Chapter Four
Lunelle hardly rested that night.
Between the anxiety keeping her ear tuned to the hall, and the humbling after-effects of Yallara’s tea, there was no amount of sleep that could have made climbing out of bed the next morning pleasant.
But duty waited for no hangover, and she was up and being laced into one of her more attractive Summer gowns before the room even came into focus.
The palace halls were still oddly stilted with an icy silence—no one knew what to say in the wake of such a shocking occurrence. She’d half expected the courtiers to stick to their assigned wings for the day, but the Sun had drawn them out of the halls and into the gardens and groves.
To Lunelle’s dismay, her mother had not forgotten about Arcas’s promise to give her a tour of the grove. They were both restless as they searched for small talk along the twisted trees.
Dense greenery punctuated by crimson bulbs loomed over them, the tangled mass of fruit blocking out the Summer Sun. Lunelle pulled nervously at the edge of her sleeve as soft cream linen dragged across the rippling grass.
“They do not produce fruit for the first century,”
Arcas murmured, turning his chin up to the nearest branch. He reached his spindly cerulean knuckles out and brushed the soft underside of an unfurling leaf with a tenderness that surprised her. Everything about him was sharp. He’d been frantic last night, furious.
But this morning he was too tired to maintain his rage.
“It takes them eons to warm up, but once they do…”
he trailed off. His fingers wrapped around a plump red fruit, snapping it from the branch.
“They’ll produce fruit for another six, seven hundred years. Maybe more if they’re from a particularly strong lineage.”
Lunelle lagged behind him as he moved from tree to tree, his hands whispering amongst the leaves as they moved along. Her mother’s stare burned against her back, watching them weave through the grove from a lavish tent on the palace lawn. She’d stayed close all morning, uneasy after last night’s attack. When Arcas greeted them over breakfast in the tent, Lunelle expected her mother would join them.
She glanced over her shoulder, covered by the light fabric of her dress in an effort to prevent burns to her pale skin, watching the Inner Courtiers stretch out in the Sun, basking in its sacred light. They held no reservations as they let the warm rays spill across the bridges of their noses, freckling them with shimmering spots.
A golden beam slipped through the trees, toasting a perfect circle against her palm. She twisted her hand one way and the next, watching the sunlight chase her blood across icy skin.
She thought it would hurt—the Sun. But it was not pain that she felt. It was something much more frightening that took hold across her chest.
Desire.
Desire was not something Lunelle had much experience feeding, but plenty of practice ignoring. She’d certainly encountered its hungry mouth in her younger years when crowns were merely an accessory, the very notion of thrones reserved for her mother alone.
Lunelle had let it wash over her in midnight meetings in palace gardens against the unsteady hands of councilwomen’s sons. She’d felt it climb her spine as thick-lashed eyes flashed toward hers across ballrooms, courtiers spinning out in moonshine clouds. She’d given herself over to it a time or two when she was simply unable to distract herself. But mostly, she’d shoved it deep down under rocky shores where she didn’t have to stare it full in the face.
As was her duty.
She was the heir to a crown of stars, as ancient as the spray of glittering bodies that inspired it, and she had too much resting on her shoulders to risk distraction.
In the Plutonian Court, though, she found the thought of stepping into the gilded light more than pleasant. It was downright tempting.
“Which one is the oldest?”
Lunelle asked, her swirling gaze sweeping the orchard. There must have been a hundred rows of trees, easily. They stretched into oblivion as far as she could tell.
Arcas’s lips tilted into a crooked smile.
“This way.”
He dodged quickly into the thick walls of the pomegranate trees, cutting across a dozen neatly marked rows as she skipped over fallen limbs and rotting fruit to keep up.
“This one,”
he breathed, stopping short in the middle of a row, his boots crunching against decaying leaves. Lunelle steadied herself at his side, looking up at a towering tree twice the size of the rest, its roots tangled and popping up from the ground.
Her heart twisted as she traced the curled and peeling lines of the bark.
“It’s incredible.”
Arcas reached for a branch, pulling it gently and letting it spring back up. The night before, he’d been stiff, inhibited by his obvious nerves, and then, of course, panic-stricken as things devolved. But here, hidden between shadows, he was lighter in his step. Almost amiable, but she hesitated to bestow him too much generosity too soon.
He was, after all, an enemy to her court until mere days ago, and revealed himself to be far from a seasoned leader last night.
“How is your sister?”
Lunelle asked, her voice hardly a whisper.
Arcas glanced at her in the space of a breath, his eyes returning to the tree just as quickly. He tucked his hands behind his back as he stepped closer.
“She is all right,”
he said.
“As well as she can be. I’m not sure she fully understands the threat laid before her.”
“I’m certain she does,”
Lunelle said.
“She’s a smart girl.”
“That she is,”
he agreed.
Lunelle rubbed the lace of her sleeve between her thumb and forefinger.
“And you? Are you all right?”
Arcas did not turn to look at her, his silence loaded with a myriad of emotions she did not understand.
