“Mine wasn’tthatbad,” Lunelle mused, her eyes sliding back to the prince as he brushed himself off. “But noted for you.”
She arched her brow as she turned to examine his wound, the blood clotting and sealing over, but his face paled, the pain was catching up with him.
Astra moved toward them. “What happened to your leg? What happened to Pluto?” she sneered. Lunelle gently helped Mirquios to the ground, his eyes closed against a wave of nausea.
“Shadow,” he murmured.
Luxuros scoffed. “Bastard attacked me!”
Lunelle turned to him, prepared to beg for more information, but Astra was already in his face. It was fascinating, she realized, the desire to defend them both, the fear which one might strike first.
Astra beat Arcas to any explanation. “You know you don’t have to be theonlychampion back, just the first, right? We aren’t barbarians.”
Lunelle watched her words undo Arcas’s last shred of sanity.
“I don’t know! I don’t know what’s going on!” He flailed his hands between them, the pitch in his voice so familiar to Lunelle. His back was against the wall by a Lunar woman once again, but this one did not have a secret affinity for his weaknesses. “I didn’t even want to be here, okay? The queen said that if I came 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!” Arcas focused his eyes on Lunelle and Lunelle alone. “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!”
The prince gasped for breath as he gestured to Luxuros. Lunelle’s head felt as if it would cave in at any moment, his words landing like her Shadow’s unforgiving blows.
“I wasn’t expecting to run into you on the other side of the woods. I can’t track you in here, the Tethers arereallyhard to see in such a dull environment.”
Four faces froze as they avoided one another’s gaze and attempted to piece together what Arcas had just said. Arcas’s lips pulled into a tight line, his throat flexing against his next thought, but Lunelle suddenly had the appetite to feel those tendons shift beneath her grasp in a much different way than in the dark of his bedroom.
“What did you just say?” she asked, marching toward him, her chest colliding with his as their Shadows danced against one another, twisting and curling at their edges—welcoming one another back home. Arcas stepped back, flinching as he felt it much clearer here than in the chaos of the other evening.
His lips dropped into a frown, eyes closed against those cerulean cheeks.
“Which part, Princess?”
Astra sputtered beside them, soothing the headache she was surely battling under so many endless revelations.
“Oh,” Lunelle spat. “I don’t know, Arcas, maybe the part where you canseeTethers? Have you known about the king and me this whole time?”
He would not look at her. Could not bear to see the betrayal on her face. He’d implied—more than once—that he knew there wassomethingoccurring between them. She’d happily weaponized it against him at times. But he’d never come close to intimating that he understood how dire it was for her. The pain of the position Fate put her in.
The agony it caused from all angles.
“Yes. I’m sorry,” he whispered. “My mother was Venusian, they can see Tethers.”
Lunelle’s cheeks heated. She’d been exposed to him in many,manyways, but this transcended any of that.
Astra leaned forward, her voice tight. “All… Venusians? And all… Tethers?”
Arcas clenched his jaw before answering. “Yes.”
“Oh my gods,” Astra gasped, the commander’s hand closing around her hip as naturally as his next breath. Orbiting her, as if she were not just something to hold, but the very thing that held him.
Oh.
Lunelle’s chest cracked wide open—ofcourse,they were.
“Are you—Astra? Are you two…Tethered?”
Her sister’s eyes flitted to the commander and then to Mirquios, sending a fresh wave of feral heat to Lunelle’s face.
Astra attempted to move her along. “I think there is much more pressing information that Arcas just dropped on us?—”
“Please!” Mirquios begged from his spot on the ground. “Please, just tell her so I can have somepeace!”
