Chapter Eighteen
The pull of the Tether did not get any less distracting.
If anything, it got worse as the day wore on.
It wasn’t just the physical tug she felt toward him, but the emotional complexity that drowned her. It was like she could hear his thoughts from another room over—muted and muffled, but the sentiment relayed all the same. He was feeling just as conflicted as she was.
She’d escaped the torture after dinner, opting to hide in the pomegranate orchards instead of suffering through more drinks and dancing, likely in arms she could no longer think about without feeling the need to vomit.
It was all supremely cruel.
She wandered through the orchard, enjoying the familiarity of the night wrapped around her shoulders until she came to the ancient tree she’d stood before just a few weeks prior. The roots dove underground in thick, wise twists, speckled with fallen fruit.
“Perhaps you were right,”
Lunelle whispered to Proserpina, wherever she was.
“Perhaps neither Mercury nor Pluto was at fault, but only yourself.”
She sighed, folding herself between roots at the base of the tree, tossing her skirts over her feet as she leaned against the withering bark.
“Or perhaps you were the eldest daughter,”
Lunelle mumbled.
“Trapped by the expectations, theirs and yours.”
She pushed at the muscles in her chest, their constant engagement starting to wear on her.
“You could have at least warned me,”
Lunelle said, closing her eyes.
“Warned you about what?”
She snapped her head forward as the prince approached. His evening attire was lined in glimmering silver threads reflecting the moonlight above.
“Arcas,”
she said, moving to stand, but he waved her off.
“May I join you?”
She nodded as he sat beside her, his tall, slender frame weaving between roots and overgrown grass. His eyes fell to her chest, and for one moment, she worried he could see what she felt, but she realized she was still massaging the sore muscles.
“You’ve seemed unwell these last few days,” he said.
“Have I?”
she asked, knowing he was doing her a kindness by calling it so gently.
“I hope that it doesn’t have anything to do with the other night?—”
“No,”
Lunelle scoffed. It had nearly everything to do with that night, but not for the reasons he thought.
“Good. I know we are… somewhat attached, Princess, but I would like to discuss formalizing our engagement.”
“Oh,”
Lunelle breathed.
“My mother really should be?—”
“She and I have spoken. Many times. But I find myself wondering if you do indeed wish to take the Plutonian throne?—”
“What?”
she asked, sitting up straighter to face him.
“Where did I lose you?”
She bit her lip.
“If we were to wed, Arcas, you would be the Lunar king. I would not be the Plutonian queen. You would forfeit your throne to your sister—you are aware of this, surely!”
Arcas frowned.
“I assumed your sister would take the Lunar throne and you’d rule beside me.”
She eyed him, baffled.
“Forget all of the reasons I would have no need to make such a trade, but why would you give up a more powerful throne?”
“You have more power in the Lunar Court. I would be an accessory at best.”
Lunelle sneered.
“For one thing, that’s not how it works in the Lunar Court. My father is an integral leader in our society—you’ve clearly been stained by your father’s misgivings about women on thrones. And for another, by your own logic, you’d prefer I become the accessory, then?”
His lips twisted as his face flushed.
“That is not what I meant?—”
She folded her arms across her chest, the buzzing of the Tether whispering to double down. To wound him. She stood, determined to say her final piece and leave his grasping for a lick of sense.
“Allow me to remind you which one of us is here to beg the other’s mercy, Prince.”
She spat the word, her foot digging into the soft ground.
“Lunelle,”
he sighed, standing from his perch.
“I did not mean to hurt your feelings.”
“My feelings are fine!”
she declared.
“It’s my pride you’ve assaulted if anything. I will not be relegated to planning balls and festivals, Arcas. We are heading for a war, a war the likes of which has not been seen in centuries, and I am poised to lead the most powerful armies in the universe through it. I will not be stepping away from my court for anything, but especially not for a man who does not understand the first thing about duty—a man who not a month ago told me he’d just as soon appoint someone else to his throne because he’s too scared to do right by them.”
