Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Oh!”
Oestera set her book on the table across from her chair.
“Sorry Mother, I thought I’d be alone here,”
Lunelle said, her arms filled with books she’d brought back from the Mercurian library.
“I was waiting for you, actually,”
Oestera said, her face worn from the heightened emotions of the last few days.
“Me?”
Her mother sighed, gesturing to the chair beside her.
“It is honorable, Lunelle, to choose your court over your own dreams,”
Oestera said, stirring her coffee.
“Many simply aren’t capable of it. They crumble beneath the weight of a crown before they get their bearings and build enough muscle to hold it.”
Lunelle did not understand what she meant by her musings. Her lungs slowly filled with dread as she turned them over in her mind. She sank into her chair, wishing a pit would open up beneath her and take her back to the encounter with Pluto, where she might ask him why the Nether he’d dared to make her hope.
“It is honorable,”
Oestera said again.
“But honor is not all there is to life.”
Lunelle’s forehead creased.
“Mother, I am tired?—”
“Hear me when I tell you, my darling girl, that you and I are not as unalike as I might have thought. As you surely think. I was not much older than you when Leona died and tossed my entire life plan into the ether. Things change, Lunelle. That’s all I’m getting at. And if you need to change with them, I would hope you’d have the courage to do so.”
Lunelle eyed her mother. She studied the delicate lines forming at the corners of her lips, the fold through her forehead that Lunelle used to imagine Astra carving with her own blade. It seemed so connected to her sister’s behavior.
“Do you understand me, Lunelle?”
“No,”
Lunelle snorted.
“No, I do not. My entire life, you have painstakingly and relentlessly trained me to only think of everyone else, never let my will supersede the betterment of my court, and now, weeks away from my coronation, you’re unraveling it all to tell me what, Mother? What do you want me to do?”
Oestera’s eyes flared.
“That’s exactly it, Lunelle. You can’t rely on what I want you to do. After your coronation, I will be on borrowed time. I will make my Ascent to the Lunar throne in the Court Above, and all of this will be up to you. Every piece of it. I’m telling you that it’s time to consider what you want that to look like.”
Lunelle’s neck flushed pink with heat. She was exhausted by her mother’s riddles.
“That's all I consider, Mother. It’s all I’ve ever considered—and I resent the implication that I’m not doing exactly what it is I believe to be right.”
Oestera held her hands up, backing down from the fight in a move that Lunelle had never once seen.
“I was merely offering some understanding, Lunelle.”
Lunelle swallowed a bitter laugh. Understanding was comical. Understanding was long overdue. Understanding was worthless to her now.
“Perhaps your understanding would be better spent on the daughter down the hall, hmm?”
Lunelle arched her brow, knowing that throwing Astra into the mix would swiftly shift the focus from her.
Oestera exhaled.
“If I understood your sister less, perhaps I could give her more.”
She left Lunelle to ponder her strange circles, pulling at threads to which she did not see any ends in sight.
“Explain it again,”
Mirquios said, his eyes widening as Lunelle held up the diagram she’d drawn.
“It’s a symbolic ceremony,”
Lunelle said, the lines of her diagram slipping from the page as her dream struggled to hold the concepts together.
“The priestess will lead me through two prayers—the Hymn of the Soul, and the Song of the Shadow. When that’s complete, I will offer my Shadow to the Nether queen for the Solstice, typically by placing it into a piece of quartz, and then I will have to reintegrate it in the Court Below to accomplish my trial.”
“That’s it?”
Mirquios said, taking the page from her, the notes bleeding into one another.
“Well, I have to find it first.”
Mirquios leaned back into the sofa.
“Does it hurt?”
“My mother said it’s more emotional turmoil than physical.”
Lunelle poured herself another cup of tea, settling in for the rest of their study session. She’d spent her entire life preparing for her coronation trial, and explaining the ritual to him had made her feel like she just might be capable of it.
