“You’ll see. Did you bring anything white?” Yallara released Lunelle’s wrist and dug into the trunk at the foot of her bed, flinging gowns and lace across her room.
“Yallara!” Lunelle stood, gathering the floating slips of silk, shaking off whatever sleep clung to her head. Yallara popped up from the trunk with a silver-beaded gown in her hands, one of Lunelle’s favorites.
“Oh, this is perfect,” she chirped, tossing it toward the bewildered princess.
“Yallara, it’s the middle of the night,” Lunelle moaned as she glanced out her window. She wasn’t sure what was more disturbing—Yallara’s frantic intrusion or that she’d been in Pluto long enough to recognize time by the state of the sky.
“Exactly,” Yallara said. “We haven’t got a moment to lose. Put that on!”
Lunelle turned to look at the spritely princess, her obsidian hair piled high on her head in intricate loops, framed by iridescent pearls twisted into the spirals. She was in a gossamer white gown, floating off her slight frame in wisps of thin smoke.
Yallara blinked and waved at her again. “Put it on!”
Something about the earnestness in her tone, the excitement in her eyes, loosened the knot in Lunelle’s spine. Her mind wandered back to a time in her youth, when Astra was still just a rebellious teenager, shaking her awake hours before the Moon would rise. She’d been wrapped in black leather, tossing a pair of riding pants to Lunelle.
“It’s a full Moon,” Astra whispered, glancing over her shoulder as if their mother might be outside the door. “Riverion is already saddled. Come with me!”
“Come with you where?” Lunelle asked, her eyes wide as Astra’s shoulders fell, hearing the apprehension in Lunelle’s tone.
“Do not ask me where, just come with me! Please. We’ll be back before Mother wakes.”
“I cannot just leave, As! And neither should you.”
She watched Astra’s heart break, heard it between breaths as the wind that brought her into Lunelle’s room quieted. She did not push. She did not insist.
She returned to her bedroom—or perhaps she didn’t.
Lunelle would never know.
“Hand me the white boots,” Lunelle sighed, gesturing to her trunk. “They look better with the silver.”
Yallara clapped her hands together and dug into the trunk, squealing as quietly as she could manage as she fished for Lunelle’s pristine white boots, handing them over and bouncing on her heels. The moment Lunelle’s fingers left the laces, she reached for her wrist again, pulling her into the hallway where several other courtiers waited, each dressed in shades of cream, beige, and silver.
“And that makes a dozen of us!” Yallara reached for something from one of the Venusians and handed it to Lunelle—an intricate mask made of lace curled in delicate florals around shimmering opalescent pearls. Long white feathers burst from the sides of the mask, trailing down her shoulders as she held it to her face for Yallara’s approval. The group fastened their own masks over their eyes, each one a beautiful representation of their home court, Lunelle realized.
She eyed hers again, the phases of the Moon shimmering beneath the flickering sconce painted in some sort of iridescent glitter.
Yallara charged ahead, and Lunelle marveled as no one seemed to question her, even though she herself did not seem to have questions. She led them down the hall and into a dimly lit staircase, plunging beneath the palace for what felt like an eternity, the air pulling tight with a crisp edge.
When the staircase finally spit them out, they piled into the mouth of an underground cavern, sparkling dark crystals climbing the walls. Lunelle leaned closer to a cluster to examine them, the sound of footsteps echoing off the arched walls punctuating the brisk air.
“Are they sapphires?” a deep voice asked.
“No,” Lunelle replied without meeting the inquirer's gaze. “Stibnite.” She ran her fingers against the cool edge of the nearest crystal, enjoying the pleasant buzz against her fingertips at its energy. “They connect you to your ancestors, your past lives.”
“Precisely!” Yallara pointed toward the end of the cavern in the distance, a shuffling sea of white pouring into the next room. “Tonight is the Feast of Proserpina. Every year, we dress in white and don masks to confuse Pluto, so that he might not realize if we’re living or dead, and give Proserpina the chance to escape. It is the one night a year when we might get a taste of death—we parade through the Plutonion catacombs to the Cliffs of Descent over the sea. If you’re brave enough to face your Descent and leap from the cliffs, they say Proserpina will grant you a blessing.”
“A bit macabre,” the voice next to her said quietly. She glanced at him, bright jade eyes flickering behind his mask.
“I like it,” Lunelle said, straightening beside Mirquios.
“I thought you might.” Yallara winked and grabbed Lunelle’s hand, pulling her into the fray of Plutonians pouring into the catacombs from the streets above. The courtiers fell into line behind them, the rhythmic sound of their steps echoing against the caverns, sending Lunelle’s heart into a stilted rhythm.
Yallara pulled her through a small carved door in the crystal-coated wall, and they stepped into a thrumming sea of white and blue, flowing down an ancient hall made of alabaster skulls encrusted with stibnite crowns. Ribs and spines laddered up toward the domed ceiling. Thousands and thousands of Plutonians passed and watched as they fell into the crowd.
Plutonians danced to dozens of drums, skipping and turning in circles as they rippled along the city’s underbelly. Masks made of lace and leather and linen watched Lunelle as her silver waves twisted and turned under Yallara’s arms.
The drumbeat was hypnotic, so unlike the delicate strings Lunelle was used to waltzing against. The percussive pulse came from somewhere otherworldly, but not unfamiliar. She felt it seep into her muscle and bone, finding spaces to hide she hadn’t noticed before.