She moved to dart into the trees, but he caught her elbow.
“And what of your logic then? If you’re so offended by my lack of duty to my court, surely you can understand why I might have changed my mind after a certain princess woke me from my stupor?”
Lunelle pulled her arm from his grasp.
“If you truly cared about them, you’d do whatever it took to secure their safety. You’d sit proudly beside the Lunar queen and let your sister, who is more than capable, lead them to victory. Staying here out of a sense of duty instead of seeking out what would be truly beneficial is cowardly at best. Selfish at worst.”
“Yallara is a child?—”
She snorted.
“And you’re so grown?”
Arcas glared, hovering over her, his eyes falling as the wheels turned within his mind.
“My sister is easily swayed by the movements around her, she does not understand their larger implications, she does not understand the long-term impact, and she has no respect for the traditions of our ancestors! My father would turn in his grave if I put her on the throne.”
Lunelle grinned, the cracks in his armor showing now. She stepped closer, her proximity cutting off his thoughts.
“Your father? The one you told me in no uncertain terms was a monster. Why are you so haunted by his voice? What part of you still cries out for a man who, by your own admission, had no love for his sons? The world that made you is gone—it’s burning away by the second. You are well-heeled, Arcas, but even the most loyal dog still sleeps outside.”
“I beg your?—”
She clutched at his tunic.
“Ask yourself why you’re so dedicated to earning the approval of a ghost.”
“Because!”
he roared.
“Because. Because I know no other way?—”
Lunelle rasped, “Because you know no other way or because you like it this way?”
Arcas glared, his eyes flashing even in the dark.
She stepped closer once again.
“Power is an addictive substance, Arcas, but it is also corrosive. Things do not have to stay this way simply because you like the way it tastes.”
A chill settled between them, charged with spilled ink and smoke.
“And what about you, Princess? Does your mother know she’s raised such a progressive thinker?”
he whispered.
“She had her chance to disappoint her mother. I look forward to having mine.”
She slowly inhaled, her chest tightening as she leaned closer to him, casting a heated stare into his.
“You mystify me,”
Arcas mumbled.
Lunelle tilted her head, narrowing her eyes.
“If only you’d mystify me. I can predict you as well as I can predict the phases of the?—”
Before she could finish her insult, Arcas closed the gap between them, pressing his lips to hers and stealing her breath in a way that she didn’t find entirely unpleasant.
Lunelle pulled herself away from him, lost on how to breathe, how to see straight. And for a moment, she didn’t feel a sick pooling in her chest.
For a moment, she wasn’t thinking about… well… a godsdamned thing.
Lunelle thrust herself forward again, tangling herself with Arcas and forgetting everything about everyone except the way he tasted like certain dark things. There was only him. She melted into his touch as his long fingers tore at the back of her dress, digging into the silk ribbons at her waist. He twisted her, backing her into the ancient bark of the tree.
Peeling wood clawed at her hair, but even that felt good in his haze.
His fingers crawled over her, hesitating at her breast before she pushed his hand upward, letting him hold onto her in all the ways she’d secretly craved since she left his bed the last time.
It was senseless—it was cruel—to let him give her even a fraction of what she so desperately wanted. To take anything from him at all.
His mouth dropped from hers to her neck, his hips crashing into hers. It was the whisper of her name that sent a despairing wave of reality over her.
“Arcas,”
she sputtered back, pushing him away.
His breath caught, a whimpered plea escaping in the passion before he grabbed hold of his senses. His chest heaved as he ran his hand over his face, disheveled in a way he was not keen to let go of.
They both gasped for breath in the silence.
There, in the heft of the air between them, there was something else. Something so wildly uncontrollable to her, the urge to unfold herself before him and let him see pieces of her no one else had access to.
It was beyond maddening.
She stepped forward again, holding either side of his face as she examined him, his eyes boring into hers.