“Say I bribed a priestess to perform the ceremony on me and then snuck into the Court Below… if I completed it… and then beat Arcas back…”
Lunelle shook her head.
“You have to be nominated, I think.”
“You think?”
She frowned. She did not actually know if that was a prerequisite.
“We should look into that,”
the king whispered, leaning forward and placing a kiss on her shoulder.
“Add it to the list,”
Lunelle sighed, resting her head on his.
“What time does Lura typically wake you?” he asked.
Lunelle giggled against him.
“If you can rouse yourself, you’ve got time to get to me.”
Mirquios sat up, unsure how to accomplish it.
“Pinch me,”
he commanded her.
“Mirquios!”
Lunelle laughed, but she reached for him anyway, pinching his forearm.
“Damn,”
he murmured.
“Still here.”
“Perhaps something more intriguing,”
she whispered, climbing over his lap and wrapping herself up in him. She sank her hips over his, the motion strange and slow in the astral, but at the first sound of pleasure from her throat, the king disappeared from beneath her.
It took him all of five minutes to make it to her door.
Breakfast could not hold her attention.
She’d been watching her parents carefully, unnerved by the tension between them.
Do you think Mother and Father are fighting? she beamed to Astra, who was also strangely preoccupied this morning.
Perhaps they were all just drowning in the discomfort between her and the Plutonian prince, whom she’d done her best to stay far, far away from.
What makes you ask that? Astra replied. Lunelle’s eyes shifted toward her mother, who looked slightly more agitated than she normally did, and her father, who never looked anything other than happy to be present, a frown wearing lines on his lips.
They just seem at odds, Lunelle sent back.
“Yallara sent a missive for you yesterday, Princess,”
Arcas mumbled beside her. His sudden comment pulled her from the conversation with her sister.
“Good,”
Lunelle replied.
“I miss her.”
“Perhaps she could visit soon,”
Arcas said. After he was king, he wanted to add, Lunelle could taste it.
“Princess?”
Astra and Lunelle’s heads both snapped toward the end of the table, where Mirquios stared at them expectantly.
Lunelle forced her gaze away from him. He did not mean her. He should not mean her.
“Sorry,”
Astra offered, her mother’s eyes flickering over her.
“I was telling Arcas here what a talented rider you are. He has an affinity for dragons.”
“Oh,”
Astra sighed.
“Do you ride?”
Arcas kept his eyes fixed on his teacup.
“I don’t. But I find them fascinating. We don’t have them in the Outer Courts.”
The commander leaned forward, his amber gaze rippling across the table.
“Perhaps you could introduce him to Riverion.”
“Do not take the prince near that beast!”
their mother declared—her tone very much that of an order, not a warning.
“You’ll forgive me, Arcas, but Riverion has a history of unpredictable behavior around men,”
she said. Oestera glared at her second-born, she knew better than to risk Riverion’s unpredictability around nobility.
Lunelle thought it sounded like a better solution than any of the other half-baked plans rolling around in her head.
“Odd,”
Mirquios said.
“Luxuros seemed to find him quite amiable. I’ve yet to brave the introduction.”
Lunelle’s jaw nearly dropped, but she tensed the muscle at the last second, feeling her mother’s watchful eye. She was stunned her sister would let anyone near her beast, especially someone she’d sworn to loathe not two months earlier.
Astra Leona, you let the commander meet Riverion!
No! No. Astra found Lunelle’s eyes across the table. Lux snuck up on me in the roost. He threw himself into Riv’s claws before I could get the warning out!
She saw it then, the blush on her sister’s cheeks. She should have known better—to leave two such formidable creatures alone for months and expect them not to form an attachment… it was rather silly to think any other outcome was possible.
Her father finally looked away from his plate.
“I’m sure Riverion would be nothing but kind to you, Your Highness. He respects the worthy. Right, Astra?”
Lunelle bit back a giggle as Mirquios grinned. She knew her father’s expressions so well, his every intonation, and he was clearly forming the same conclusion she had. Mirquios could hear the amusement in Nayson’s voice as well.
