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“I did.” She pressed her lips together into a wistful smile.

“That was the problem, as it so often is. We were great together, but she wanted more than I could give. The clock was ticking until Mother needed me as a bargaining chip. She wanted to run away together, find some little city in Venus or Mars, and disappear. Which had its appeal, trust me.”

“What stopped you?”

She glanced over her shoulder at the sleeping city behind her, at the thousand women traversing their subconscious desires as they rested. The low hum of their dreams wafted over, like walking to a room after someone applied a floral perfume.

“I couldn’t leave. I saw the state of the city.

They needed my help. She couldn’t understand why I would choose strangers over her, but that wasn’t it.

The weight of a court… so few people understand the way a crown breaks your neck and straightens your spine.

” Emotion climbed her throat, digging its skeletal fingers into the soft flesh.

“You chose to be a queen.”

“Queen-adjacent,” she snorted. “I might never be on the Lunar Throne, but I still love the people who serve it. It was my fatal flaw with Daria. I couldn’t choose heart over duty, and she resented me for it. Things ended in a plume of smoke, as you’ve gathered. I never meant?—”

She bit back a violent wave of tears, searching for a breath.

“I never wanted to hurt her. You may think me a feral animal now, but a few years ago… feral almost feels too generous a term.”

“It must be lonely,” Luxuros murmured, his throat tightening, a familiar ache in his chest. “Always feeling for everyone else, but never being allowed the same grace.”

Her eyes flickered over him, the warmth in his tone unexpectedly comforting. It was so rare for someone to even consider how it wrecked her, wading through the court’s internal wars day in and day out, let alone give her the space to explore it.

“I can count the number of times I’ve been completely alone with my thoughts on one hand.

Even now, you’re a brick wall, but the women beyond us…

they dream in such divine palettes… it’s lovely some nights, but on others, their nightmares take root in my lungs.

It costs me days when I can’t find the energy to block it out.

It’s like my mind is constantly on fire and no one ever smells the smoke until it’s too late. ”

He stared for a beat too long, his eyes swirling like pools of molten honey.

Something about him this way, in the starlight, surrounded by a warmth she understood, a warmth she expected, pulled her in.

She couldn’t have fought if she wanted to as she stepped forward, a strange insistence in her chest.

The crash of her knees colliding against his sent her back in shock. The heat of his skin—the one she understood so much less—flooded her senses as she lost the focus that constantly ran in the back of her mind to disarm his lineage.

“Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” he assured her, reaching for his chest—closing himself off. “We haven’t slept. We’ve been drinking. I’m not being a complete hardass for once.” He laughed at himself as he looked beyond her, toward the glow of her windows. “Just a body, right?”

“Right,” she breathed.

“We should probably get some sleep, Astra.”

She agreed, knowing it wouldn’t be possible with all the wild thoughts convalescing in her mind.

She didn’t look to see if he turned around as she climbed out of the pool and wrapped herself in one of the cotton blankets, nor did she wait for him to get out before heading back to the bridge.

* * *

The steam from the springs combined with the moonshine pulled her mind downward, into a spiraling haze. She’d have to extinguish the blazing rivers of him again in the morning when she wasn’t so dizzy. Now was not the time.

She could already feel the dream coming on as she sank right back into those damned hot springs.

She should have known she’d find herself here—standing before Lux, staring him down. Her knee brushed against his again, but she did not flinch this time.

She didn’t move at all as she waited, watching his body unconsciously rearrange for her, his eyes dropping from her face to the bare skin between her breasts.

They flickered back up, a blush creeping over his throat. A throat she’d once nearly slit—now she felt her fingers twitch at her side, begging to reach out and touch the taut skin across his collarbones. Yearning to twist them into the bronze hair on his chest.

“What are you, Luxuros?” she asked, eyes dropping pointedly to the twin scar on his palm.

“You don’t have a monopoly on magic, Astra,” Lux said, his resolve to adhere to his Mercurian propriety crumbling with every step she closed between them.

Emboldened by the swirling smoke in his eyes, she did what her body begged—she slid over his lap as he froze beneath her.

Her knees landed on either side of him, his breath stalling as she took a moment to explore the feel of the commander beneath her.

“Astra, please,” he begged, hands tightening around the rocks behind him, hanging on to any shred of loyalty he could bleed from the stones. The siren call of him was unstoppable—is this how human women felt about Solarians in the real world? Entranced by the heat in their veins?

She should have moved, should have gotten up, should have apologized.

She should have felt worse about the position she put him in.

In reality, she did the right thing. She ignored the knocking in her ribs and stepped back. But here, where she could lock her decisions away in the dark recess of her mind where she kept all the things she pretended didn’t occur to her in the moonlight, who could blame her for sinking lower?

Shit, when did the blazing current under his skin become so tempting to her cool fingers? It was like the call to reach out and touch a singing kettle, just to ensure the boiling tea within wasn’t imaginary.

His eyes slid along her bare skin, smoke and flame, drowning any logic she might have clung to in reality. Her heart pounded so loudly there was no way he couldn’t hear it, but as she leaned forward, she felt his drumming wildly, too.

Maybe she imagined the pulse of scarlet in his chest.

She lifted her hand, the need to touch more of him all-consuming, but she couldn’t bring herself to commit the next crime.

Lux sighed, the warm air tickling her neck. His lips brushed her bare skin so slightly that perhaps it was only a passing breeze. “You have to stop.”

“Me?” she asked, daring to reach out and touch a loose curl.

It taunted her, the curve of it begging to brush against her fingertip.

She’d lost any ability to think about the consequences as it slipped between her fingers and sprang back toward his face.

She ran her forefinger along his jaw, forcing him to look into her eyes.

“Astra,” he breathed, his hands breaking free of their perches. They wrapped around her back under the sizzling water. “What are we doing?”

She rocked her hips over his, letting his fingers brush her hair behind her shoulders, his lips finding their way to her throat.

“What we’ve always done,” she said, a quiet gasp escaping in the space between them as she felt his desire for her between her legs.

A shock of white lightning lit her spine up as she slowly rolled her muscles forward, creating a delicious friction between them.

His breath hissed between his teeth. “For centuries and centuries. Sun and Moon, destroying one another.”

She woke up gasping, her heart racing, her head swirling with a thousand justifications.

Not one of them quelled the midnight-black guilt consuming her soul.