Anwen
I blink awake the next morning, sore and scraped. For a second, I stare at the ceiling, trying to remember who I fought. Then, someone shifts in the bed beside me, and everything snaps into place.
The assassination of King Isai. Estrella yelling at me. Falling into bed with her. And collapsing into sleep afterward without exchanging a word. A fuzzy corona of dark brown hair sticks out above the blankets, promising she's still there. I smile.
Last night complicated everything, I'm sure. She's Luna now, and I don't know if Sundrop has some extra traditions or rules about a Luna's mate. But all I can think about is the moment when she came at me, yelling, putting me down, and I didn't take the bait. I didn't snap back. I ignored all the voices in my head screaming that she couldn't talk to me like that and became the person she needed me to be.
If I can do that, there's no point in avoiding telling the world we're mates. Estrella is mine, and I need everyone to know it. I brush a lock of hair off her forehead.
She stirs, then shoots up, her eyes wild. I jump back to avoid knocking our heads together and barely stay on the mattress.
"Hey," I say softly. "I'm here. You're all right. You're in a private room in the east wing of the castle."
Estrella blinks a few times, and I take the opportunity to marvel at her in the morning light. Her gray eyes shine. One of the pillowcases left a jagged dent in her cheek that my fingers itch to smooth. A trail of purplish bruises in the shape of my mouth decorate her neck. She's just as beautiful as she was when she entered the ballroom.
And I don't even think the fact that she's topless is most of it.
She shakes her head. "Hours have passed. The sun is up. What have your men learned?"
I frown. "I haven't checked in yet. I thought we could-"
"Please check in." Her voice is sharp, tight.
"Of course." A milder protective instinct surges, reminding me I never want to be the one making her feel like that. Any conversation about our mating can wait until she's less upset.
'Baz?' I call across the mind-link.
Kieran assigned me to lead the chase on the trail a few soldiers picked up last night while Taner searched the castle. When it became clear I couldn't make myself leave Estrella, I asked Baz to chase it in my stead. He's a gray wolf, so he'll have a better chance of following the trail with his nose anyway.
'Took you long enough,' he replies. 'I was starting to think we should circle back and make sure a second assassin hadn't gotten you.'
'It's barely after sunrise, you big baby.' I struggle not to roll my eyes with Estrella looking at me. Somehow, I doubt she'll appreciate that I'm irritated with Baz's antics and nothing more. 'What have you found?'
'Less than I'd hoped. The fucker is fast, and he's smart.'
Swallowing my grimace is another fight. Luckily, the one useful skill Father taught me was hiding my expressions. 'Smart how?'
'He peeled out of the ballroom, shifted, and only using hallways big enough for a wolf, found the royal escape tunnels.' Baz sighs over mind-link. 'I hope he's smart. Otherwise, he's damned well-informed.'
The insinuation shivers up my spine. 'None of us had anything to do with this.'
'Of course not,' Baz answers easily. 'Just strange. I thought nobody outside the palace knew about the tunnels. Anyway, I've still got the trail. We're on his ass, headed west. I'll report in when I know more.'
'Thanks.' I look at Estrella, and that information doesn't seem like enough. Quickly, I reach out to Taner. 'Did you find anything?'
'Nothing,' my brother's Beta replies. 'Suspiciously nothing. No bow, no quiver, not even a feather. The closest we've got to a clue is the arrow in King Isai's chest, and the family's not letting anyone near him yet.'
'Dammit.'
"Well?" she asks. "If you're talking this much, there must be something."
I take her hands. "We've got people on the assassin's trail."
Her face falls. "So you don't have him."
"Not yet." I squeeze her hands. "But we've got our best men on this. Preliminary findings indicate the assassin was smart, so this wasn't some impulse killing. He took all his weaponry with him, and we don't yet know how he got in, but he got out using secret passages under the castle for royals to escape if we are attacked."
She pulls her hands back. "It sounds as though you're attempting to dress your grandmother up as a bride."