“What are you?—”
“Shh,”
she whispered.
“I’m trying to convince myself not to fuck some sense into you.”
“I’m afraid you’ve only ever had the opposite effect, Princess,”
he returned, pulling her into a darker, more tender kiss that twisted spaces within her she had not felt before. His tongue parted her lips, poisoning her slowly, the haze of him spreading through her veins. His hand wandered over her, giving her more space to breathe between touches, to feel the full arc of his movements as he dragged his fingertips across the neckline of her gown.
His fingers slipped below, pinching at her breast, eliciting a soft gasp from her throat that he was quick to replicate.
He traced his lips over her jaw, grasping at her neck. She was lost to him, fully given up on trying to stop this. She needed it.
Arcas pressed her further into the tree, his knee slipping between her legs. It was irony in her truest form—the heat of the Ice Queen, revealing that he had any semblance of control over her.
He whispered into her ear, “I wonder…”
Arcas dragged a finger across her cheek.
“Do you blush like that under his touch, or just mine?”
Lunelle froze.
“Excuse me?”
Arcas pulled his fingertip away from her face.
“I have eyes everywhere, Lunelle. There isn’t a room you enter I don’t know about.”
Lunelle shoved him away from her, the heat in the blood pumping through her chest fizzling at his implication.
“Nor do I mind,”
Arcas said, shrugging.
“You can spend whatever time you wish with the Mercurian.”
She could have cleared the accusation. She could have told him there was nothing—nothing—going on between them. Because the truth was that nothing could pass between them in the end.
But she liked the way his eyes flared when she smirked.
“I’ll be sure to ask him and report back.”
Arcas parted his lips but seemed to think better of his next insult. Instead, he leaned forward and brushed his lips to hers one more time, surprising her as she pulled away.
“Good evening, Lunelle.”
“Arcas—”
It was almost better that he darted into the trees before she could find anything else to say.
The moment he left her line of sight, the torture of the Tether resumed, burning a hole right through her and suffocating any attempts at justifying her actions.
She should have known it would be even louder upon its return. She should have predicted that yet another tryst with Arcas would only make her feel worse.
But she could not have fathomed the absolute crush of betrayal she felt as Mirquios’s movements faded back into her consciousness.
The Tether hummed and twisted as she wandered from the grove, aimless as the fog from the sheer range of her predicaments pulled at her mind. If she hadn’t been so overwhelmed, she might have felt the sudden slack on the cord as she rounded the corner outside of her quarters.
“Princess,”
Mirquios said as she stopped short of him, her cheeks flushing.
Could he feel it? What she’d done? The same way she felt him sigh in pain or tense in irritation all day?
“I was just on my way to bed,”
she muttered, unable to look at him.
Mirquios stepped closer, the sigh of the Tether too generous, too tempting.
“Lu—”
“Goodnight,”
she rasped, fighting a downpour as a storm swelled in her chest.
She left him in the hall, where he stayed for much longer than she’d liked to have known.
“You should not be here,”
Lunelle whispered as she looked up from her book.
They were not in the Plutonian Court in her dream. They were back home, tucked away into Lunelle’s favorite corner of the smallest library in the palace. Moonbeams shattered between shelves, warping and wavering in the astral.
She’d been curled up in the armchair she liked best, re-reading the same book of poetry she’d read dozens of times, running her fingers over the bleeding ink in the margins with her sister’s bold lettering.
Hiding. That’s what she’d really been doing. Though the sting of her guilt was quieter in this plane, it still poked at her as she tried to steady her breath.
“I wouldn’t even know where ‘here’ is,”
Mirquios mumbled, leaning against an ancient shelf.
She folded her book, setting it in her lap as she lowered her feet to the floor.
“We’re in the Andromeda library back home. Not far from your quarters.”
He nodded and pointed to her book.
“Any good?”
Lunelle laughed, but it was a curt sound, an immediate reminder that nothing about this was amusing.