“They say the tree grew from Proserpina’s tears as Pluto stole her away.”
“Proserpina?”
Lunelle asked, unsurprised that he’d avoided her question.
His lips ticked upward in what was dangerously close to a smile as he turned those deep blue eyes on her.
“The Goddess of Death. Pluto’s bride, though the myths tend to glamorize their marriage. He kidnapped her from her family’s orchard and forced her to take his throne.”
Lunelle sighed.
“That’s terrible. Her poor family must have been devastated.”
Arcas nodded.
“Her mother spent the rest of her days searching for her. But Proserpina grew to tolerate the marriage.”
“Until Mercury spotted her.”
Mirquios’s deep voice shook both Lunelle and Arcas as they moved apart from one another. The tension in the prince’s shoulders snapped together immediately, holding him in a rigid grasp as the king edged his way into their conversation.
“Yes,”
Arcas said, his lips pressing together.
“Mercury found her as he traveled the courts.”
“He saved her,”
Mirquios explained to Lunelle, touching the tip of his finger to his lips.
“Pluto was selfish—grasping for power he did not understand.”
Arcas snorted.
“Pluto was a lonely deity, he merely desired to find partnership?—”
“Ah, yes, and his selfish desires justified forcing a young woman to wear a crown of bones?—”
“I wonder,”
Lunelle interjected, stepping away from them as she stroked the taut flesh of the nearest pomegranate, “What either of you knows about Proserpina’s desires?”
She unleashed a starry glare on the men, the silence following as endless as the gnarled roots dancing between them, reaching for anything to consume, tearing paths through the dust to find any life.
Arcas glanced back toward the palace, his lips parting as if he had something more to add as he rocked forward on his heels, but he gave up. He bowed to her quickly before disappearing into the thicket.
“Predictable retreat,”
the king muttered.
Lunelle strolled toward the tent, her linen skirts swishing behind her as the king trailed. His dizzying eyes scanned the orchard as they walked—checking the shadows, she realized.
“Are you feeling okay this morning, Princess?”
Lunelle winced. She’d attempted to forget the bulk of last night’s activities, but the surge of energy in her veins had kept her up until the Sun made its return, beckoning her to the window as it bled vibrant oranges and reds onto the terrace below her window.
“I’ve been better,”
she confessed.
“I do not know which took a worse toll—the attacker, or the tea.”
Mirquios laughed, the low rumble of it settling between the trees like an early morning fog.
“I’ve had plenty of rough mornings in my day, but this one was particularly horrendous. I think both share the blame.”
“I do not think I’ll be partaking in any more of the princess’s tea parties.”
He smiled softly, a genuine thing, but his eyes remained elsewhere.
“Certainly not.”
They continued slowly, meandering across the orchard. She preferred his company to that of the tent, where half the courtiers were rehashing everything they thought they saw, and the other half were too exhausted to engage beyond tacit smiles.
But the silence between them was surprisingly tolerable, Lunelle noted, irritated at her growing affinity for her sister’s fiancé. It was so much easier to dislike him for stealing Astra away, and yet, there was such an easy charm about him, she found it damn near impossible to hold him accountable for it.
And after watching him take control of the courtiers in the hall, she’d grown an ever more regrettable feeling toward the man—respect.
Lunelle picked up her skirt as she hopped over a twisted section of roots, the edges of the pale linen stained with Plutonian dust.
“She wanted to be seen,”
Mirquios said, tucking his chin toward his chest as he stepped over the roots.
“Pardon?”
Lunelle asked.
“Proserpina.”
Lunelle shook her head, finding it a tad bit easier to dislike him again.
“Of course, because all women naturally desire to be the center of men’s attention.”
A slow grin cracked over his face as those bright eyes stared back toward the massive tree they’d left behind, rising above the rest of the grove.
“She wanted to be seen. Pluto only ever looked at her. He never saw her for who she truly was.”
Lunelle mulled over his point as they began walking again, the quick anger that rose in her chest dissipating with each step. He plucked a pomegranate from the last tree at the far edge, her mother’s stare once again finding her from the tent now that she’d emerged once again.
“You cannot court him,”
Mirquios said as plainly as one might state the direction of the wind. He pulled at the end of the fruit, struggling to get hold of it.
Lunelle cleared her throat, still stuck on what he’d risen within her mind about Proserpina.
“I’m sorry?”
“Arcas. He’s a disaster, Lunelle, you saw so last night. He cannot lead his own modest court, let alone a court as powerful as yours.”
She looked away from him, searching the tent, spotting her mother as she laughed with Kahlia. The pomegranate slipped from Mirquios’s hands, landing in the grass below with a thud. Lunelle quickly bent at her knees and scooped it up.
She tilted her head, watching the prince as he slinked between tables, a dark cloud rolling between the courtiers. Searching for his sister, she assumed.
“Arcas is green, I’ll give you that. But I’m not sure he’s a disaster.”
“There’s something dark within him, Lunelle. Something I don’t trust.”
