Chapter Seventeen
Some things were so painful that one could not even risk thinking about them, let alone acknowledging them out loud.
Tethering to her sister’s betrothed king after binding herself to him in blood was certainly one of those things.
Fucking a prince she hated—but couldn’t seem to stay away from—to fill the void carved by the aforementioned king was another.
She could not tell which sat heavier on her shoulders.
Despite the near-constant ache in her chest begging her to get out of bed, shirk any concept of morality, and run to either of their arms, Lunelle did her best to ignore the alarms ringing against her skull.
Instead, she thought about how irritated she was with her mother as they dressed for the first meeting of the morning. Arcas had promised testimony from a captured Neptunian spy, and Oestera was eager to hear from them.
Lunelle had faked illness for the last three days, and she knew her excuses as to why she could not attend the daily activities were dwindling.
As Lura helped her slide the morning gown over her chest, Lunelle nearly lost her breath, the ripple of the invisible Tether so unsettling.
“Are you well, Princess?”
Lura asked.
“Fine,”
she muttered.
“You seem… distraught.”
Lunelle’s eyes flashed to Lura’s in the mirror before her. Distraught was one way to put it—she might have gone with something more akin to devastated or so confused I can’t figure out which way is Above and which is Below.
“I have much on my mind,”
Lunelle returned.
Lura laced up her dress, each tug of the ribbons a brutal reminder that she’d soon have to face the king.
And the prince.
Oh gods.
“Princess, your heart!”
Lura’s forehead creased with concern, her eyes wide as she listened to Lunelle draw a ragged breath. Of the two secrets shredding her mind, one would strike her dead for revealing, and the other simply made her wish for such a mercy.
“Lura,”
she breathed, the thought of saying it aloud choking her.
“What has happened?”
Lura held her shoulders, searching her crystalline gaze.
“Are you safe?”
No. No, she was not safe. She was in grave danger.
Lunelle held her shoulders back, fighting the urge to crumple into a sputtering mess. This was not who she was, not who her mother had carved her into. She rubbed her fingers over the small scar in her palm as if it might release some sort of cosmic wisdom and free her from this spiral.
“Are you hurt?”
Lura asked, pulling her hand out between them. The Moon-shaped cut was small enough—harmless to anyone not looking closely—but Lura was looking closely.
Lura softly scratched at the neckline of her dress, shifting the fabric ever so slightly away from her body and revealing the edges of a tattoo Lunelle recognized instantly, even from just a glance.
A dagger and the edge of a crown were inked in silver against her collarbone.
The princess gasped softly as her veins seized with adrenaline. She stared at her maiden, her friend of two decades, watching as Lura’s lips curled.
“I don’t know the secret passwords,”
Lunelle sighed, her eyes wide.
Lura sputtered a laugh.
“Who bound you?”
She held up her own wrist, a barely-there pink scar hovering beneath the fabric of her sleeve.
“I cannot say, can I?”
“You needn’t worry about the oath within the rebellion, it’s only outside of us that you’ll have consequences.”
“I did not get a copy of the rules.”
Lura sighed.
“If you had, that damned prince would have just incinerated it anyway.”
Lunelle’s brows arched.
“Apologies, Princess?—”
Lunelle grasped her hand.
“No! No, none of that. No more of that at all. I took the same oath you did, Lura. And I did it in all sincerity. I am not your princess, I am your peer.”
“Well, then,”
Lura said.
“What in the Nether are we going to do about the prince?”
Her heart sank. The weight of it was all too much.
“If only that were our largest problem, Lura.”
The maiden’s head tilted, a hesitation seeping into her smile.
“I will not bind you by blood, but if you tell a single Soul, I will make you wish the oath struck you dead before I did.”
Lura bristled, so unused to hearing anything of the sort from this sister. Astra had threatened her with much more for much less.
She nodded.
“Of course, Prin—Lunelle.”
Lunelle backed away from her, twisting her fingers against her chest.
