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Isla grabbed the folded note over the book she recalled reading last night when she’d been in the library. After talking with Adrien, she’d wanted to begin learning all she could about thisdark moon, not wasting a moment to pick up a tome about charting the stars to gauge celestial events. Kai must’ve carried her back.
FOR THE MOST BEAUTIFUL
QUEEN IN THE FOUR REALMS.
BE BACK SOON.
I LOVE YOU.
Isla ran her hands over the ink and brought it closer to her nose to catch his scent.Real. Alive.She let out a heavy breath, unsure if she was about to cry in relief or just for how much she…loved him.
He had to be safe, then. Wherever he’d gone. But the bond, something inside her, still felt…wrong.
But she couldn’t dawdle on it long. Not with the blush pink that crept over the floor, spreading over some of the furniture as dawn peeked over the mountaintops.
The countdown had begun. At dusk, as the sun faded and the goddesses rose with the moon to witness, the coronation ceremony would begin.
And she would be crowned the Luna of Deimos.
* * *
Late afternoon hit, and Kai was still missing.
Marin hadn’t known that he’d left at all, let alone where he’d gone, and neither had Sol or any of the staff or guards. Isla couldn’t make a huge fuss about it when she’d asked them, having to frame her questioning as something easy in passing, but she should’ve known that someone would see right through it. Should’ve known that someone would be using their highly-trained warrior skills.
Isla had dealt with her scrutinizing stare for ten minutes too long before she dismissed Marin’s arsenal of doting handmaidens so she and Ameera could talk. The general carefully sat on the lip of the bath within the ornate bathing room, specifically situated in the Northern Hall to prepare the luna for events. “How long’s he been gone?”
Isla’s heavy sigh was enough to ripple lukewarm water. She ran a soft sponge over her arm, dousing herself in the smells of spearmint and jasmine. Not as calming as she would’ve hoped. “Since this morning. He left me a note saying he’d be back soon but didn’t say where he was going.”
Ameera pursed her lips. “All meetings today were canceled for the coronation.”
“I’m aware.”
Her voice softened even further, wary of any listening ears. “You can’t feel him?”
Isla kept hers equally so. “Barely.”
It was with sheer grit and determination that she took the fragments of the bond, of herself, and hurtled each across the bridge between them, trying to re-forge the tether with whatever fire she possessed. But he was only a whisper of a tug, if anything. Perhaps sometimes she felt her heartbeat in phantom rhythm with his, but that could’ve just been in her mind as a comfort. Telling herself that he was alive.
“Could he be getting you a gift?”
Isla sank lower into the water, letting its warmth envelop her, just above her shoulders. “He already did.” There was a steady pressing on her skull, right between her brows. A tap, tap, tap on her mind, but not from the bond. Not from Kai. Stress, anxiety, she didn’t know what it was from, but with each ticking second since she’d woken up this morning, it was relentless. “What I do feel…is something’s wrong.”
“With him?” Ameera’s body had become rigid, the muscles in her arms flexing as if the word had triggered something deep within her, and for a moment, Isla saw a flash of wild emotions on the general’s usual flawless and fierce exterior. A woman who’d felt her best friend slipping away far too many times, who’d nearly lost him just as many, and would do anything to protect him.
She and Ameera were similar in so many ways.
“No, not him,” Isla answered quickly but then reeled back. “I think he’s fine. It’s just…something.”
It wasn’t nearly as placating as she’d foolishly hoped, for Ameera or for herself. The general was already rising. “I’ll gather my band of fools, and we’ll look for him.” Her band of fools—Rhydian and Jonah, she could only assume. “It’s not the first time he’s disappeared on us.”
Isla offered a soft smile in thanks. “Where was he the last time?”
Ameera’s jaw tensed, and a bitter rage lingered under her words. “In Callisto because he’d entered the Hunt and never thought to mention it to us.”
Isla opened her mouth to defend him, to say he hadn’t been thinking straight in the early months that followed his family’s deaths, to nearly tell Ameera everything Kai had confessed to her that night in the hotel—how lost and hopeless he’d felt while having to appear strong, so much so that a small part of him hoped he’d die behind the Wall—but it seemed, Ameera had already figured that for herself.
The mention of the Hunt nagged something in Isla’s mind. She recalled all they’d learned from Adrien yesterday about the spreading rot in particular. If he’d actually gone to investigate without her…
