Estrella
I smooth my hands over the fabric of my soft, golden coronation dress, shot through with strands of color. Purple for the sky at night. Rich brown for the sand of the desert beyond our little oasis. Gray for Father's eyes. Red for the heart of our people.
The heart I hold in my cold hands.
"Isn't it beautiful?" Mother says.
I force a smile and nod. Father's funeral is already over. As always, Yana's words were beautiful. Between Father's remaining advisors and me, we managed to set up a showing most of the capital could filter through to pay their respects. I've spent the last four hours overseeing condolences, and my cheeks ache. But if my cheeks ache, I am feeling something other than the hollow ache in my chest.
"You're going to look lovely." Tess pauses braiding my hair to stroke the fabric. "I can't imagine anything better."
"Thank you both," I reply, rote and automatic. "Where did it come from?"
"My hope chest." Mother begins unfolding the swath of fabric, readying it to be folded into a dress. "After the Haze, but before I left Thunderpeak."
Coming back home, too, seems to have returned her more to herself. Perhaps it's simply the weather. Escaping the chill of Dun's Crossing should be a gift from the Goddess Herself. The pale stones under my feet are warm to the touch without any need of rugs, though several do still line the floor of my dressing room to show off our craftsmanship. I run one of my toes over the weave and remember the woman who gave it to us. To me. On our monthly market visit, the colors caught my eye. A silvery blue runs through the whole piece, rare in Sundrop Gem. As soon as the weaver discovered I liked it, she insisted we take it with us. I was young then, and happy to agree, but Mother insisted we pay her for her work, and Father had offered above asking if she would agree to make more for the castle.
Usually, that story makes me proud to be a Sollabella, proud to belong in Sundrop Gem. Tonight, mere hours from my coronation, it is simply another story.
"Tell me more about that," I say.
"About what?" Mother drifts over to the hanging display of my jewelry.
"Knowing you were to be Luna but not being one yet." I meet my own gaze in the mirror. The eyes staring back at me are barely recognizable.
"It was strange. I loved Thunderpeak-love, really-but the ways there are nothing like life here." Mother plucks a few pairs of gold earrings off the rack and looks out the window at the low-lying mountains that hide the kingdom she came from. "Everybody fawned over me ceaselessly. I couldn't turn a corner without some girl I'd spent half my life avoiding wrapping her arm around my waist and declaring us bosom friends. Quickly, I realized they all wanted to be brought to Sundrop as part of my retinue."
Tess tugs a braid tight and pins it in place. "Did you take any of them?"
Mother sighs. "I thought about it. I was terribly afraid of being lonely, even though I knew these girls didn't want me particularly."
This is the part where I ask what changed. My mouth doesn't move. Mother walks over to us and holds one set of earrings up to my lobes, then another.
"Then, your father came to visit me, the week before the wedding." Her smile is tired, sore, but present. "He was overflowing with love for me. Nothing in Thunderpeak shone like it did before. And his people were all just as kind, just as personal. They wanted to know me, not just their king's new queen. That was when I understood Sundrop for the first time." She sets the earrings down. "I thought the isolation made them standoffish, but it makes us rely on each other. There's real love between people here like I've never seen before. Remember that, Estrella, and you cannot lead them astray."
I stare up at Mother as much as I can with Tess still braiding my hair. Sleepless nights still darken her under-eyes, and a sallow tint remains on her warm skin, but there's something of the woman who raised me in her now. She is being reinvigorated by this place.
Why isn't that happening for me?
"It would be easier to remember, Mother," I say before I can catch myself, "if I did not have to lead them alone."
She blinks. "What do you mean?"
A confession dangles on the tip of my tongue. It would be best to make a clean break of things before my coronation.
Tess meets my gaze in the mirror, her eyes soft and almost pitying. I am in the company of two romantics, two women who have felt Goddess-given love so truly and deeply it affects their every choice. They could not understand about Anwen if I spent the rest of the night explaining.
