“It is honorable, Lunelle, to choose your court over your own dreams,” Oestera said, stirring her coffee. “Many simply aren’t capable of it. They crumble beneath the weight of a crown before they get their bearings and build enough muscle to hold it.”
Lunelle did not understand what she meant by her musings. Her lungs slowly filled with dread as she turned them over in her mind. She sank into her chair, wishing a pit would open up beneath her and take her back to the encounter with Pluto, where she might ask him why the Nether he’d dared to make her hope.
“It is honorable,” Oestera said again. “But honor is not all there is to life.”
Lunelle’s forehead creased. “Mother, I am tired?—”
“Hear me when I tell you, my darling girl, that you and I are not as unalike as I might have thought. As you surely think. I was not much older than you when Leona died and tossed my entire life plan into the ether. Things change, Lunelle. That’s all I’m getting at. And if you need to change with them, I would hope you’d have the courage to do so.”
Lunelle eyed her mother. She studied the delicate lines forming at the corners of her lips, the fold through her forehead that Lunelle used to imagine Astra carving with her own blade. It seemed so connected to her sister’s behavior.
“Do you understand me, Lunelle?”
“No,” Lunelle snorted. “No, I do not. My entire life, you have painstakingly and relentlessly trained me to only think of everyone else, never let my will supersede the betterment of my court, and now, weeks away from my coronation, you’re unraveling it all to tell me what, Mother? What do you want me to do?”
Oestera’s eyes flared.
“That’s exactly it, Lunelle. You can’t rely on what I want you to do. After your coronation, I will be on borrowed time. I will make my Ascent to the Lunar throne in the Court Above, and all of this will be up to you. Every piece of it. I’m telling you that it’s time to consider what you want that to look like.”
Lunelle’s neck flushed pink with heat. She was exhausted by her mother’s riddles.
“That's all I consider, Mother. It’s all I’ve ever considered—and I resent the implication that I’m not doing exactly what it is I believe to be right.”
Oestera held her hands up, backing down from the fight in a move that Lunelle had never once seen.
“I was merely offering some understanding, Lunelle.”
Lunelle swallowed a bitter laugh.Understandingwas comical. Understanding was long overdue. Understanding was worthless to her now.
“Perhaps your understanding would be better spent on the daughter down the hall, hmm?” Lunelle arched her brow, knowing that throwing Astra into the mix would swiftly shift the focus from her.
Oestera exhaled.
“If I understood your sister less, perhaps I could give her more.”
She left Lunelle to ponder her strange circles, pulling at threads to which she did not see any ends in sight.
“Explain it again,”Mirquios said, his eyes widening as Lunelle held up the diagram she’d drawn.
“It’s a symbolic ceremony,” Lunelle said,the lines of her diagram slipping from the page as her dream struggled to hold the concepts together. “The priestess will lead me through two prayers—the Hymn of the Soul, and the Song of the Shadow. When that’s complete, I will offer my Shadow to the Nether queen for the Solstice, typically by placing it into a piece of quartz, and then I will have to reintegrate it in the Court Below to accomplish my trial.”
“That’s it?” Mirquios said, taking the page from her, the notes bleeding into one another.
“Well, I have to find it first.”
Mirquios leaned back into the sofa. “Does it hurt?”
“My mother said it’s more emotional turmoil than physical.” Lunelle poured herself another cup of tea, settling in for the rest of their study session. She’d spent her entire life preparing for her coronation trial, and explaining the ritual to him had made her feel like she just might be capable of it.
“Say I bribed a priestess to perform the ceremony on me and then snuck into the Court Below… if I completed it… and then beat Arcas back…”
Lunelle shook her head. “You have to be nominated, I think.”
“You think?”
She frowned. She did not actually know if that was a prerequisite.
“We should look into that,” the king whispered, leaning forward and placing a kiss on her shoulder.
