Lux’s gaze flashed to hers, pulling her to her knees across from him.
“You cannot be a Nova unless you’re bound to one by blood,” he said quietly. “If something goes wrong tomorrow…”
Lux squeezed her hand as her chest ruffled with a fierce rejection of the very idea they wouldn’t both return from the Court Below.
He said softly, reverently, “I want to have been the one who bound the mighty Fire Queen.”
Astra’s eyes found his, a warmth washing over her in pale pinks she wished to stay beneath forever. He leaned forward, holding her palm as he delicately carved a shallow circle beneath her thumb.
“Is that a full Moon?”
Luxuros smirked, drawing a half-Moon shape into his palm. “It’s the Sun. I did not think you’d appreciate slicing a dozen rays into your skin.”
He held his hand up, a crescent-shaped scar smeared with crimson teardrops. She pressed her palm into his, that same strange alchemy between them grabbing hold and sizzling as they bled into one another.
“Astra Leona Aurellis, Princess of Lunaria, you will fight for the people who serve the courts alongside them, never over them. You will protect peace and reject oppression. You will never reveal your association or another Nova’s, as long as we both breathe.”
Astra exhaled, squeezing her hand against his. “I will.”
Luxuros hauled her into a dizzying kiss that stole her breath and nearly made her forget the reason for the insistence in his touch. His arms wrapped around her back, pressing them into a fiery pillar of smoke and ash.
She whined against his lips, the sound unraveling any threads of logic he’d strung together that evening.
“As,” he warned, pulling away from her for a moment before she consumed him again. “Astra,” he breathed, laughing into the space between them. He gripped her face between his palms, the Moon-shaped cut already closing over.
“We should sleep.”
“I’m fine!” she protested.
“We’re descending into the Court Below and facing the Goddess of Death in a few hours,” he whispered. “We are not fine.”
Astra returned the laugh, but the sound was hollow, like listening to herself through the wall.
Tomorrow, she’d have to hold up her end of a bargain she believed in her soul to be true, but as she lay in the dark, she wondered just how many more catches the gods had planned.
Chapter
Forty-Two
“Did you get some sleep last night, darling?”
Astra glanced at her father from their dutiful perches beside Oestera on her throne in the gardens, the Winter winds kicking up as courtiers lined the Lunar Gate. They mingled and sipped on moonshine, dressed in their best, ready to celebrate the triumph of Lunelle and her champion.
Whichever one of them made it back first.
Oestera hadn’t looked at Astra once since she arrived. She quite preferred it that way.
Lunelle stood beside her sister, wrapped in silver and black leather, less a queen and more a warrior. The Lunelle she’d seen in Mercury. Astra tried not to shift too much—she had similar vestments beneath her golden gown, but no one needed to know that.
“I slept enough,” Astra replied, the lie leaving her lips with ease. She watched as Lux stood against the misty waves of the Rift, his long hair pulled back into a knot at the top of his head, stoic as ever. His eyes scanned the courtiers, landing on her long enough to send a soft shimmer over the Tether.
It took everything in her not to give in to the nerves ravaging her bones, begging her to run—to yank him from the platform and disappear on Riverion’s back.
But they had a plan.
It would work.
It had to.
