Chapter Thirty-Five
She followed the maidens toward Astra’s room as they carried her through the palace, breaking from the panicked rush to slip into the hall outside the infirmary.
She took a steady breath before stepping into the dimly lit room.
The king was awake, his color looking much better than it had moments ago.
“I thought they were to put you out,”
she said as she bounded toward him, resting her hand on Mirquios’s chest. She felt for the slow breath filling his chest, the gentle beat of his heart.
“It looked worse than it was,”
Mirquios said, squeezing her hand.
“They were able to close it quickly,”
Arcas said from a chair in the corner.
“Your maidens did not seem too worried about him.”
“Thank you for staying,”
Lunelle said.
Arcas shrugged.
“I can stay longer if you need to attend to whatever the fuck put that sister of yours out.”
“Careful how you speak about the Lunar queen,”
Lunelle mumbled, her brow arching.
Both men tilted their heads toward her.
“We all have the same amount of information,”
Lunelle said, waving her hand.
“My mother is assembling the family in half an hour, think you’re up for it?”
Mirquios sat up straighter, swinging his legs over the side of the bed.
“If I start now, I should be able to make it,”
he laughed.
“I’ve been summoned to help you hobble,”
Luxuros said, strolling in from the hallway.
“Ah,”
Mirquios laughed.
“And who are you this evening? The Solar prince? The Lunar king?”
Luxuros pushed gently at his shoulder.
“I’m your only hope at hearing just how the Nether all of this happened, Your Highness.”
Lunelle leaned down and planted a soft kiss on her king’s cheek, patting his back as Luxuros pulled him out of the room.
Arcas wandered closer to her.
“And who will you be when the dust settles? A Lunar princess? Mercurian queen? Rebel officer?”
Her fingers twisted in front of her, the cast of blood against her leg only now starting to make her stomach churn.
“I don’t see why I can’t be all three.”
He scoffed, tucking his hands behind his back.
“And besides,”
Lunelle murmured as she circled him, dark shadows beneath his eyes.
“Your title is of far more interest to me.”
“And what title is that?”
“Precisely,”
she whispered.
“Your sister will be crowned queen if my sources are correct. What does that make you?”
“Free,”
he replied.
“At least, until someone offers to bind me into the rebellion.”
Lunelle’s heart leaped out of the way for that certain black mist within her, that thing that begged her to touch him.
Arcas opened his mouth to speak, but she held up a hand, silencing him.
“I do not want riddles. I do not want guessing games. I need you to tell me truly, once and for all, if you actually intend to commit?—”
He was across the room before she could finish her sentence, his lips on hers in a kiss that twisted the very Shadow within her into a knot so tight she did not imagine it would ever breathe again. When he released her, he stepped back, his hand covering his mouth.
“That is all I know,”
he sighed.
“I have no other answers. That is what I can offer to you, and if it is not enough?—”
“It is not enough. You know it is not,”
she gasped between them as his hands grabbed her neck and brought her back into another kiss. Lunelle pushed him away, but he only wrapped his arms around her tighter, melting her into him.
“I love you,”
he hissed, his eyes narrowed, absolutely horrified to say it aloud.
“Is that what you need to hear? Because you know it, you demand it, and I cannot do a damned thing about it.”
His hands gripped around her sides, his finger pointing at that space, the one that rested beneath her heart.
“We will never have what the rest of them get, what you have with your sparkling beam of light with your gallant king, but I live within you, buried in the darkest night of your Shadow, I am there, waiting, hoping, dying to be yours, in whatever capacity you will allow.”
Arcas released her from his grip, stepping back, putting space between them.
“And if you must hear it from me, you were right. At every turn. At every criticism. The Prince of Pluto was indeed a coward, but he left that cowardice with his crown. I will follow you to the ends of the realms, Lunelle. I will listen and learn and fight, not for you, but because of you. Because of what you’ve plucked out of me and cleansed in your divine fire.”
He took a sharp breath.
“I have no need for a title or any further clarification between us outside of the scraping of your Shadow against mine. I will be everything to you and nothing at once, and it will be enough.”
Arcas’s lip twitched in the silence as he stood, bare before her in a way he’d never risked before.
“Well, then,”
Lunelle said, exhaling slowly as she reached for her boot, slipping her Mercurian dagger from between her ankle and the soft leather, dusted in the Nether’s dunes.
“I wonder if my Shadow bleeds red or blue?”
He leaned toward her, whispering, “I bleed sapphire and silver.”
She snagged his hand, carving the slightest crescent moon into the pad beside his thumb before giving herself a matching mark on her opposite hand from the king’s mark.
