idea of spelling out someone’s punishment… deciding the shape of their days, the limit of their freedom…felt like a power I hadn’t earned and a cruelty I didn’t want to wield.
“Yes,” he said. “Bella and Maya’s punishment will be whatever you decide.”
Something cold slid through me. He wasn’t bluffing. He had the rare, quiet confidence of a man who meant exactly what he said.
I leaned back and gripped the arms of the chair until my knuckles went white. Thoughts spun, sharp–edged and unruly. I pictured Bella’s smile…the way she’d leaned into every chance to humiliate me…and then I saw Maya, how she had easily played me for a fool all along. How to punish them without becoming what I despised?
“You want me to spell out the punishments?” I asked, because the idea was still dizzying.” Alexander, I can’t-”
“You can.” He interrupted softly. He wasn’t impatient; he was patient in that terrible way of people who have made conclusions and will wait out any objections. “You’re Luna. You have the authority, and the right. So, why not?.
“At the same time, I’m the victim here,” I said, raw honesty rising up before I could censor it. “I can’t pretend my judgment won’t be tainted. If I decide what happens to them, how do I know I’m not just settling a score in front of everyone? How do I know I won’t make the punishment more about my anger than about justice?”
“Your judgment will be shaped by what you have experienced,” he said slowly. “That is true. It will be hard to separate feeling from fairness. But that is precisely why it must be you.”
“Fine,” I said at last. The word felt both like surrender and resolve. “I’ll do it. But I won’t pretend I’m not biased. I won’t pretend I’m not angry. I’ll say it exactly as I feel it.”
He inclined his head, and there was no mockery in the gesture, only respect. “That is what I expect.”
I thought of Maya first–her voice on that terrible replay, the way she flinched whenever her father raised his tone. There was a cruelty in coercion that deserved correction, but not the same correction reserved for a perpetrator who took pleasure in harm. Mercy and consequence needed to coexist if I wanted to be a leader who could claim moral authority.
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