He was fucking with them, but they were too preoccupied with their hands to notice.
Mirquios arched a brow, those bright eyes sparkling with mischief.
“What do you say, Fire Queen? Would I stack up to the commander in your beast’s eyes?”
Luxuros reached for another cup of coffee, the heat rolling off him even more intense than usual.
“Only one way to know for certain, my king,”
Astra muttered.
“The commander can have Riverion’s affections,”
Mirquios said, sipping his tea as Lunelle watched, a quiet rain flooding her heart.
“I will not fight that battle.”
She had never seen her sister remain quiet at a table for so long. As they went their separate ways for the day, she aimed to get the king alone, but it was Arcas who caught her elbow outside the hall.
He reached into his pocket, producing a pale blue envelope.
“Yallara’s letter.”
Lunelle eyed it, her pulse quickening at the possibilities it contained.
“Did you read it?”
Arcas gave her a crooked smile.
“I was tempted. But no, I did not.”
Her heart sank.
“I wish I could believe you,”
Lunelle sighed.
“I wish you could, too, starling.”
Arcas pushed the message into her hands, the buzz between their fingertips shocking her and sending her back. He seized his moment, the one she knew he’d been searching for since they arrived. He leaned forward and caught her cheek in his hand, whispering, “As pathetic as it is to admit, I’ve missed you.”
“Arcas,”
she sighed, pulling from his touch. Pain pooled in his eyes, perhaps surprising both of them.
“Do not pretend to care about me?—”
“I do care about you, Lunelle, despite your clear disdain for me. I do not just miss you in my arms, I miss you in my head. I miss your blunt critiques, I miss your disapproving glares, I miss feeling like a disappointment to you?—”
“Do not worry to that end,”
she scoffed.
“You are still a grave disappointment to me, Prince.”
Arcas could not even pretend to be wounded. He smiled.
“Why does it feel like an honor to be your enemy?”
Lunelle laughed, despite herself, and rested her hand on his chest, adjusting the soft lining on his tunic. The anger she felt dissipated at the concave of his sternum beneath his chest.
Arcas was not a monster. He was an idiot.
“You do not have to be my enemy, you know.”
He stepped closer, dropping his tone.
“The ally slot on your dance card appears to be filled. I have to find a way in somehow, don’t I?”
She resented the thrill it sent through her—the way he closed in around her. Resented the way his lips dragged across her ear and neck as he whispered. Resented the way she both wanted to wring his neck and taste the taut ocean skin that stretched across it.
“You are once again chasing ghosts,”
she murmured.
It was all she had to say to earn her space. He said no more as he disappeared down the hall.
When his sunken shoulders cleared her line of sight, two jade eyes blinked at the end of the hall as his head tilted toward the study to his right. She glanced behind her, ensuring no one else waited for her attention before slipping into the dim room, teeming with old maps her father liked to catalog in his spare time.
Lunelle’s heart beat quickly, and she was unsure if she should feel guilty or not.
She was caught in a strange middle ground between two futures, neither more likely than the other. Mirquios leaned against the desk in the center of the room, the pale wood stained with oil paint—another relic of her father’s time.
She cradled her arms around her ribs, hoping to contain the wildness spiraling within her.
He sighed.
“You’re so far away.”
Lunelle glanced down at the space between them, only a few breaths apart, the relief from the Tether no longer stretching over the palace enough for her. Her lips parted to contradict him, but he clarified first.
“In here,”
he said, reaching his finger between them and tapping her forehead.
“Oh,”
she sighed.
“I suppose you saw Arcas in the hallway.”
Mirquos held up a hand, shaking his head.
“I’ve told you before. You owe me no explanations, Lunelle.”
She stepped forward, his legs parting to accommodate her.
“But I do, don’t I? If we figure out this whole awful mess, if you and I get a chance… you would want to know, wouldn’t you?”