“Arcas Hydranos, formerly the cowardly Prince of Pluto, you will forsake your regency and fight alongside the people you once ruled. You will seek truth and justice, and you will reject the hierarchy that has oppressed so many. You will never reveal your association or another Nova’s as long as we both breathe.”
“You forgot that I will bow to only one goddess for the rest of my days,”
he whispered.
Lunelle giggled.
“I will not bind you to that?—”
“Please,”
he whispered. She lifted her eyes to his, unsure if he understood what he was asking.
“I will never be yours in the eyes of the gods, allow me to be yours in the confines of an oath.”
Lunelle swallowed, the dark space they shared seeming a little lighter now. She pressed their palms together and made the addition.
“Arcas Hydranos, formerly the cowardly Prince of Pluto, now the devoted acolyte of the goddess of death and desire, you will forsake your regency and fight alongside the people you once ruled.”
He left his hand in hers for as long as she could allow it, as long as she could stand it before pushing up to her toes and leaving him with one more kiss.
“I have to go check on my sister,”
she sighed.
“As do I,”
Arcas replied.
“When will you return?”
Arcas ran a fingertip over her lips.
“The moment you sing for me, starling.”
“You’re in pain,”
Lunelle whispered into the king’s ear, reaching for his hand as he braced himself against the back of the Celestial Hall, wrapped in finery they’d no longer need by the end of the evening. She flinched as he winced and readjusted his stance.
“I’ll make it through this evening,”
he mumbled. She watched his chest rise and fall with a sharp breath, the pain more than he let on. She felt it tighten between their chests as the sting reverberated.
“I’ve got a tea that can help,”
Arcas said, leaning from his station behind the king, his glimmering eyes taking in the swirling courtiers and their half-filled glasses, clinking over jovial whispers that knew nothing of what they’d witness in a few moments.
“Oh, no you don’t,”
Mirquios laughed, the sound deep, rich, like a warm cup of coffee.
“Your sister took us down that road once before.”
Arcas’s lips tilted, a quiet hum in his chest as he pushed off the wall.
“I should take my place, your sister demanded I be front and center.”
“Don’t fuck it up, Lieutenant,”
Mirquios said, his fingers closing tighter around Lunelle’s. Arcas pushed his shoulders back, appearing that much taller at the use of his new title, the one he’d avoided for so long, and yet rested atop his head much lighter than any crown ever had.
“She can do this, right?”
Lunelle asked, craning her neck over the buzz of the ballroom. Her mother and father stood, tolerating Ellume’s High Priestess and her ramblings as Oestera glanced over her shoulder toward the moonstone staircase on which Astra would appear soon.
Mirquios’s brow curved.
“My love, I would be hard-pressed to think of a single thing a Lunarian woman could not do.”
She rolled her eyes.
“You’re biased.”
“I’m also right.”
He pulled her closer, resting her back against his chest as the music quieted to a hush. Lunelle’s breath caught at the doors in the mezzanine swung open, revealing her sister, looking more like a queen than she ever had.
Lunelle turned her head to the side, his lips close to her ear.
“The robes suit her.”
“She’ll ignite them before the night is over,”
he replied.
“Good.”
Lunelle scanned the crowd as Astra stepped forward and began to speak, her voice a steel blade as it cut through the speculation—steady.
Certain.
She felt the same assuredness flow through her veins as her sister informed the court they were no longer—that they would be the first to fall to the Nova Rebellion and become a refuge for the community. That anyone who did not align with their plans was welcome to get the fuck out. She watched as Astra melted her crown over the pristine moonstone balcony, staining it forever with a golden tattoo that would tell generations the exact spot the Lunar Court turned itself over into the hands of her people.
“I promised Luxuros I would bring Astra to him,”
Mirquios said as he closed a hand around her hip and gave it two squeezes.
Lunelle leaned back into him.
“You deserve to see their faces. Stay for one more moment.”
He pressed his lips to her cheek as the Ellumian High Priestess’s sneer cracked, her voice shaking as she challenged Astra’s declaration.
“One more moment.”
Epilogue
“State your business,”
the guard said, his pale blue skin reflecting the sky below.
“I have an appointment with the queen.”
Lunelle pulled at her sleeve, waiting as he confirmed with the queen’s officer that Yallara did, indeed, have an appointment with the Queen of Mercury that afternoon.
“Him too?”
The guard pointed at Mirquios, hovering behind her.
“I’ve business in the city.”
He sighed, scribbling their names across a ledger and waving them on.
“I’ll meet you at the cliffs?”
Mirquios asked as Lunelle lingered at the edge of the palace hall.
“Hour, two tops,”
she replied, squeezing his hand. He began his path through the city to the Novas’ newest meeting space.
Lunelle watched as he disappeared into the bustling streets.