“The Mercurian king bound me into the rebellion.”
Just breathing around the sounds of his home court felt impossible.
“Mirquios! Oh, that’s fantastic, do you think he bound your sister as well?”
“I do not know,”
Lunelle mumbled.
“But something… else. Something else happened between us.”
“Oh,”
Lura gasped, a shadow passing over her face.
“Oh, Lunelle. These things are hard to navigate, I’m sure your sister can forgive?—”
“Not that,”
Lunelle interrupted.
“It’s worse than that. The king and I… when our palms touched…”
Gods, how to say it, how to commit to it? If she said it, she could never escape it.
“I believe we Tethered.”
Lura’s eyes flared, the amethyst swirls darkening as she considered the implications.
“You… you believe? You are not sure?”
Lunelle shook her head.
“I do not know what else it could have been! I ran from him immediately, I was so overwhelmed.”
“But if you aren’t positive… what if it was not a Tether? What if it was just the alchemy between a demigoddess and a man as he bound you? Our blood is not like his.”
“What do you mean?”
Lunelle sank into an armchair, her head lighter now that she’d found someone to share her burden with.
“We share blood with the gods Above, Lunelle. We do not bleed crimson like the humans do. There’s something within it, something gilded, something that sparks and hums. You’ve felt it—surely.”
Lunelle thought back to her stibnite pieces, how they seemed to sing at her touch.
“I always thought that when—if—it happened, I would not be the least bit unsure.”
Lura kneeled before her, taking her hands from her lap.
“That’s how it should be, Lunelle. There should be no doubt. What if this is all just a misinterpretation?”
“Perhaps,”
she admitted, daring to relive the moment in her mind.
She’d felt her entire being shift, hadn’t she?
She’d heard the way her bones creaked as they moved to accommodate the weight of his Soul within hers.
She’d felt him pace the halls all morning, wandering back and forth, the cord between them ebbing and flowing in response. Hesitating outside her door last night.
Or perhaps it was all in her mind, her sick, twisted mind.
What if she was merely assigning a myth to the irredeemable feelings bubbling under her skin when she was near him?
Was she trying to excuse the betrayal of her sister?
“I suppose the only way for you to know is to see him again.”
Lura stood, offering her hands to pull Lunelle forward.
She sighed.
“I’d sooner tell my mother I joined a rebellion against her throne.”
Lura winced.
“Start with the king, perhaps.”
Any hope Lura had inspired in her chest that it had all been some sort of cosmic misunderstanding disappeared when Lunelle felt the king’s anxious energy hovering outside the dining hall.
She’d felt it when he left his room and again when he returned to it. She felt it tense and stretch as he stopped dead in his tracks entering the hall, his bright gaze falling on her.
She felt the shallow breaths rippling from him as he did the calculations and realized how limited his seating options were. But his crown prevailed, the pride woven into his muscles carried him through the hall’s doors.
Perhaps he’d convinced himself it was nothing, too.
“…and beyond that, I firmly believe we need to be more considerate of the Inner Courts’ sentiments before we make a final decision. If your court does not fully embrace the Plutonians, the Living Courts will feel those ripples in the water—oh. Oh! Oh,”
Kahlia, the High Regent of Venus, had been deep in conversation with Oestera when they stumbled over their words, their brows arching in surprise at the morning’s mysterious tension.
Lunelle had not been fully engaged, she knew, but she heard the startle in their speech. Her eyes flickered to Kahlia’s and then followed as they widened and darted between Lunelle and the king as he hovered near the door.
“At any rate,”
Kahlia recovered and continued.
“We cannot move forward if there’s any… hesitation… on the princess’s side.”
Oestera nodded, watching her daughter’s face carefully as she sipped her tea, the hot liquid hardly registering to her.
“Good morrow, Your Highness!”
Kahlia called as Lunelle felt the cursed rope around her heart circle her. Mirquios kept a wide berth as he rounded the table and sat between her mother and the other Venusian courtiers.
