Chapter Thirty-Three
“Why am I always letting you into my bedroom against my better judgment?”
Mirquios stepped aside, allowing Lunelle to slip beneath his arm and into his study. She had been pacing in circles for the better part of an hour, awaiting her summons to the Lunar Gate and she could not take the loneliness another moment.
“Because you love me,”
Lunelle said simply.
His eyes dropped to her hands, twisting together into a knot.
“Gods be damned, Lunelle, I do,”
he sighed, wrapping her into a soft embrace. He pressed his lips to her forehead.
“And you love me, too.”
“From the moment you drank that horrifying tea for me,”
she whispered.
He leaned away from her, searching her gaze, the greens of his eyes even brighter without any darkness within him to shade them. She looked away for a moment, desperate to regain her composure.
“My mother wants us to wait to cross back through the gate.”
“What?”
He released her, unsure what to make of the suggestion.
“She knows we’re bringing Astra with us. I don’t think she knows why, but she begged me to trust her.”
“And?”
Lunelle frowned.
“And… I do not know what to do,”
she sighed, sinking against him.
“If your sister goes through the gate first…”
“She becomes queen.”
His brows tucked together.
“Well, that’s not going to work?—”
“It does if a certain commander goes with her.”
Mirquios winced.
“Solan would set this entire court on fire if he found out.”
“I know my sister, Mirq. The moment she realizes what’s happened, she’ll likely overthrow the entire system anyway. The Fire Queen would live up to her name.”
“With Luxuros by her side…”
The king paced the small study, his mind working in concentric circles.
“If they’re here, that would force you onto the Mercurian throne?—”
“Would it?”
she asked, her brows arched.
Mirquios stopped his pacing, doubling back to her and cradling her face, stroking her cheek with his thumb.
“Temporarily, at least. Is that what you want, Princess?”
Lunelle’s lips twisted, though for once, she did not have to think about what she desired.
“More than anything.”
He laughed, a low thundering sound as he pressed his lips to hers.
“I would have made you my queen months ago if it weren’t for… well, everything.”
He waved his hand as he gestured to the unseen chaos that kept them constantly on edge.
Lunelle thought aloud.
“With Astra on the Lunar throne, the rebellion would have a clear path to turning the rest of the courts, Mirq. She would not hesitate.”
“Neither would the commander. We’d disband Mercury soon after. And Arcas, perhaps?—”
“Yes,”
she sighed. “Perhaps.”
Mirquios brushed his fingers over the bridge of her nose.
“We will figure out how he fits into our world, I promise.”
“This could work,”
Lunelle breathed.
“This will work,”
Mirquios said.
Three soft raps on the door separated them. Lunelle tucked herself into his bedroom, hiding for what she hoped was the final time. The king pulled back the door to a maiden with a plate of food and a note for him. She set it on the table and disappeared as he read the missive.
“Seems we’ve been summoned,”
he said, folding the note into his pocket.
Lunelle stepped back into the room, looking at the plate they’d made for him. A pile of red pomegranate seeds slipped over the edge, bleeding onto the tray.
“One more moment?”
she asked, plucking a seed from the plate and letting it roll over her tongue.
Mirquios pulled her into his chest, resting his head on hers.
“You may have every last one of my moments.”
The dust of the Court Below clung to her lips, much like the salt of the sea below her beloved palace.
Only instead of salt, the Nether tasted like ancient secrets, bitter with betrayal.
Lunelle glanced back over her shoulder, ensuring Astra had made it over her side of the dune.
“She’s got this,”
Luxuros said as they jogged toward a forest of withered branches and gnarled trees. She believed him—believed in her sister—but her heart ached with worry nonetheless.
“Your prince sure ran off in a hurry,”
Mirquios said, ducking beneath a black oak branch, the wood crackling into decay as he touched it.
“Cut him some slack,”
Lunelle whispered.
“You’re here with your best friend and your… whatever I am?—”
Mirquios stopped walking.
“My Moon, my stars, my sole reason for existing… do you need me to go on?”
“Spare us,”
Luxuros muttered.
Luxuros trudged ahead of them, a smile tugging at her lips, despite the pain she held for the Plutonian prince.
“I only mean to say that he’s alone out here.”
Mirquios squeezed her hand.
“We will all leave the Court Below in one piece, Lu. I promise.”
She nodded, stepping through the heaps of dead logs and overgrown, brittle grass.
“I’m taking the northern edge,”
Luxuros called over his shoulder, breaking into a jog across the clearing.
Mirquios hopped over a particularly large fallen tree and glanced through the dim forest.
“I don’t suppose you have some sort of magical intuition that tells us how to find our Shadows?”
