Lunelle’s eyes flashed to Lura’s in the mirror before her. Distraught was one way to put it—she might have gone with something more akin todevastatedorso confused I can’t figure out which way is Above and which is Below.
“I have much on my mind,” Lunelle returned.
Lura laced up her dress, each tug of the ribbons a brutal reminder that she’d soon have to face the king.
And the prince.
Oh gods.
“Princess, your heart!” Lura’s forehead creased with concern, her eyes wide as she listened to Lunelle draw a ragged breath. Of the two secrets shredding her mind, one would strike her dead for revealing, and the other simply made her wish for such a mercy.
“Lura,” she breathed, the thought of saying it aloud choking her.
“What has happened?” Lura held her shoulders, searching her crystalline gaze. “Are you safe?”
No. No, she was not safe. She was in grave danger.
Lunelle held her shoulders back, fighting the urge to crumple into a sputtering mess. This was not who she was, not who her mother had carved her into. She rubbed her fingers over the small scar in her palm as if it might release some sort of cosmic wisdom and free her from this spiral.
“Are you hurt?” Lura asked, pulling her hand out between them. The Moon-shaped cut was small enough—harmless to anyone not looking closely—but Lurawaslooking closely.
Lura softly scratched at the neckline of her dress, shifting the fabric ever so slightly away from her body and revealing the edges of a tattoo Lunelle recognized instantly, even from just a glance.
A dagger and the edge of a crown were inked in silver against her collarbone.
The princess gasped softly as her veins seized with adrenaline. She stared at her maiden, her friend of two decades, watching as Lura’s lips curled.
“I don’t know the secret passwords,” Lunelle sighed, her eyes wide.
Lura sputtered a laugh. “Who bound you?” She held up her own wrist, a barely-there pink scar hovering beneath the fabric of her sleeve.
“I cannot say, can I?”
“You needn’t worry about the oath within the rebellion, it’s only outside of us that you’ll have consequences.”
“I did not get a copy of the rules.”
Lura sighed. “If you had, that damned prince would have just incinerated it anyway.”
Lunelle’s brows arched.
“Apologies, Princess?—”
Lunelle grasped her hand. “No! No, none of that. No more of that at all. I took the same oath you did, Lura. And I did it in all sincerity. I am not your princess, I am your peer.”
“Well, then,” Lura said. “What in the Nether are we going to do about the prince?”
Her heart sank. The weight of it was all too much.
“If only that were our largest problem, Lura.”
The maiden’s head tilted, a hesitation seeping into her smile.
“I will not bind you by blood, but if you tell a single Soul, I will make you wish the oath struck you dead before I did.”
Lura bristled, so unused to hearing anything of the sort from this sister. Astra had threatened her with much more for much less.
She nodded. “Of course, Prin—Lunelle.”
