Lux snorted. “Is this what walking away looks like? I made it a few days at most. I came back over and over again to check on you. You almost caught me a few times.”
She pressed her lips together. “Everything aside—our bloodlines, your beliefs about them at least, the war… if I was just me, and you were just you, and we ran into each other somewhere…” She smiled, despite the pain in her chest. “If our hands both reached for the same cup of coffee in a village market and the Tether connected us before you could stop it…”
He frowned. “If everything about our circumstances were completely different, what would I have done? Is that what you’re asking?”
She nodded. His fingers twitched, hard lines carving into the edges of his mouth.
“If absolutely everything were different,” he sighed, a hand skimming her jaw as he held her cheek. “I’d have introduced myself, first of all.”
“Good start,” she breathed, lost in the scent of the leather cuff on his wrist.
“And then I would have done one of these.” He pointed to his chest and then hers, eyebrows arched, a wry smile on his lips before silently mouthing, ‘Did you feel that?’
Astra laughed, so unused to this lighter version of Lux, his head finally over the water her presence drowned him under on this astral plane.
“And then, you would have wounded me with a biting remark that secretly only made me want to impress you all the more.” He grinned, the magic of it shoving her off a cliff she’d never recover from. “I’d play it off like I wasn’t affected by your cutting words, but really, I’d think about them that night, in my bed, about the delicious way your lips curl around insults… well. A man can’t help but think about the way they’d curl around other things.”
He backed her into the trellis, the length of his body fitting against hers like two broken shards of the same crystal. She watched his eyes drink her in, taking his time.
Even here, in a plane that numbed the heat between them, she suffocated in his shadow. Her fingers traced lines in his chest, slipping under the band around his waist. Scarlet lust filled her lungs, begging to spill over.
He shook his head, pushing her hands away. “It’ll only make this more difficult.”
“I’m not afraid of difficult,” she insisted. “I can handle difficult. What I can’t handle is never knowing.”
“You’re not missing much. I’m nothing special.” Lux laughed, sliding his hand from her face to her shoulder, his fingertips fussing with the ruffled neckline of the white nightgown she’d pulled on before falling to sleep.
“Surely you don’t believe that,” she whispered.
“I used to, before you started looking at me like that.” He dropped his hand to her hip, settling into the curve. “You have to stop looking at me like that.”
“Would you prefer a withering glare?”
“No. That’ll only make me want you more.” He stepped back, a rush of cool air filling the void. Lux took her hand and strolled with her once again. “I’ll never forgive myself for what I’ve done to you.”
“Me either,” she chuckled. “I’ll stop torturing you for tonight, then. We haven’t really talked about Oestera yet.”
“I was wondering if you’d spoken with your sister about her thoughts.”
“Lunelle doesn’t think she’s involved with Selenia, or at least doesn’t believe she’d do anything to defend her. They’ve always had a strained relationship.”
“I think you should talk to her,” he said, stopping as they met the gnarled trees of the Midwood, sparkling in silver moondust on this plane.
“And ask what? ‘By the by, is your mother actually evil? And are you covering it up?’ Didn’t seem to go well for Ivonne.”
Lux snorted. “I trust you can be more tactful than Ivonne.”
“Ah yes, that’s what they call me. The Tact Queen.”
This earned her a laugh from his chest, a sound she’d give anything to be the reason for again and again and again.
He leaned his forehead against hers, the red haze within him fading into a gentle rose pink—a feeling she was hesitant to name. He pushed a soft kiss against her temple, catching his breath. “Maeve knows someone in Venus who can sever a Tether safely. We’re visiting tomorrow to see what all it entails.”
Her heart stopped for a moment, the hollow space in her chest where she should have felt a tugging empty.
“And there’s no convincing you to find a market coffee stall somewhere?”
He frowned. “Run away together?” His eyes held a million futures, none of them theirs. She made a mental note to find Daria when this was all over and flog herself at her feet.