“It’s my favorite.”
“And your favorite tea,”
he said, gesturing to the simmering pot of chamomile on the coffee table before her.
“Well, favorite non-hallucinogenic tea.”
“Correct,” she said.
“And your favorite Mercurian.”
Lunelle glanced around.
“Is the commander here?”
The king winced.
“Ha, very funny.”
“It doesn’t hurt as much here,”
Lunelle said, rubbing at her chest. She could still feel the Tether, but it was a whisper instead of a shout.
“Much easier,”
he agreed.
“You seemed agitated in the hall earlier. More so than at dinner. Or lunch.”
She heaved a sigh.
“I had an… argument with the prince.”
“Ah,”
he said. They were both unsure how to navigate the topic—it was clear in their twin hesitation to move forward.
He left his station at the shelf and sat on the coffee table across from her. Even there, where everything moved in slow currents, the air still pulled taut between them.
“Did he hurt you?”
Lunelle rolled her eyes.
“No. It would certainly be easier to hate him if he were as physically cruel as he can be emotionally.”
“But he touched you,”
Mirquios said. He did not ask. He didn’t have to.
“It wasn’t uninvited,”
Lunelle whispered.
The king nodded slowly, a strange blend of envy and anger slipping between them. She felt his attempts to suppress the emotions bleeding into the Tether, but it was not enough to quiet the resounding thought bouncing between their chests.
She was not his. She was not his. She was not his.
“Gods, this is complicated,”
he admitted.
Lunelle winced.
“Everything is. Arcas… is incredibly complex. I can feel it in him—he wants to do good, but he is so misguided about what ‘good’ looks like for everyone. I do not know how to get through to him. The moment we get into any serious conversations, we both explode. I fear the only thing that stops us from killing one another is… is?—”
Mirquios eyed her.
“You don’t owe me any explanations, Lunelle.”
“I know. And yet, I feel compelled to share every passing thought with you.”
“I worry, Lu. If he found out about you joining the rebels… the volatility you describe… it would be a disaster.”
Lunelle frowned. She’d thought of nothing else all evening.
“I can handle myself.”
“Of course you can,”
he said.
“But you don’t have to. I know that we’re in a complex situation. But I cannot stop myself from caring for you, in whatever capacity you’ll allow. If you want to be friends, we will be the very best of them. If you want to be enemies, it would be my honor to bare my neck to you. The only thing I can’t be to you is indifferent.”
Her wide eyes drank him in, allowing the slightest smile to unfurl over her lips. She leaned forward yet again, knowing the danger it put her in. But it was impossible to resist the warmth of him.
“You will make this impossible for me, won’t you?”
Mirquios shook his head.
“Blame the gods, Princess. I’m merely a victim.”
“I cannot allow this to be anything other than friendship,”
she whispered, desperate to follow her words as they landed on his ears.
“I know,”
he returned, his eyes locked on hers.
She swallowed—it may have been dulled, but the Tether was not silent. It begged, pleaded for her to close the short gap between them.
“Perhaps we could always have the library,”
Lunelle said, her throat tight with every emotion she couldn’t stomach.
“Maybe dreams could be enough for us.”
Mirquios nodded, unable to form much more than a deep sigh. He held out a hand toward her, an invitation she tentatively accepted, the wild heat between their palms so intense she felt it even through the rippling walls of the astral.
It was the most they could give one another.
It would never be enough.
“Read your book, Princess. I’ll keep watch,”
he laughed, sliding from the table to the floor beside her chair. He leaned his head against the arm, handing her the book of poems.
“What are you watching for?”
she asked, settling back into her chair and cracking her book open.
“Plutonian princes,”
he mumbled.
When she woke, the pain began anew, stretching and pulling as she rolled to her side and let a few tears slide onto her pillow like liquid starlight pooling at the corner of her lips.
It was impossible—untenable.
She’d never be able to stand it.