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“We don’t talk much about her. But Lunaria’s High Priestess once told me Leona was born with cooler features, but they warmed over time. Some say it was a divine fire gifted to her by the god Mars as part of the arrangement for my mother’s hand.”

Luxuros snorted, his hand drifting to his bare chest. In the low light, she could just make out the stretched pink skin over his shoulder, tangled with golden ink.

“That whole ordeal can’t have been easy on your father,” he snorted.

“It was a disaster,” Astra said. “Even now, forty years later, there’s still a lingering tension.

But it wasn’t like my mother did it on purpose.

She was perfectly content to accept her duty and marry the Martian king.

They got on well, from what I’ve heard. But one night she bumped into an Earthen soldier and everything changed. ”

Luxuros took that in. His lips pulled into a slight smile as he found a portrait of Oestera, painted with the same love and care as the Earthen canyon in Astra’s study.

She sat on the edge of the Lunarian garden fountain, her chin tilted just so that she looked rather like her daughter after she’d won an argument.

“Nayson must have been shocked, too.”

“Just imagine it,” Astra laughed. “You’re on your way to a foreign court as a security guard, and you stumble onto the throne. Selenia was enraged?—”

“Selenia?”

Astra scanned the wall before them.

“There,” she said, pointing to a large painting of a particularly sharp-featured woman with Oestera’s icy gaze, but something else, something chilling to the bone in the cut of her jaw.

“My mother’s mother. Ascended Lunar Goddess Selenia Aurellis, may she bless us all,” Astra muttered, reflexively.

“She was horrified by the Tether. My poor father wasn’t even supposed to be there.

Another guard had gotten injured the week prior, and he agreed to sub in before his leave at the last moment.

Leona was trying to prevent war with Mars, Selenia was trying to prevent a riot with the council.

You have to understand, most Tethers in our lineage have fallen between nobles, if at all.

A princess and a soldier? It was unheard of. ”

Luxuros nodded. “And then Leona died?—”

“Her death was a shock to my mother;s entire world. They’d eloped and set up a home in the Earthen Court to avoid Selenia’s wrath. Mother hadn’t been near the court in years. Selenia dragged her back kicking and screaming.”

Astra’s eyes fell to the commander’s fingers, twisting into a leather cord around his neck that held a moonstone pendant. She turned her gaze back toward Leona’s portrait.

“I would give anything for just five minutes with her. To understand what really happened in Solaris. To learn how to avoid the same Fate.”

“You will,” Luxuros said, as if it was that simple.

“And yet here I am,” Astra giggled, gesturing toward him. “Putting myself at the mercy of a Solarian after all. You know, we’re raised to believe that one touch from you is lethal.”

“You’ve touched me and no one went up in flames,” Luxuros mumbled. “Well, I suppose not no one .” He grinned, but the point stung. She lost her grip on the heat of him in her embarrassment, the smoke rising in her throat quickly. She tried to change the subject, to shift her focus.

“Earlier, you spoke another language to Daria. What was that?”

“ Li elomhi eontu and eontu neu ,” Luxuros said, the notes flowing like music off his tongue. “It’s a Jovian phrase their Nova Captain started using years ago to identify ourselves. It’s a question and answer. ‘For crown and court?’ ‘For court.’”

Astra nodded, repeating it to herself a few times. “Common, Solar Elvish, Mercurian, Jovian… how many other languages do you speak, Commander?”

“I think that’s the list. Well, and Earthen, of course.”

“See? You don’t like my silent conversations with Ameera, but you could easily speak about me with my father and I’d have no idea.”

“And I have,” Luxuros laughed.

She frowned but quickly realized her own hypocrisy. “One’s own medicine is always quite bitter, isn’t it?”

Luxuros sank onto the bench along the foot of his bed, the other end piled with a perfectly neat stack of his clothes. He ran a hand through his hair, a single gray tendril popping out from his temple Astra hadn’t noticed before. It shimmered in the low light.

“How old are you, Luxuros?”

He frowned as his eyes narrowed. “Are you judging my streak?”

Astra giggled, embarrassed that she’d been so blatant. “Perhaps.”

He groaned, stretching his neck. “Well, I’ve aged about a decade since meeting you.”

“Oh, come on now, Commander, we were getting along for once!”

He turned his amber gaze to hers, a solemn stillness settling between them she wasn’t sure how to interpret. “I don’t know exactly how old I am, Astra,” he said.

“Ah,” she whispered. “Of course. I’m so sorry?—”

“I’m not quite forty, I don’t think. But not far from it if my back is any indication.”

“A man of many mysteries.”

Luxuros shrugged. “Yes, well. Good evening, Astra.”

“Goodnight,” she said, backing out of the doorway, too self-conscious to turn around and walk out.

* * *

The paintings on the walls watched them, rippling at their edges as she waded through the dream version of her father’s room.

“I wish you’d tell me a secret,” Astra said, crossing the room as he stood from the bench.

“Trust me,” he scoffed, folding his arms over his chest, closing her off from him. “You don’t.”

“Just one?”

Luxuros shook his head, the low torchlight reflecting off that pale streak.

“And you say I’m stubborn.”

“Please,” he laughed. “Between the two of us, it’s no competition.”

“Sure, sure,” she mused, circling him. Here, without her control over it, he was warmer, though much less unpleasant than before. “Keep your secrets.”

“I will,” he huffed as she stopped in front of him. She couldn’t help it. Her hand reached up of its own accord, drifting toward the silvery slip of hair behind his ear.

“I’m so sorry,” she gasped as he pulled away. “I just—I wondered ? —”

Luxuros glared. “If it was cooler than the rest of me?”

“Yes!” It felt so childish to admit. “It sounds stupid out loud.”

“Well,” the commander backed another step away. “Was it?”

“I didn’t get to compare.”

Luxuros sighed, softening his stance. “Go on, then.”

Astra debated if she should, if this was over the line of appropriate for him, but she found herself drifting forward with both hands, one tangling into the dark curls on the left side of his face, another into the lighter spiral on the right.

She dragged her fingers through the silken strands, brushing them away from his irritated glare.

It was harder to sense here, where everything felt a little like being underwater, but her right hand did, indeed, feel colder.

“I’ve always had it,” he whispered as if reading her mind.

“Fascinating,” she mumbled.