Five sets of dreamy, lovelorn eyes watched in silence as the Lunar princess and Mercurian king avoided acknowledging one another.
Oestera cleared her throat.
“I understand your concerns, Kahlia. Deeply,”
she added.
“There is plenty for Lunelle and me to discuss on the matter. We will be thoughtful in our decisions.”
“Excellent,”
Kahlia mumbled, the tension at the table pulsating through the morning air.
“Arcas!”
Oestera called out as the prince appeared. She stood, rushing toward him as she looped her arm through his, disappearing into the palace gardens beyond the dining hall.
It was just as well, Lunelle thought. She didn’t need another man with whom to avoid eye contact.
“I believe we’re late for our conference with the Martians,”
Kahlia said to their courtiers. They all rose in fluid motions, their soft gazes avoiding falling between the young king and princess.
And then they were very much alone.
“Lunelle,”
Mirquios whispered, his voice tight.
She risked a glance at him.
The second their eyes met, there was no possible way to deny their unfortunate truth.
“Godsdammit,”
Lunelle cursed, her chest on fire with seething anger, and something else. Something she’d spent so very much of her life pretending she did not have.
Desire.
“Lu,”
Mirquios said again, leaning forward. His courtiers filed into the dining hall, as well as the rest of the Lunar Court.
“I do not know where to begin?—”
“You can start with how in the Nether you’ve managed to Tether to not one sister but two,”
she growled.
Mirquios scoffed, a sound that stoked the rage within her.
“I only… I only Tethered to one,”
he said. For just a moment, her mind turned over the possibility that she was once again wrong.
“Astra… she did not think your mother would approve of her choice of suitors, so we… we concocted the Tether story.”
Lunelle rolled her eyes.
“My mother invited you expressly to court my sister, you knew she would approve!”
“I did,”
Mirquios nodded.
“That is true. But I also knew that if your sister knew that, she’d run off with the next fool, and I did not want to risk losing her to another court. Not all of the monarchs are as bought into the vision as we are. I knew Astra would be safe in Mercury. She has the experience we need from her time in Celene. I thought it was harmless. I never—never—would have gone along with it if I’d known! If I…”
He swallowed, his eyes softening.
“If I had known what I was missing.”
Lunelle sighed, the tension melting just a tad in her shoulders. It did not solve any of the problems it presented, but it did ease her overwhelming guilt enough that she could breathe again.
“You and Astra…”
“If you asked her, she’d tell you the exact same story, I swear it. She’d also tell you, while laughing, I’m sure, that romantically… we were not much of a pair.”
Lunelle blushed, the delicate rose shade sending a companion heat to his neck.
“I do not need to know the details of your intimate encounters, Mirquios, I assure you?—”
“There were none!”
he said bluntly, perhaps a bit too loudly. He lowered his tone.
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Lunelle. We both agreed this was a political move, not one of passion.”
“It does not matter,”
Lunelle said.
“Your status does not change with your feelings, Mirquios. You are still engaged to her, and she is still counting on a union with you. I will not be the reason her plans fall apart, I cannot?—”
“Understood,”
he said, waving a hand between them as her voice reached a pitch on the brink of tears.
“I have no aims at coming between sisters.”
“That aside, I’m practically engaged to Arcas?—”
“No,”
Mirquios muttered.
“Not yet, you are not.”
Her lips twisted into a delicate pout, the words coming out in a tight whisper.
“But I will be.”
Mirquios pushed against his chest. Her sternum ached around her heart as it strained to contain the impulse to reach across the table and haul him to her.
“Surely it will not feel like this forever,”
Lunelle offered.
“So arduous. If you’re to marry Astra, you’ll forever be in my life in some way. We will be friends, as we are now.”
Mirquios leaned away from her, the Tether pulling tight between them.
“Of course,” he said.
“It will be enough,”
she assured him.
“It has to be enough, Mirquios.”
The king did not have a response.