Lunelle’s ears heated.
“I… I might,”
she confessed. She turned toward him.
“Something strange happened with Arcas the other night.”
“You do not have to tell me, Lu?—”
“I know, I know. But something…. I cannot explain it, something happened to a darker piece of us… it was not like a Tether, but not unlike it in some ways. I can feel the space it left behind, it's like my blood calls out for it.”
Mirquios stared at her for a moment, taking in what she could possibly mean. His eyes swept over her chest as if he might see the shift she spoke of.
“It sings,”
she whispered. She closed her eyes, blocking out the dull haze of the Court Below, letting her mind drop to that pit in her stomach, that space between bone and blood that waited for him—that swirled with smoke dark as night, but glittered with brilliant sapphire threads.
The tug was there. It was quiet, only a whisper, but she could feel it brush against her ear.
“East,”
she mumbled, striking forward over the dense decaying flora.
Her king followed without hesitation.
Lunelle followed the ghost of the Shadow within her, seeking the darkness she’d loaned to the sorrowful forest, stretching and yearning to absorb more of itself and feel whole once again. They tore through the macabre woods, branches leaving shallow holds across their cheeks and hands, the silence of phantoms running beside them amplifying the thud of each rock against boot, the shhhh of crumbling leaves breaking along their shoulders.
The skin on the back of her neck burst with gooseflesh as something cut into their path—something too fast to identify with her eyes, but she felt it in her Soul.
“Was that—”
Mirquios’s question cut short as another onyx apparition raced by them.
“That one is yours,”
she sighed, recognizing the glossy pride of it—the way its shoulders still stood tall even as an amorphous slip of space.
“The other one?”
Mirquios barked as he broke into a sprint after the smoke and spirit of him.
Lunelle swallowed, turning in a tight circle as she waited for it to rush through the trees again. A lithe black streak curled at the base of a gnarled tree, springing forward when it sensed her stare. It blew over her like a storm, smelling of desperation and fear.
Her tongue reared back as a bitter note spread through her mouth, slinking down her throat.
“Not mine,”
she said. But not far from hers, she wanted to add.
The same weight on its shoulders, the same stubborn rattle at its core as it refused to accept sacrifice. The same glittering spine of shame, torn between desire and duty, doing what is right and doing what the blood that runs through its missing flesh begs. The same craving to be seen as what it knows it could be, what it might be if only it shed a few deeper hues.
Mirquios dove from a small boulder as he attempted to wrestle his Shadow into place, missing it by just a breath.
“Godsdammit,”
he muttered as he tumbled to the forest floor.
The king sprinted after it, as Lunelle shook her head, attempting to clear the weight of Arcas’s Shadow from her chest as it disappeared into the treeline.
She was certain it whispered her name as it went.
“Lu!”
She darted away, casting one more stare behind her before she wove through wicked roots toward the sound of Mirquios’s scream, the Tether in her chest lighting up with pain.
He slumped over his leg at the bottom of a shallow ditch, hissing as he cradled his leg. He brought his fingers to his face in the dim of the eternal twilight, stained with a bright crimson.
“I swear to the gods, the damned thing slashed at me!”
Mirquios leaned his head back, pulling in a harsh breath as he hauled himself to his feet, reaching out for Lunelle as she leaned over the edge of the rocky ravine.
“Your Shadow did that?”
she gasped as she caught sight of his thigh, flayed from hip to knee and weeping beneath shredded leather.
“It attacked, and I fell back. I must have caught it on the rocks. Shit,”
he groaned as she hauled him back over the crest of the fall.
“Tula did not mention combat,”
Lunelle sighed.
“No, no, she did not.”
Mirquios eyed the edge of the trees in the direction his Shadow had taken off.
“There! That’s you, I’d stake my life on it.”
He pointed to a movement between the ghostly white trunks a hundred paces away.
Her Shadow did not run. It held.
It demanded to be seen.
Lunelle held her breath and tilted her head, watching the wisps of her watch back. His Shadow slinked behind hers, catching her attention as they both dove deeper into the dark. Mirquios began to run, but grunted as his leg contacted the ground and sent a shock of screaming pain through his spine.
“We have time,”
Lunelle breathed, looking toward the murky sky, searching for something to anchor her in space and time, but it only returned an endless black. She propped her shoulder under his arm and helped him hobble through the first few steps before he tightened his back and found a motion that allowed him to move swiftly, though the pain only grew more demanding.
“We do not have that much time,”
he sighed. His head already swirled as the blood soaked what remained of his pants. He winced as he struggled to overcome a log, Lunelle waiting for him with guiding hands.
“You should not wait for me.”