I blink. "What?"
"It's an idiom." She flips her hand dismissively. "I mean to say you have nothing, and you're pretending otherwise."
I swallow. In that moment of hesitation, a lance of pain rips through my chest, nowhere near my mark. I put my hand to it.
"Did you feel that?" I ask.
"Feel what?" She frowns.
"The pain." I rub my chest. "As if someone stabbed my heart."
Estrella stiffens, which has the lucky side effect of putting her breasts even more on display. Her expression tells me now is not the time to be thinking like that.
"Are you asking me if learning you've utterly failed to find my father's killer is painful?" she asks icily.
I shake my head. "I'm asking why-"
Thunderclouds gather on her brow. Maybe I'm better off not trying to solve the mystery of feeling her so intensely right now. Which means it also isn't the time to bring up the glowing incident.
"I apologize." I drop a kiss on her bare shoulder, scant inches from her mark where I know the skin will be tender. "I'll think before I say these things in the future."
Estrella leans away, and my mark aches.
"What?"
"Last night was...." She bites her lip. "Do you understand that I am the Luna of Sundrop Gem now?"
"Yes." I frown slightly, trying to understand. "You were quite clear about that, Your Majesty."
My teasing doesn't make her smile. She slides out of bed, gloriously naked in the morning sun. "So you understand that the situation has changed."
"What situation?"
"This situation." She gestures to the two of us, our marks. "The matter of us being mated."
"I agree!" I sit up. "You were right about me, but after last night, I-"
"Anwen," she says as gently as if she's talking to a child.
My stomach drops. I know that tone. I've used that tone on the dozens of nameless women that have passed through this bed before. It's the I had a wonderful night tone, the I'm just not ready tone.
"No." I cross my arms. "I was wrong to try to keep this a secret. We can't go back now. Goddess, look at your neck! You can't even walk through the castle without someone seeing those."
She grits her teeth, then turns to a polished bronze mirror on the wall. After a few minutes of inspection, she turns back with a sigh.
"I would be lying if I claimed to be pleased about those, but I own scarves." She shakes her head. "I don't know how to be clearer, Anwen. Sundrop Gem demands satisfaction from Dun's Crossing, and as Luna, I am Sundrop Gem."
My temper slips my grasp for a moment. "You could try not speaking in riddles."
"You're being childish," she replies. "This was your idea, don't you remember?"
"What was?" I demand. "I want to hear you say it."
"Hiding our marks." She meets my gaze steadily, and no hint of the pain she felt over her father sparks in my chest. "Denying that we're mates."
"I want to change my mind now," I say.
Hanging in empty air, it sounds exactly as childish as she claimed. I scowl.
"Perhaps princes have that luxury, but I am queen, and I intend to act like it." Estrella straightens. "Do we understand each other?"
I understand perfectly. I just feel like my skin is about to boil away into nothingness and leave the flesh underneath behind.
"What if I disobey, Your Majesty?" I ask.
"Then there will be war," she says simply.
That hits me like a blow without any of the magical force I've been enduring. War. Looking at her, naked and fearless, I don't doubt for a second that she would keep that promise. No matter how stupid a thing my mouth is to go to war over. I thought she wasn't stupid.
She lifts her chin a fraction higher, as if convincing herself of something, and I realize she isn't stupid. She wouldn't risk Sundrop over me. But she would risk Sundrop over this assassination attempt.
Estrella thinks Dun's Crossing was involved. Or that we might have been. That's why she's walking away, so she doesn't have to bear the shame of being mated to her father's killer.
A bright, beautiful path back to her illuminates in front of me. I squash my temper into a box-into a cage-and smile. "I understand. Rest assured, Your Majesty, I will be helming the investigation from here on out, and I won't rest until your father's killer is brought to justice. For now, there are spare dresses in the wardrobe."
Estrella peers at me, clearly wondering about my change of heart, but walks over to the wardrobe anyway. I take a deep breath. Now, all I need to do is prove my mate wrong.