“Nothing. I just… I thought maybe it was lonely, in the days following your celebration. That everyone moved on and thinks one night was enough.”
The slightest glint of admiration warmed Proserpina’s eyes.
“You were not one of the divers,” she observed. “You did not seek a blessing from me, yet you still thought of me in your hour of need.”
“Is it my hour of need?” Lunelle asked, her hands so empty now, she was unsure what to do with them.
“You’re here, no?”
Lunelle nodded. “I came to the cliffs to confess something, I think. To purge myself of it.”
Proserpina grinned. “Shall I leave you to it, then? Shouting your sins to the crests of the sea?”
“I’m sure you have better things to do than to listen to pathetic whims of the heart.”
Proserpina shrugged, her eyes raking over Lunelle.
“You know, people offer the gods all sorts of strange things, but rarely gossip.”
Lunelle could not stop herself. She laughed. Because itwastrite gossip in the end. People were dying, wars were starting—and here she was, seeking the ear of a goddess to tell her to get her head out of the clouds.
“I fear I’m losing myself to a man I can never claim.”
Proserpina nodded, forcing her thumbs between the skin and tissue of the pomegranate.
“A woman can never lose herself to a man, she merely loans him her splendor.”
Lunelle huffed a shallow sigh, staring at her fingertips.
“What if it’s his splendor I’m after?”
The goddess pursed her lips. “What stops a Lunar queen from taking what’s hers?”
“He is engaged to my sister.”
Proserpina considered this. “And you like her?”
Lunelle giggled. “I love her very much.”
Proserpina dug a few seeds from the flesh of the pomegranate, popping them into her mouth and staining her lips a deep red.
“No man is in possession of enough splendor to come between sisters, dear girl. But you know that.”
Lunelle nodded.
“You know,” the goddess sank back onto her heels, loosening her divine posture. “They tell a story about me—that Pluto ripped me away from the arms of my mother, that he dragged me to the edge of the universe, that I sought Descent rather than spend eternity in his hold.”
Lunelle moved her hair from one side of her neck to the other, shaking the rain from the ends.
“Is that not so?”
“No,” Proserpina said, a sorrow seeping into her words. “It’s not so.” Her eyes drifted into the deep black of the fathomless forest behind Lunelle. “I went willingly, but my mother did not want to give me up. She did not think I was ready to be a wife, and perhaps I wasn’t. My life was not a happy affair, Princess. It was rife with suffering. I prayed to Pluto, to the God of Death himself and asked him to take me. It was the shame of getting what I wanted that allowed the rumors to spread.”
“I don’t understand?—”
“Pluto granted me exactly what I begged for, what I knew my heart craved, and I let my mother, my sisters, and the rest of the gods believe he’d done it out of selfishness to save face. But I was born yearning for death—not of my body, but his. Our Souls… they were crafted from the same speckled light, never pure enough for the day. It took centuries to admit it—eons of wasted time.”
Proserpina cast her eyes toward the forest once more, and Lunelle wondered where he was—where death lurked when no one needed his escort services.