She glared as she pulled him forward, watching the space she’d disappeared into carefully for movement.
“Don’t be a fool,”
she sighed.
“We do not leave one another. Ever.”
Mirquios nodded beside her, though she did not need his affirmation. She knew it in her bones. They passed through a thickly tangled knot in the wood and fell into a clearing, the ground sharp with rocky soil and brambles fallen from life that perhaps once existed there a millennia ago.
“Yours calls to you,”
Mirquios mumbled, pushing into the wound on his leg to attempt to stop the flow of blood.
“But can you call to it?”
Lunelle tilted her head as she considered what she might need to do—to say—to convince her Shadow to return to her. What might tempt it.
She reached within herself once more, sifting through that hollow for answers. A slight tendril curled a finger toward her, begging her closer.
What do you want?
She was not sure who was asking whom, which way the question flowed, or if it even mattered. She pressed into the shape of the question, leaned into the darkness.
What do you want? she asked her Shadow. She’d spent so long suppressing what her Shadow wanted for the sake of what her Soul needed, she wasn’t sure she’d ever considered that it may have a dissenting opinion.
The answer bubbled up easily—instantly.
“Ah!”
Mirquios screamed as his Shadow sought to deepen the wound to his leg again. Lunelle’s eyes widened as she watched the phantom strike his leg a third time, driving the pain to his bone. His knee hit the brambles beneath them briefly before he sprang back up.
Do not ignore me now, she heard, delivered in an icy chill down her spine as wisps of smoke pulled at her hair, her chin, demanding her attention. She spun back around, pressing her shoulders against Mirquios’s, hoping to bring him any amount of relief as he dodged another savage swing.
He was heavy against her, his breath coming hard as he tried to get a hold of his stance.
Lunelle? It was not the voice within her that called her name—it was Astra.
Over here! she called, as if she understood where here even was, grunting as Mirquios landed on her shoulders once more.
“On your left!”
he huffed as he hauled himself forward.
She had not expected to feel her Shadow’s grip on her jaw, yanking her head, a yelp leaving her throat as nails dug into her flesh.
You will hear us, it hissed, sweeping Lunelle’s legs from beneath her and pinning her into the fallen thorns.
Her mind raced back to that answer—back to that truth she’d always known but never wanted to admit. Her Shadow clutched at her hips, her knees, her elbows, forcing her back into the twisted prongs over and over again as she fought to get her gaze on Mirquios. She could hear him hit the ground with a thud, a harsh gasp tore from him as he shuffled against the leaves.
The Shadow atop her refused to entertain the distraction.
She was in charge, like she’d been when she’d taken a blood oath that would change the trajectory of her entire life. Like she’d been when she’d commanded a Plutonian prince to release rebel prisoners, rooted in the darkness that drove her to forsake the nobles that lofted her.
Like she’d been when she’d surrendered to the call within her and shoved Arcas into a wall, refusing to let him slink off into the night.
Mirquios crumbled into a heap beside her, his lungs puffing as his Shadow landed another blow against his neck.
Lunelle ground her hips deep into the sharp thorns, embracing their revenge against her skin as the fuel she needed to throw her Shadow from her, rolling to her right and scrambling to her feet.
I hear you, she thought, I see you.
She reached for her king’s head, tilting his chin up toward her as his Shadow rounded the clearing, reading for another round. His bright eyes were so heavy, so tired.
She was in charge, like she’d been when she let every rule and boundary—imagined or not, faked or not—fall away at the edge of a cliff and threw her arms around a king that did not belong to her. Could not belong to her.
Unless.
Lunelle smiled, the radiance dimmed in the faded lights of the Nether, but warm all the same.
“We’re all making it out in one piece, right?”
She yanked him to his feet, pressing her back to his again, taking on his weight as best she could as she watched both their Shadows wind up, haunched against the ether and gathering the darkness around them to launch them forward.
She could have what she wanted, but she could not have it without help.
“Astra!”
she screamed, searching for the bright ruby of her sister in the trees. Their Shadows rushed in, two infinite pits of black clashing against their braced bodies.
Her Shadow did not hold back, consuming her as she leaned into her heels. Her eyes burned against the onslaught, Mirquios’s muscles flexing against hers as he tried to dodge the viscous rhythm of his own haunting.
A flash of scarlet in the corner of Lunelle’s eye grabbed her focus for just long enough that her Shadow wrapped its grip around her arm, squeezing with a ferocity she could not get on top of.
“He’s hurt!”
Lunelle called to her sister. She could not face her Shadow if she was worried about saving him. Mirquios would always win in that equation. Astra circled them to catch her eye as her Shadow twisted against her, begging for her to give in.
