The crystal had lived in the shadows of her chest since the day of the ceremony.
That was where it had ended up naturally when everything resolved, and where it had stayed, because Luna's body didn't want to stop hugging it and had decided it belonged there with the same instinct that made hands move toward something before the mind had finished deciding to reach.
She felt it constantly, not intrusively, not as a weight or an active reminder, but the way you felt things that had become part of you without requiring thought.
She was fiercely protective of it. Protectiveness that was less a decision than a posture, a defensive closing around something before any threat had even been named.
But when Ren asked, she didn't feel the resistance she would have expected.
She took it out without hesitating.
