Page 47

Chapter Twenty-Eight

“I believe I have something of yours, Commander.”

Ehlaria motioned for them to follow her, weaving through the crowd of wobbling dancers and into her mighty oak home. Astra’s feet hurt from hours of dancing and drinking. Her head swam in a hazy mist of Elven wine.

She’d never made it this high into Ehlaria’s retreat before, the opulent home carved into the center of an impossibly large tree. The hollowed home buzzed with elves, who were drinking, eating, and tangling themselves up with one another.

Astra did her best not to absorb the rising clouds of petal-pink lust and desire. She had enough nerves of her own to contend with. Ehlaria pointed to a deep blue velvet cloth hanging over a round object on a console table.

Astra knew what it was immediately.

“You were the Solarian spying on me?” She turned, the fire in her—no, the sunlight—bubbled to her fingertips.

Lux held up his hands. “I used the looking glass to locate you, that’s true, but?—”

Ehlaria clucked her tongue. “Not here, you two.” She glanced around at the dozens of eyes trying not to stare.

They followed her up the spiral stairs and passed two more floors before she veered off the landing and into a hallway, pushing a tall door inward.

“You can stay here tonight. Discuss whatever you need to, but please, no blood on the rugs.”

“We can’t share—” Astra protested, but Ehlaria cut her off.

“You two have wasted enough time. All of our time,” she sighed. “Figure it out. And Commander,” she said, the tone cutting. “Thank you for letting me borrow your toy. We’re paid up.”

She shut the door behind her, shaking her head the whole way out.

Astra surveyed the room—small, but cozy, exactly what she pictured a guest room in the Queen of the Lunar Elves’ home to look like. Curved shelves lined the walls, boasting books and crystals and potions of gods only knew what.

Layers of soft rugs flopped over the floors, glittering silver threads woven through them.

In the center of the room, a large, lavish bed begged her to collapse into its luxurious bedding.

A sheer black silk fell over it, creating an inky canopy with stars embroidered in constellations across the sky.

She tried to still her heart as she crossed the room, pulling off her slippers and flopping against the black velvet bedding, smelling of lavender and smoke and spices. Lux did not speak, folding himself into an armchair in the corner, leaning his elbows on his knees, his eyes brimming with misery.

“Get on with it then,” she sighed.

“We wanted to make sure you weren’t involved in anything nefarious, that was all.”

“How long did you watch me?”

“Not long! Just a few weeks, and only a few times. I promise you.” Lux ran his hands over his face.

“Why does she have it?”

“She borrowed it,” he shrugged.

She shook her head. “Try again. Ehlaria borrows nothing. You made a trade.”

“I did.” He did not offer more.

“Luxuros,” she growled, a furious plume of red smoke rising. “What did you do?”

“I traded her for this,” he said, snatching the leather cord around his neck and pulling the moonstone pendant out from under his shirt. “Okay?”

“And what does it do?” she asked through clenched teeth.

“What it needs to.”

The crimson fury in her lungs threatened to spill out as she glared.

He threw his hands up, sliding it back under his shirt. His eyes narrowed. “It dampens my emotions. It protects me from your prying eyes, okay? It blocks you.”

“How?”

He rolled his eyes, annoyed at the vulnerability she was requiring of him. “I’m not an elf! I do not know how their magic works.”

She glared. “You have that much to hide from me then? That you’d trade something so useful for a way to dampen it?”

“Astra,” he whispered, his head hanging.

“It’s not that I have so much to hide. It’s that I don’t know what I need to hide.

When we watched you, we realized you were much more powerful than your mother let on.

I was afraid you’d be able to sense things about me I myself don’t even know.

Whoever I was before, whoever The Flare erased, I have no affiliation to.

I am a Mercurian. I did not want there to be any questions about that when you met Mirquios. I did it to protect him.”

“You did it to protect you!”

His eyes flickered to hers for a second. “I did it to protect you . Above all.”

“Me?”

He nodded. “I could have been anyone to Solan. I was a boy when it happened, but I was still raised in Solaris. You saw the fire within the Solarian in the Midwood. What kind of cruelty is carved into my bones? At what point do generations of hatred erupt? It’s all I think about.

When I left Mirquios here on your birthday, I half-hoped you’d put him out on his ass just to ensure I never brought any harm your way.

But then you two… you two did whatever it is you did and I had to have a fallback plan. ”

“Whatever it is we did,” she scoffed. “You really have so little respect for the Tether, then?”

Lux leaned forward, a curl at the corners of his lips alarming me. “I respect Tethers. When they’re real.”

Her eyes narrowed as blood rushed to her ears. “What did he tell you?”

“He didn’t have to,” he snarled. “If you two had actually formed that bond, you’d have lost your damn mind weeks ago. When was the last time you even wrote to him?”

“I’ve been distracted by a million other things!”

His eyes flared as they locked on her, refusing to release her from their heated stare.

“You’ve been distracted by your king’s commander.

None of those dreams would have happened if you were truly Tethered to Mirquios nor would I have allowed them to continue.

I love my brother. I wouldn’t betray him, and I don’t believe you’re the kind of woman to trifle with his heart. ”

Astra swallowed the shame rising in her throat. “So you’ve known this whole time?”

He nodded. “I suspected.”

She folded her arms, anger and regret swirling into a gray mass in her chest. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Who am I to interfere in what’s best for the courts? We need you. And you need us. Who cares how messy the truth is if it means we’re that much closer to our goals?”

She stared at him for a long minute, trying to understand the desperation in his voice.

The fear of who he might have been. The respect for his king.