"You were my age when you took the throne," I say instead. "But you had a partner in Father. Why do I have to do this alone?"
"Oh, my dove." Mother cups my cheeks, and I watch hesitation flicker in her eyes. I've asked her a question she doesn't quite know how to answer. "Didn't you listen to me? You're never truly alone in Sundrop Gem."
The bite on my neck itches. I scratch at it absently. In Dun's Crossing, I thought that itch meant Anwen was nearby, but I was obviously wrong about that. Like so much else in these last few weeks.
"Done with your hair," Tess says. "Dowager Suniva, have you picked earrings?"
***
Castor slips his arm through mine in the waiting area before the royal temple. On the rare occasions the reigning Alpha King and Luna Queen can retire, they escort the new leaders to the holy woman. Had Mother died, Father would walk with me. But Castor is the only other person alive with royal Sollabella blood running in his veins, so the job falls to him.
"You look nice," he says.
"You've never complimented my appearance before," I reply.
"Things are different now." He swallows heavily.
I tighten my grip on him. "I wouldn't like them to be. Not like that."
He sighs, and a bit of tension leaves his body. "You mean you don't want me to be a perfect, mannerly advisor?"
I offer him a wan smile. "If you transformed into one overnight, I'd worry we abandoned the real Castor in Dun's Crossing."
Real fury flashes across his face. Beyond the door, the drums and flutes climb to a fever pitch.
"We should kill them for what they did," he snarls.
My bite sears. "Perhaps. Someday. But for all they say they've changed, Dun's Crossing boasts the largest standing army in the world. If we attacked them now, we would be slaughtered."
Castor visibly forces himself to relax. "Perhaps it's good you're the eldest."
A high, trilling note rings out. That's our cue. Castor pushes open the door, and we walk arm-in-arm through a crowd of our people.
"Why is that?" I ask in the brief moment after we exit the crowd, before we reach Yana, on the altar.
"You can handle this," he says bluntly.
He releases me to face Yana alone and fades into the crush. For the first time since I realized how deep Anwen's betrayal ran, I want something. I want to ask Father for advice.
"The Goddess guides our footsteps, even in the darkest night," Yana declares over the noise.
The music softens. Even in the packed temple, no one says a word. I can barely pick out individual faces amidst the assembly.
"She does not abandon us." Yana meets my eyes. "She does not lead us astray."
I hear the meaning behind her words. I may be young, I may be alone, but the Goddess would not make me queen if I could not handle it. If only I could tell Yana what else the Goddess has asked of me recently.
"And as she dances from phase to phase, so must we in Her footsteps." With the introduction complete, Yana moves into the proper ceremony.
I've never seen a coronation, but I know the ritual by heart. I've been learning it since I was a child. The steps, the words I have to say, the candles and prayers echo in my dreams. I've always known I would have to endure them on nearly the worst day of my life.
In truth, I suspected the coronation would be worse. Yana's invocations of clear-headedness, of truth, of power wash over me like gentle waves. These are my people. I must lead them. There is nothing else.
A door at the back of the temple creaks open, and every head turns but Yana's. It is the height of disrespect to arrive late to such an event. I look, even though I don't expect to see anything over the crowd.
But two heads of blond hair in Sundrop Gem are impossible to mistake.
Emotions burst through my chest, hot and wild. Anwen is here. Anwen and Baz. I cannot think of anything else other than that they are here. The emotions are impossible to tease apart, to tell good from bad.
Yana grasps my wrist. I cannot stop the coronation, certainly not now. She lifts a curved, jeweled dagger.
"This blade was carved from the tooth of our very first Alpha King." She turns my hand over, exposing my palm. "These gems were mined from the home of our very first Luna Queen. Their blood flows in your veins. With this, I join you to their endless line."
Yana slices open my finger and drops the blood into the candle flame.
The emotions burn hotter, brighter. Like desert sand at noon. And then, I feel it. Just as the glow starts, a second set of hands around my own. Larger, warmer, softer. Smoothing over the cut, which heals instantly.
The Goddess is here.