Astra huffed, “Did they tell you how to get them back?”
Lunelle shook her head, Mirquios leaning over her as she felt his slick pant leg stick to hers.
“Tula said something about listening to them! I don’t know!”
He bent and dodged once more, shaking her as he moved.
Lunelle’s eyes snapped forward, peering into the swirls that stung her. She knew what her Shadow wanted—she knew what she wanted.
And she was no longer afraid to demand it.
Lunelle wanted to lead the fight against the layers of lies from the Court Above, and she wanted to do it from the Mercurian’s glittering golden streets. She wanted to be her sister’s protector and be protected by her. She wanted to bask in the golden light of the Sun, and drown in the silver secrets of the Moon.
“You have to embrace them!”
The commander’s voice bellowed from a distance. Lunelle’s Shadow seemed to breathe at his revelation.
“The more you fight, the harder it is!”
Arcas called. Lunelle turned when she heard his voice, his tall frame thrown over Luxuros’s shoulder.
She did not have a moment to wonder how he found himself there.
Lunelle stopped resisting the touch of her Shadow, stopped wrestling the call to the void of it. She leaned forward, reaching her arms around it, and whispered an apology she didn’t know she was choking on for so long.
As the murky blacks and glittering sapphires of her deepest hidden layers melted against her flesh, she knew what it was that she’d wanted all along—she longed to be worshipped by day and death, sunbeams and starlight.
She wanted to hold it all within her, all the versions of herself she was and would be, and she wanted to love them from every angle.
She raised her hand, admiring the depth of color returned to her starry complexion, the rush of cold breath moving through her veins in a gentle sigh. Arcas landed at her feet with a heavy thud, the breath leaving his lungs as she stared at those eyes—those sharp gems, cut just to reflect her.
Mirquios screamed as he lifted his hands to the dim break in trees overhead, searching for whatever light he could find. Lunelle spun, wrapping her fingers around his shoulder.
“Your leg?”
“No!”
he barked.
“You could have warned me they’d say such horrifying shit,”
he sighed.
“Mine wasn’t that bad,”
Lunelle mused, her eyes sliding back to the prince as he brushed himself off.
“But noted for you.”
She arched her brow as she turned to examine his wound, the blood clotting and sealing over, but his face paled, the pain was catching up with him.
Astra moved toward them.
“What happened to your leg? What happened to Pluto?”
she sneered. Lunelle gently helped Mirquios to the ground, his eyes closed against a wave of nausea.
“Shadow,”
he murmured.
Luxuros scoffed.
“Bastard attacked me!”
Lunelle turned to him, prepared to beg for more information, but Astra was already in his face. It was fascinating, she realized, the desire to defend them both, the fear which one might strike first.
Astra beat Arcas to any explanation.
“You know you don’t have to be the only champion back, just the first, right? We aren’t barbarians.”
Lunelle watched her words undo Arcas’s last shred of sanity.
“I don’t know! I don’t know what’s going on!”
He flailed his hands between them, the pitch in his voice so familiar to Lunelle. His back was against the wall by a Lunar woman once again, but this one did not have a secret affinity for his weaknesses.
“I didn’t even want to be here, okay? The queen said that if I came to court the princess, she’d pay off Pluto’s debts and help us manage our rebellion! I wasn’t even supposed to make it to the trial!”
Arcas focused his eyes on Lunelle and Lunelle alone.
“She was supposed to announce at the ball that Lunelle is capable of ruling the court without a man and pass the crown to her unwed, but then that goddess changed all the rules, and the commander somehow got roped into this, and I wasn’t trying to attack you!”
The prince gasped for breath as he gestured to Luxuros. Lunelle’s head felt as if it would cave in at any moment, his words landing like her Shadow’s unforgiving blows.
“I wasn’t expecting to run into you on the other side of the woods. I can’t track you in here, the Tethers are really hard to see in such a dull environment.”
Four faces froze as they avoided one another’s gaze and attempted to piece together what Arcas had just said. Arcas’s lips pulled into a tight line, his throat flexing against his next thought, but Lunelle suddenly had the appetite to feel those tendons shift beneath her grasp in a much different way than in the dark of his bedroom.
“What did you just say?”
she asked, marching toward him, her chest colliding with his as their Shadows danced against one another, twisting and curling at their edges—welcoming one another back home. Arcas stepped back, flinching as he felt it much clearer here than in the chaos of the other evening.
His lips dropped into a frown, eyes closed against those cerulean cheeks.
“Which part, Princess?”
Astra sputtered beside them, soothing the headache she was surely battling under so many endless revelations.
“Oh,”
Lunelle spat.