The protective instinct over her. It was all genuine—she could feel the regret in his chest even over the shield, the fear that at any moment he might slip and she’d learn something neither of them could unlearn.

Even if he didn’t let her see it, anyone could feel it.

She could understand that, couldn’t she?

“Fine then,” she relented.

“That’s it?”

She dropped her head back, an irate laugh escaping her throat. The war commander, muscles always wound tight, prepared for a battle.

“If anyone can understand fearing who you might be, and forsaking it all for the benefit of your people, it’s me.” Her eyes dropped to her fingertips, buzzing with sunlight after years of flickering in flames.

“I didn’t know about the sunlight,” he murmured.

She shrugged. “Many, many surprises this evening.”

“I am sorry. For what it’s worth.”

Her lips twisted into a half smile. “It’s not worth much, Commander.”

“You should sleep.”

She furrowed her brows, the irritation still twisting in her gut. “You’re going to stay up all night staring at that door, aren’t you?”

He didn’t respond. He simply scooted the chair so that it faced the door straight on.

Astra rose and reached behind herself to loosen the ribbons holding her dress together. There was no way she could sleep in the stiff bodice.

“Shit,” she whispered, her fingers just missing the top loop.

Lux tensed behind her, his eyes still fixed on the door. She struggled for another moment before she heard heavy boots brush against the rugs. Searing fingers pulled gently at the laces, first unraveling the tight bow Ameera had carefully constructed, and then loosening them loop by loop.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

She felt another tug, and the bodice sighed in relief as she held the front of her mother’s masterpiece against her chest. She expected a rush of cold when he inevitably darted back to his perch, but he stayed.

He lingered.

A rough fingertip traced the petals of the moonblossoms jutting out from the full Moon at the center of her spine.

She held her breath, afraid if the ink so much as twitched, he’d disappear. Lux exhaled, the warmth tickling her neck.

“Goodnight,” he mumbled as he circled the Moon one last time, leaning beside her to extinguish the sconce on the wall, plunging them into darkness.

She let the breath go, dropping the gown to Ehlaria’s floor and sliding under the velvet quilt.

She watched the constellations woven into the canopy glint in the faint glow from the window, revelry still floating on the late-night air.

She understood why he lied, logically. She even understood why he left so many unspoken threads floating in the air between them—why he could only bring himself to trace lines and never cross them.

She nearly preferred it that way.

But in her gut, under all the rationalizing, there was still a bright white heat that burned against bone and vein. How many times now had she caught him in a lie designed specifically to control her actions? To curb her decisions?

It was hard to be angry with someone who believed they were protecting her, even if it was from herself.

As she drifted to sleep, a nagging thought percolated at the base of her skull. If she could be so forgiving of his well-intended meddling, didn’t she owe her mother a similar grace?

Another question nagged at her—one she feared the answer to even more as his words echoed in her chest.

You’ve been distracted by the king’s commander.

“Lux?” she whispered.

She felt him shift in the chair, tensing against the back.

She took a slow breath—he counted the seconds between the end of her exhale and the sound of her lips parting in the dark.

One.

Two.

Three.

Fo—

“I’m not the only one distracted… am I?”

Lux stayed silent for a long, brutal moment, at war with the right way to answer. She could feel it, pull together in a tightness between them—she damn near thought she could hear the thoughts spilling over his iron wall.

“As…” he said, unable to string together any of the dozens of words wandering from his mind.

Deep in the space between her beating heart and bleeding soul, she understood.

* * *

She wasn’t asleep long before she slipped further into herself, falling, falling, falling into nothing, just color and light blinding her.

“Go, go,” a woman’s voice screamed from above, her anguish a stab in the chest. The pain was unbearable. She couldn’t right herself, couldn’t see anything. It was like drowning without water, her lungs collapsed all the same.

Above her, everything exploded into a furious bright white. An unholy pain ripped through the air. She couldn’t tell if it was hers or someone else’s. Everything faded as her heavy eyes closed. The last thing she saw was a spray of ruby flames.

And then there was nothing.

She fought for breath, the pressure in her chest too much to take, her eyes starting to swell.

“As,” someone called from far away, their voice barely a whisper.

“Astra!” they yelled again, more firmly. Her lungs were on fire, begging for air.

A cold gasp tore her from the dream. Her eyes fluttered open, Lux hovered over her in Ehlaria’s guest room.

“Are you hurt? As, talk to me,” Lux pleaded, his knees on either side of her hips, eyes wide with the same fear she’d seen in the Midwood.

“I’m okay,” she breathed, her lungs finally filling again. “I’m okay.”

“You were dreaming about The Flare,” he said. “You were dreaming a memory. My memory.”

“Who called to you?” she asked, the woman’s terror still so fresh in her mind.

“I don’t know.”

It was the pain in his whisper that did it, she told herself, that broke her into a thousand pieces. The pain drew her in as she reached her hands to his face, drawing three curved lines along his cheek and his neck, where his hand caught her fingers.

“Go back to sleep,” he said, but he made no move away from her. His fingers wove between hers, pushing them against his chest.

“Will you ever let me in?” She held his gaze, hardly visible at the midnight hour.

He shook his head, swallowing as he rolled off her, hands still tangled. His eyes dropped to their fingers, resting against his chest before he released her hand, moving for his station on the chair.

A silent shock of betrayal crept up her back—a gnawing knowledge that his place was there, beside her.

“Just stay,” she whispered, everything within her begging to close the distance, no matter how traitorous it might be. “Stay with me.”

Luxuros put as much distance between them as he could without falling out of the cursed bed, his chest tightening with each of her movements.

The right thing to do seemed less and less viable by the moment.