“What about Mercury?”
Proserpina scoffed. “Mercury did not know what he did not know. He thought he was saving me. He thought he was protecting me. But all he did was delay the inevitable.”
She offered half her pomegranate to Lunelle.
“How did you know what to ask for?” Lunelle took a handful of seeds and let them rest on her tongue, enjoying the tart juice as it burst along her lips.
“The most important things in life you can never know for certain.”
Proserpina’s eyes wandered back from the trees to Lunelle’s face, the depth of her stare sending a shiver over Lunelle’s body.
“So there is no fighting it then? Fate?”
Proserpina’s lashes fluttered against her tan skin, an easy smile closing over her lips.
“Has it worked for you so far?”
The goddess leaned toward her, pressing her pomegranate-stained lips to Lunelle’s forehead, sending her catapulting back through herself and into the dust of the cliffs, the sea crashing below her. Her eyes shot open, and she scrambled back from the cliff’s edge, climbing to her feet as she shook the strange hypnosis she’d fallen into.
It took until she was back in the catacombs, outside of the palace passageway, to get the taste of pomegranate out of her mouth.
ChapterFourteen
When she woke the next morning, Lunelle had made two decisions.
The first was that Proserpina had a good point. Pluto was not the villain in either of their stories, and Mercury did not know what he did not know.
She’d been silly to think her delusions about the king were anything other than fear of letting herself want what she knew sheshould—Arcas was not her enemy.
He was what made sense.
Hewas what she’d asked for.
The second decision was that she could no longer waver on what to do about the rebellion. She needed to put her feet on the ground and move, one way or another.
The further she got into her morning, the more she realized she hadn’t actually made two decisions so much as decided to make two decisions, but that was enough progress to push her through breakfast with the courtiers and a long round of debates on the merits of absorbing Pluto’s infantry into the Inner Court army, versus leaving them in Pluto as a secondary wave in closer proximity to Solan.
She knew she only had an hour before the courts were to convene for yet another lengthy debate, this time on gods knew what, but she hoped to get a break before dinner.
“Lura?”
Her maiden poked her head through the door, eyes wide.
“Will you tell me when my mother returns from her lunch with the Venusians?”
Lura nodded. “Of course, Princess.”
Lunelle dug in her trunk for the manuscript Kwan had lent her, diving back into the article she’d left off on.
The People’s History of The Flare
The events surrounding the Solar Court’s lethal attack are not entirely clear, but of two things we can be certain:
1. The Solar Court only benefits from confusion around the king’s motives and,
2. The Lunar Court’s deity, Selenia, was spotted within the gates of Solaris on the morning of the incident.
Lunelle’s heart raced as she read the name—Selenia. It had been nearly a decade since she’d seen her mother’s mother. She did not leave her throne in the Court Above often. Even when she did, it was always fraught with stress and tension on her mother’s behalf.
