The night air whispered soothing secrets against her bare shoulders, her heart still unsure if it was free to breathe.
It wasn’t, she decided, as a lick of heat disrupted her pensive state.
“I think we’re calling it a night,” Mirquios said to her, dropping a hand onto her shoulder. Ameera sat upright as the commander approached, a trill of vermillion worry sparkling in her stomach.
“I believe I’ll stay for one more drink,” Astra said, resting a hand over his. “But get some rest for your travels.” Mirquios leaned forward and placed a soft kiss on her hair and headed into the palace.
Trail them, please. I want to be sure they go straight to their chambers, Astra sent to Ameera.
Ameera slowly rose, taking the outer perimeter of the garden as she stayed a few steps behind. When she was completely alone, Astra finally let out the breath she’d held for hours.
“Shit,” she whispered to herself, reaching for the nearly drained moonshine bottle at the center of the table. Every muscle in her body strained against the knowledge that a Solarian wasn’t just here, he was in her palace, attached to the king.
The complications were dizzying.
She threw the rest of her drink back and gathered her divination cards, slipping them into a silk bag. Astra took her time meandering through the palace to the wing she shared with her sister, careful to sense for anything amiss down every hall.
Just in case.
She bumped her hip against her study door, gasping at the heat that rolled forward through the opening.
“Princess,” Luxuros said, an irritation in his voice from his perch on her writing desk. She thought back to her dream from earlier—had she left anything sensitive out? Her eyes dropped to the black book resting against the smooth marble of the desk, untouched.
“Commander,” she huffed, pulling the door shut behind her. She tucked the bag of cards into an opening on the bookshelf, her blood racing beneath her skin. “If you’re going to kill me, can you at least do me the mercy of making it quick? I’m quite tired.”
Luxuros snorted and uncrossed his arms. “You nearly got us both killed this afternoon, so perhaps you can drop the attitude, Princess.”
“I didn’t plan on running into any Solarians in the woods! I fell asleep one minute, and the next I was in the clearing!”
“You’re undisciplined,” Luxuros said, pushing away from the desk and pacing as he spoke. “Dangerously so.”
“I—”
“Don’t deny it, Princess. If you had a lick of training, you wouldn’t be boiling right now, on the verge of passing out because you’re in the same room as someone with a few drops of Solarian blood!”
“What?”
Luxuros sighed, landing on the sofa against the wall. “The heat you feel, it isn’t real. It’s how your sensibilities interpret the threat of me, but no one else feels it. Your mind is trying to warn you, but you’ve no finesse, no understanding of what it’s telling you.”
“So you are Solarian!”
He flinched. “Part. We weren’t sure how sensitive you’d truly be. I think we’d hoped it was so slight you might not notice.”
“Not a chance,” she snorted. “I felt you a mile away on my birthday. And in the woods before today, I’m sure that was you, too.”
Luxuros frowned, rubbing at an ache in his chest. “Don’t be so sure, Princess.”
Astra moved closer but thought better of it as her skin prickled. “How did you get through the wards?”
“What wards?”
Astra sighed, her suspicions confirmed once again. “They must be down. Fuck.” She fussed with the bag of cards on the bookshelf, unable to look at the commander as she thought back to that arrow on her way into Lunaria. Her fingers drifted toward the scar on her arm, healed over now but still visible against her lighter skin.
“When you say ‘we’ thought I wouldn’t notice… the king knows about your lineage?”
Luxuros nodded. “I am loyal to my king and court, Princess. I am a Mercurian above anything else.” His face fell as he recalled something painful, something she’d expect to have a flare of bruised purples or reds associated, but there was nothing. “I have no memories from before The Flare. I was just a child.”
“I’m sorry,” Astra said, knowing how deeply embedded the trauma of The Flare was in anyone who survived it. “Your chest,” she continued, pointing to the black box beneath his leather. “How are you so tightly guarded from me?”
