The goddess leaned forward, holding out her palm. Lunelle offered her the pomegranate.
“Even in eternity, I regret the time I wasted fighting,” Proserpina said, looking at Pluto. Between them was a sorrow laced with love and lust, a depth to their feelings that Lunelle worried she understood perfectly. “You can only outrun Fate so long, Lunelle. What is for you will find you, in every plane, in every lifetime. Even if you hide from it.”
Lunelle sighed, the sinking feeling within her sparkling with something silver—something like hope.
“Hold your breath this time,” Pluto said softly, waving his hand and sending a black wave over her head.
She swept up and over herself with the midnight current.
There was no breath left in her lungs to hold.
ChapterTwenty-Two
“Lunelle!” A booming voice sent her back from the edge of the cliff, her fingers reaching for the ache as she righted herself.
She coughed, salty sea water spilling into her hands.
“Lunelle!” Mirquios barked again, a rage within his voice that ravaged her bones. He rushed her, gripping her shoulders as he yelled in Mercurian, by the sound of his dipped vowels.
“Mirquios!” She hit his chest, his eyes wide with harsh words.
He finally found the common tongue phrase he’d been searching for in his panic.
“Are you fuckinginsane?”
She glared and pulled away from him, but his hands only tightened.
“Do you have a death wish?”
She followed his eyes to the edge of the cliffs, the dark brown planes of his face deepened by his anger.
“I wasn’t going to?—”
“I don’tcare,” he hissed, shaking her. “I don’t care if other people do it. I care if you—I care if you…”
His bright eyes flickered away, but she didn’t need to see them to know what they revealed.
“I was not trying to hurt myself!” she explained, his hands still digging into her shoulders. She shrugged in an effort to loosen his grip, but he remained attached to her.
“I came here before and made an offering to Proserpina,” she confessed. “I thought perhaps she denied it because I was too afraid to jump, so I came back, but… it doesn’t matter! It doesn’t matter.” She stroked the king’s chest, begging his heart rate to come down.
Mirquios inhaled slowly, his eyes closing as he stepped back, still unable to fully release her, though his fingers held less tightly.
“Arcas knows, Mirquios. He knows we’re both rebels. He wants the Lunar throne or he’ll tell the gods we’re bound?—”
“Thatfuckingbastard!” Mirquios rasped.
“I know,” she said. “I know, but… but I don’t know if I care.”
Perhaps her wishhadbeen granted by the goddess, and she’d been too afraid to accept it the first time. Proserpina had to call in her own love to show her, to make her understand what exactly she was risking.
And what she could not risk.
She rested her hands on either side of his face, cradling him in a way she had not dared before, not even in her dreams.
“Lunelle,” he warned, her touch too tender, too hard not to lean into.
“I cannot go the rest of my life without knowing.”