“I don’t know, Arcas, maybe the part where you can see Tethers? Have you known about the king and me this whole time?”
He would not look at her. Could not bear to see the betrayal on her face. He’d implied—more than once—that he knew there was something occurring between them. She’d happily weaponized it against him at times. But he’d never come close to intimating that he understood how dire it was for her. The pain of the position Fate put her in.
The agony it caused from all angles.
“Yes. I’m sorry,”
he whispered.
“My mother was Venusian, they can see Tethers.”
Lunelle’s cheeks heated. She’d been exposed to him in many, many ways, but this transcended any of that.
Astra leaned forward, her voice tight.
“All… Venusians? And all… Tethers?”
Arcas clenched his jaw before answering. “Yes.”
“Oh my gods,”
Astra gasped, the commander’s hand closing around her hip as naturally as his next breath. Orbiting her, as if she were not just something to hold, but the very thing that held him.
Oh.
Lunelle’s chest cracked wide open—of course, they were.
“Are you—Astra? Are you two… Tethered?”
Her sister’s eyes flitted to the commander and then to Mirquios, sending a fresh wave of feral heat to Lunelle’s face.
Astra attempted to move her along.
“I think there is much more pressing information that Arcas just dropped on us?—”
“Please!”
Mirquios begged from his spot on the ground.
“Please, just tell her so I can have some peace!”
Lunelle spun toward him.
“You knew?”
She’d asked him how many times? How many dozens of times had she inquired of his thoughts on their strange alchemy?
“I suspected,”
he admitted.
“They weren’t subtle.”
Lunelle snorted.
“Well, we knew they were sleeping together, but you never once thought to tell me you thought they were Tethered?”
He pushed at his injury, drawing a sharp breath.
“We’ve had a lot on our plate, dear. I assumed Astra would tell you!”
She’d always assumed that, too.
But she had to be forced to tell Astra, hadn’t she?
They both set their eyes on the Fire Queen, her face as warm as her fingertips. She balked, holding her hands up.
“Again, bigger things to talk about right now?—”
“All that stress, all that heartache, all the worry that my little sister must sacrifice her happiness for me was for nothing?”
Lunelle’s eyes landed on Arcas again, his lips twisting in an amused smirk as he pointed to his chest.
“Oh, we’re mad at me again?”
Astra cut in.
“I think we’re just confused. It’s been a hard few months, and we don’t exactly know who to trust right now.”
Lunelle felt the pain in her sister’s words—the whirlwind of constant betrayal and upheaval must have been tenfold for her sensibilities.
“It really has. Gods, Astra. I wish you had told me how dire this was for you, too. I put too much pressure on you!”
Astra’s eyes widened.
“No, no, Lu. You’ve taken the brunt of the responsibility your whole life. I was happy to do this for you, I swear it!”
Lunelle could feel Mirquios about to huff an “I told you so”
as he held his head in his hands, breathing deeply against the wear on his body.
The commander stepped toward her. “As?”
She sighed, her point still only half-made.
“Yes, Luxuros, what is it?”
He glanced at the sky, marking some unseen thing Lunelle could not.
“We’ve got about half an hour before the gate closes. Do you think you and your sister can hash this out when we’re not at risk of getting sealed into the Court Below for three months?”
At that, a wave of clarity washed over her.
“Mirquios is hurt. We need to get him back, but there’s no way he should walk on that leg.”
The king opened his mouth to protest, but she felt Arcas move before he spoke, the darkness within him shifting gently against her.
“I can help,”
he said.
“Least I can do, I suppose.”
He reached for the king, and for the first time, Lunelle wondered if perhaps, had she been honest with herself, and both of them from the beginning, they’d be on different sides of a revolution right now. They were two incredibly sharp minds—imagine what they’d accomplish side by side.
“I got him,”
Luxuros said, pushing past the prince.
“You good to get what you came for?”
Astra nodded, resting her hand on his arm.
“Just get him back safely,” she said.
“Wait for us at the gate,”
Lunelle said, her eyes shifting from Mirquios to Arcas.
Astra whipped her head toward her.
“Lunelle, no. Go with Mirq. I can do this!”
Lunelle had no doubts about that, not a single lingering thought that her sister couldn’t do any damned thing she set out to. But they were fighting against the same curses, buried in different places within them, but rotting nonetheless.
“Not a chance,”
Lunelle said, watching her Soul and Shadow struggle to get the king moving.
“We’re doing this together.”
Astra’s eyes settled on her sister, glimmering with a love that no one in all the realms could ever hold for Lunelle—a love that she herself knew she’d put before any man, Tether and ties be damned.
“Let’s do this,”
Astra said, a slow grin spreading over her lips.