“You have to embrace them!” Lux called out from the treeline. He held a squirming blue prince over his shoulder. “You have to embrace them!”
“The more you fight, the harder it is!” Arcas screeched from over Lux’s shoulder.
There, Astra saw it as Mirquios made another swift spin around his shadow. A gash in his leg, from knee to hip, bright red blood spilling from his wound. Lunelle was the first to stop dodging and slicing at her shadow, staring at it in the gnarled forest, the silence deafening save for Arcas’s lithe body landing with a thud on the forest floor as Lux tossed him off his back.
Lunelle reached forward, wrapping her hands around the silky black figure, the commotion ending immediately. She turned, lifting her hands, the arms of the shadow following her exactly as they should. Mirquios mimicked her movements, screaming in the process.
Lunelle gripped his shoulder in concern. “Your leg?”
“No! You could have warned me they’d say such horrifying shit,” he grunted, heaving.
“Mine wasn’t that bad,” Lunelle shrugged. “But noted for you.” She patted him on the back as he stretched, shivering at whatever his Shadow whispered as they reunited.
“What happened to your leg?” Astra pointed at the injury. “What happened to Pluto?”
“Shadow,” Mirquios sighed, sitting on the ground and examining the wound.
“Bastard attacked me,” Lux said.
Astra turned to Arcas. “You know you don’t have to be the only champion back, just the first, right? We aren’t barbarians.”
Arcas pushed himself from the ground, his deep eyes flashing wildly between each of us. “I don’t know! I don’t know what’s going on. I didn’t even want to be here, okay? The queen said that if I came back to the Lunar Court, and pretended to court the princess, she’d pay off Pluto’s debts and help us manage our rebellion! I wasn’t even supposed to make it to the trial! She was supposed to announce at the ball that Lunelle is capable of ruling the court without a man and pass the crown to her unwed but then that goddess changed all the rules and the commander somehow got roped into this and I wasn’t trying to attack you!”
He drew in a heaving breath as he turned to Lux.
“I wasn’t expecting to run into you on the other side of the woods, I can’t track you in here, the Tethers are really hard to see in such a dull environment.”
“What did you just say?” Lunelle huffed as she marched toward Arcas, her chest barely touching his as he backed away.
Arcas frowned and closed his eyes. “Which part, Princess?”
Astra groaned, rubbing the bridge of her nose, sure that her head was about to cave in from all the new information she’d learned in the last fifteen minutes.
“Oh, I don’t know, Arcas, maybe the part where you can see Tethers? Have you known about the king and I this entire time?”
Arcas dropped his eyes to the forest floor. “Yes. I’m sorry. My mother was Venusian, they can see Tethers.”
Astra’s cheeks caught fire. “All... Venusians? And all... Tethers?”
His navy eyes briefly flitted from the flora below to hers before finding anywhere else to look.
“Yes.”
“Oh my gods,” she gasped, Lux’s hand reflexively reaching for her hip. How long had Ameera been sitting on her secret?
Lunelle twisted in her boots, her lips parted in pure rage. “Are you—Astra? Are you two... Tethered?”
Astra sighed. “I think there is much more pressing information that Arcas just dropped on us?—”
“Please!” Mirquios cried from the ground. “Please, just tell her so I can have some peace!”
“You knew?” Lunelle dropped to the ground, kneeling across from him.
“I suspected,” he muttered, pulling at the sliced fabric of his pants. “They weren’t subtle.”
“Well, we knew they were sleeping together, but you never once thought to tell me you thought they were Tethered?”
Mirquios winced. “We’ve had a lot on our plate, dear. I assumed Astra would tell you!”