She wandered her way through the sapphire halls, twisting and turning until she rounded the final corner to the library she’d spent so much time in over the Summer.
“Oh!”
Arcas was clearly just as surprised to see her as she was to stumble into him. He snapped his book closed and rose, his eyes glancing past her into the hall.
“Mirquios is not here,”
she said, her knees grazing the coffee table between them.
“No,”
he confirmed.
“He shouldn’t be, anyway. We’re to meet at The Pith. I lost track of time.”
“You look well, Arcas,”
Lunelle said, a gentle smile tugging at her lips.
He leaned over the table, dropping those sapphire eyes to hers.
“Come now, starling, you know it’s much more fun to hurt my feelings than inflate them.”
Lunelle laughed.
“I wouldn’t dare insult a Nova officer.”
Arcas stepped around the table and reached for her hand. He held the ring up to the shimmering sunlight, the aventurine dancing in the golden hues.
“It is a lovely stone,”
he murmured.
“It does not sing, however.”
Lunelle’s eyes rolled as she pulled on the chain around her neck, the sapphire and stibnite ring he’d given her absorbing the light of the room.
He sighed, leaning perhaps a little too close to be considered appropriate by passersby.
But they did not understand the strange alchemy between them. The thing that would always live in the caverns between their Souls, lurking in their Shadows.
The moments they shared together and with her king.
Arcas’s fingertips flared between them, catching her hand for a breath.
“You wear his for all to see, but you keep mine buried in the dark.”
Lunelle turned her head, amused at the way he jumped back from her.
“I keep you where you belong, Prince.”
“It’s Lieutenant now,”
he said softly, a lightness to his tone that had not been there months ago.
Lunelle pursed her lips—he could not help himself. He closed the distance between them and brushed his lips over hers so quickly she might have questioned if it happened if it weren’t for the spiral in her stomach, swirling in anticipation.
“You’re late, Lieutenant.”
“Yes. And your husband hates when I keep him waiting,”
Arcas murmured, dropping her hand.
“Will he be joining us this evening?”
She nodded, a rush of heat washing over her.
“I look forward to worshiping at the altar of you,”
he whispered before strolling from the room, his sister bustling through the door before Lunelle could draw a breath.
“I’m so sorry!”
Yallara said, taking up the space in the room her brother left.
“I thought we were meeting in the garden!”
“We can, if you’d like?”
“No, no, sit! I need to hear everything about the Nova Court.”
Lunelle giggled, leaning back into the sofa, tucking her feet beneath her, listening to the fade of Arcas’s boots and tamping down the blush that climbed her neck as Yallara listed off all the changes they were making in preparation to declare the Plutonian Court for the rebellion—a list that Mirquios and she had been tackling in their own court over the last few months.
Her eyes fell on the bay window, the glass cracked as the silver pools below trickled toward the city, and a smile spread across her lips.
Her footsteps echoed through the catacombs.
Plutonians milled about at the midday hour, running their blue fingertips over the stibnite clusters along the walls. She lowered her hood as she wove between them, the ring around her neck sizzling to life in the underground grave.
She touched it reflexively, a whisper kissing her ear as she did, though it felt too far away to understand it. She quickened her pace, eager to get back above ground.
He was waiting for her at the steps, arms tucked behind his back, jade gaze lighting up as she came into view. Lunelle skipped forward, launching herself into his grasp.
“There she is, the Goddess of Death herself.”
“I believe there’s a line for that title,”
Lunelle laughed, peppering his jaw with kisses as he dragged her up the stairs, their boots crunching in the sand. Lunelle pulled him toward the edge of the cliffs, the Sun bouncing off the dark sea below.
It did not look so steep a fall as it once did.
“And you’re positive we have to do this?”
Mirquios clenched his jaw as he peered over the edge.
“It can’t be any more frightening than hunting your own Shadow in the Court Below.”
Mirquios shuddered.
“I’d take dunes to cliffs any day.”
“I’ll count to three,” she said.
“No, not necessary, just… give me a moment,”
he mumbled, stretching his neck.
Lunelle reached for his hand, pressing his knuckles to her lips. She rubbed her thumb over the band on his left hand, the one she knew had her name engraved on the inside.
“Take as many moments as you need, my love.”
Mirquios took a deep breath and then nodded, letting her lead as she hurled them over the cliff’s edge. If that was what Descent felt like, slipping through space with the love of her life’s hand around hers, she did not think it all that terrible of a Fate at all.
And when she broke through the surface of the water, frigid but not unwelcoming, she was certain she heard Pluto’s amused chuckle, folding into foamy crests and pushing her back to the surface where the gentle Sun kissed her silver-freckled face.