“I feel it,”
Lunelle admitted, cracking the pomegranate in half in one quick twist. She handed half to the king, his eyes darting from her hands to her face.
“I loosened it,”
he said, eyebrows arched as he pointed to her pale hands now stained in blood reds.
“Perhaps Proserpina did not want to be looked at or seen,”
Lunelle mused, flinging the ruby splatter from her fingertips. Mirquios’s eyes narrowed, watching as she popped a handful of weeping seeds into her mouth.
“Oh?”
She nodded, shoving the second half into his hands.
“Perhaps she wanted to be feared.”
Lunelle rarely let herself slip into such an unbecoming posture, but given the seclusion of the tiny courtyard garden between her chambers and the dining hall, she let herself relax.
She pulled one knee up onto the stone edge above a rippling fountain, adjusting her skirts so they covered anything necessary as she swung the other leg back and forth across the pavers. A wall of lush sapphire roses climbed over her, dripping deep blue petals into the fountain’s water.
She counted them as they fell, allowing her mind to focus on nothing but their spiraling paths lest she devolve into panic.
A shuffling of boots ripped her from petal seventeen.
“Apologies,”
Arcas offered, holding his palms up before backing toward a marble arch separating the palace from the small paradise.
“Don’t apologize! I should be going, anyway,”
Lunelle said, rising from her perch.
His eyes fell over the cobblestone between them, a softness to his gaze when he wasn’t in a dead panic.
“I didn’t mean to frighten you off,”
he mumbled, running his fingers through his hair.
Lunelle rolled her eyes as he stepped closer beneath the rose canopy.
“Very little could frighten me off.”
Arcas snorted, shrugging his shoulders as he focused his attention on the intricacies of a particularly large bloom near his face.
“I believe it,”
he said quietly into the petals.
“You avoided my question earlier.”
“What question?”
Lunelle wrapped her arms across her body, rocking side to side as she ventured closer.
“I asked if you were okay.”
“Ah,”
he hummed, the pale column of his throat tightening against a response.
“Well,”
she sighed. Lunelle turned to leave him to his sulking, void of any patience for it. Before she crossed through the arch, she turned, resting her hand on the alabaster marble.
“I will not bother asking a third time, if that eases your mind.”
Back in her room, she pulled the curtain away from her window to find he was still standing in the same spot, overlooking the swaying roses.
“What is he doing out there?”
Lura asked, craning her neck between Lunelle and the glass.
“What all men do when they cannot express a feeling,”
she scoffed.
“He’s plotting.”
Her tea was cold.
Lunelle had stared at the same page in her novel for far too long, fixated on a turn of phrase she hadn’t been able to untangle as her mind swirled with thoughts.
“What do you think?”
her mother asked, appearing in her evening wear. Several maidens trailed her, fussing with the buttons on the high neck.
“I think it’s a bit overwrought,”
Lunelle whispered, laying the book on the table before her.
“The love interest isn’t very believable. He falls for the princess far too quickly.”
Oestera paused beside her daughter, laying a hand on her shoulder. As she stopped, so did everything in the room, the chaotic flitting about of maidens pausing for a moment.
“I meant about the prince.”
“Arcas?”
Oestera laughed.
“Is there another?”
“No,”
Lunelle breathed.
“He’s… fine? I suppose? I can’t say I’m impressed with how he handled things last night, and he was only slightly more tolerable today.”
Oestera sighed.
“It wasn’t exactly a show of strength, was it? But perhaps with the right leader by his side, he might make better decisions.”
Oestera’s delicate brow curved upward, her thinning skin lifting with plenty of implication.
“I believe Mirquios is spoken for,”
Lunelle whispered to herself, snorting at her joke. Oestera did not return the amusement, her eyes locked on her daughter’s flippant face.
“Oh,”
Lunelle said before she could stop herself, sitting at attention. Her movement was so sudden it shook Oestera’s hand from her shoulder.
“Mother, I?—”
“Breathe, darling. We have plenty of time to get to know him. There’s still so much to understand about their potential allyship. I did not mean to panic you.”
Lunelle’s cheeks heated.
“Are you not afraid of his lack of…”
She searched for the word, her eyes landing on her book as if it might fly off the page.
“Refinement? His court is in shambles, and he crumbled the second things got tense. Even Mirquios thinks him a mess.”
“Mirquios has been on his own throne for not even five years. You are all young and reckless in your own unique ways. And when he brings your sister back to his court, he’ll have his own shambles to contend with.”
Lunelle’s lips drew into a tight line.
“I do not think that’s fair?—”
“You mistake my remark for criticism,”
Oestera said. She did not elaborate as Lunelle waited in the silence.
She leaned her chin on her palm.
“I will court him if you truly think it the most strategic option, but I do not find him to be a particularly compelling ruler, Mother.”
Oestera exhaled, something stirring within her gaze as she moved back toward the maidens waiting patiently.
She did not offer anything more to her daughter before dinner.