Mirquios inhaled slowly, watching her with those kind eyes, always seeing too much.
“You have an affinity for him.”
He was not asking.
Lunelle’s cheeks warmed.
“I… I truly am not sure most days, Mirquios.”
He reached for her face, her perfectly lovely face, tainted by the shades of gray in her heart.
“Romance was never a priority for me, Lunelle. I watched Tethers do more harm than good in most relationships I grew up near. Among the Mercurian nobility, marriages are political. They’re strategic. Tethers are… troublesome. My own mother was wed to my father despite a Tether to a merchant from Saturn. She lived a life of luxury, but she was never once content. There was no love there, no joy. Her heart lived four courts away, and I watched it eat her alive for decades, so I never held much stock in the concept as a whole. I was perfectly content to fake my way through a marriage with your sister if it meant progressing the rebellion forward, because my ideals around love and marriage and commitment had been so poorly honed.”
Lunelle leaned away from him, unsure of where he was going as his gaze moved from a painting on the wall to her eyes.
He laughed gently.
“And then you shattered every concept I’ve ever had about any of it. About anything at all.”
Her nose scrunched as she absorbed what he was trying to say, what he had not been able to say without the smallest bit of hope before.
“What I am trying to get at, Lunelle, is that this,”
he gestured to the space between them, the invisible thing that they could not deny even if they wanted to.
“This is much bigger than any of it. Any of the rules we think we are bound by. You and I… we are bound by Soul and light, nothing else can come close to the intimacy of being formed for one another. Nothing could break it. But it does not mean you do not have desires that extend beyond it.”
“I do not?—”
“I am genuine, Lunelle, when I say that I see you. I see a woman who sets her own desires so far back in her mind that she doesn’t even know they exist. But if you wanted more—if you wanted him in some capacity, I would never deny you.”
Lunelle was quiet for a long moment, her head swirling as she reached for anything to say that made sense. She left him far too long, his lips dropping into a confused frown.
“…and I just wanted you… to… know that?”
All of her uncertainty, all of the implications his thoughts created, bubbled up from her in a soft giggle.
“So you’re telling me that you’re so enamored with me, you would wholeheartedly allow me to be with a man who may as well be our enemy?”
Mirquios huffed a laugh, circling her hips with his hands.
“I think a few more of your vicious character assassinations, and he might not be so firm in his opposition. You are a quiet observer, Lunelle, but that does not make me blind. That man, whether either of you would ever admit it, would ride into battle for you this instant. I cannot fault him for that. And I cannot fault you for finding a piece of yourself in his touch.”
Lunelle rested her hand on his shoulder, her lips pulled tight as she fought back a wave of emotion she did not know how to parse out.
“You are not mine, Lunelle. You are me. I cannot possess something so deeply woven into my being, nor could I lose it to anyone else. We just are—we will always be—in a thousand lifetimes.”
She pushed into him, dragging her fingertips from his shoulders to his face.
“You are right. About a great many deal of things.”
He leaned his face against hers, enjoying the quietness in her chest for once.
“I only ask that you do not carry his heir,”
he said softly.
“Should this hellish timeline ever straighten out enough that it isn’t foolish to do so, I’d like to hold that one thing sacred between us.”
Lunelle nodded, stroking the back of his neck. That felt like a fair enough request.
“You speak of an heir as if we’ll need one,”
she sighed.
“I hope there will be nothing but love to inherit.”
He kissed her—a warm, steady thing that no one else would ever be able to provide for her. The safety, the comfort, their version of infinity.
Lunelle sighed, regretting that she had somewhere to be.
“What is it?”
“I’m to meet my sister in the library, we have some catching up to do.”
“Come find me tonight,”
he murmured, pulling at her hips and stealing one final kiss.
“How can I find that which is already within me?”
she asked, arching her brow as she smirked at him.
“A cruel goddess,”
he whispered into her skin.
“And yet I cannot help but worship.”