*Maddy*
Once a Luna, always a Luna, at least that’s how I perceive the woman sitting across from me in a high back armchair. Soft afternoon sunlight makes her glow a pale gold, an aura nearly the same color as her long, silken blonde hair. Her eyes are exactly like Isaac’s, and it gives me a start to look directly into them. I’m sitting before a goddess–kind and warm–and I am no one, yet I’m taking her place.
“Isaac says your parents are no longer alive, but you have a stepmother and stepsister. Will you be inviting them to the wedding, now that we’ve… been given more time?” She blushes a bit, which surprises me. I don’t know what was said before I came into the room, but it’s almost as if she feels guilty for throwing off the rushed order of things.
“Oh, them,” I sigh, unable to stop myself. I meet her eyes, blue gems behind gold dusted lashes. “We’re not close.”
“How come?”
I grit my teeth in an effort to stop myself from speaking before thinking. While my fluency in their language has improved greatly during my time here, I still mess up, and the last person I want to say anything stupid in front of is Luna Isla. “Lousia… she–” I hesitate. I know Isla has powers. Is reading my mind and pulling the reluctant truth from me one of them? Resigned to just putting the truth out there, I say, “She sold me to a rogue criminal in Crescent City. That’s how I met your son.”
“Oh,” Isla says with remarkable calm, but a playful smirk touches the corners of her mouth. “She sounds lovely.”
I crack a smile despite my attempts to remain neutral.
“Does she know?”
“That I’m marrying the Alpha King? No, I doubt it.”
Isla shifts her weight and focuses on the far wall, deep in thought. After a moment she turns back to me, smiling softly in a way that causes her warm eyes to crinkle with amusement. “Once, long ago now, I came here to this very house with nothing but a bag of my things and my name. I was supposed to just be a breeder, you know. My life had no meaning other than supplying an heir to the Alpha King to appease both his allies and enemies, much the same as what Isaac is going through.” She pauses, her smile faltering. “There were so many who wanted to see me fail. Who thought, as Maddox and I began to fall in love, that I didn’t deserve not only his attention, but his protection and to sit beside him on the throne. I proved them wrong, and the sweetest revenge was seeing them see me there, the infamous breeder, the nobody who became the Luna.”
Her eyes flash with mischief that makes her look like a young woman again. I understand her meaning.
“I could invite them.”
“That would be wonderful. I look forward to meeting them.” Her delicate hands reach for the teapot between us. She pours me a fresh cup of the sweet smelling, floral tea. Her eyes flick up to mine, and I feel as though she’s really looking into my head this time. “Are you sure about this, Madeline?”
I find it momentarily hard to swallow. “About marrying your the king? Yes, I am sure.”
“You’re not worried about finding your mate one day and being in a position where you’re unable to act on that bond?”
“I don’t have a wolf.” I look down at my lap, suddenly ashamed. I don’t notice she’s risen from her chair until she’s beside me, crouching next to me with her hand hovering over my thigh. I meet her eyes and nod, giving her unspoken permission to touch me.
Can you see who I am by just a touch? Does she have the power to access those memories? I’ve heard rumors of her gifts–that she can heal ailments with a single drop of her tears. What could that possibly do for me at this point?
“Were you ever able to shift?”
“Yes, but I didn’t have the time or freedom to do it regularly. I started to feel it slipping away shortly after my twenty-first birthday.”
“How old are you now?”
My cheeks burn, but I meet her eyes. “Twenty-four. I’m a few months older than Isaac, I think.”
She takes her hand away with a jerk that unsettles me. Sitting back down across from me, she takes a moment to compose herself. I want to ask what’s wrong, but the flush in her cheeks stops me from saying anything at all.
The door to the sitting room opens, and Ella comes inside, smiling at the two of us. “It’s my turn, Mom. I need Maddy. There’s a lot to do.”
Maddy. Ella’s never called me that before, no one in this place has, in fact. I zone out for a moment, repeating my name in my head over and over again. When I snap back to reality, Isla is looking right at me, an unreadable expression on her face.
I stand and curtsy, bowing my head before turning on my heel and walking as fast as I can toward Ella.
Ella sweeps me into the hallway, her arm tucked in the crook of mine. “So… not that bad, right? Mom’s great. You’ll love her! Dad is great too but his personality is lacking. He’s a big, tough, quiet guy, you know?”
“I don’t know if your mom likes me–”
“Oh, of course she does! Come on, now that we have more time to plan the wedding, I have some time to finish preparing for your official portrait. Rosie and Hannah are already upstairs in my studio.”
The look on Luna Isla’s face when she heard my name, my nickname that is, haunts me as I climb the winding staircase toward the tower. Ella is speaking rapidly, but I don’t hear her at all, my mind in some far off place and totally shut off from the world. Lifted female chatter breaks through my silent thoughts as we reach the door to the tower, which is cracked and just ajar. Hannah is sitting on the ground with her legs crossed behind Rosie, the dark-haired beauty and daughter of someone named Trinity, as well as Elijah, who I’ve heard a lot about since coming here.
Rosie has strange, grayish hazel eyes, a color I’ve never seen in the natural world before. She’s beautiful and exceedingly friendly. Her smile brightens the room as we walk in, and Ella shuts the door behind us.
Hannah continues braiding Rosie’s thick black curls, pulling her hair away from her face. Ella walks across the circular room and pulls a dust cover off a huge canvas. “Ta-da! I finished prepping the canvas today. It’s ready for paint!” She turns to me, looking me up and down. “Goddess, your hair and makeup is perfect for this. Good Job, Hannah.”
“Thank you,” Hannah beams, giving Ella a dramatic bob of her head.
“You need to lose the dress though.”
“What else am I going to wear?” I feel suddenly exposed despite still being draped in pale pink fabric. I catch the white sheet Ella tosses at me, then follow her pointed finger to an antique room divider. Hannah pops up and takes me by the shoulders without being prompted, and before I can protest, I’m out of the dress, standing in nothing but my underwear and bra, while Hannah wraps the sheet around me and clips it with laundry pins in the front, shoving it down so my declatage and shoulders are exposed. Then, I’m plopped down on a stool next to Ella, who fidgets with my hair and turns my head to and fro until she captures the angle she’s looking for.
“Great. Don’t move,” she warns, giving me a playful grin. She turns to the canvas with a smile and a huge, restorative sigh, before placing her pencil tip to the stretched fabric and beginning to map out my face.
I feel like a doll. It’s not a bad feeling, and knowing Ella’s talent, I’m more than happy to sit here and let her draw me. But from this angle, my viewpoint allows me only to look at her dark, stormy dream paintings still resting against the wall on the far side of the angular room. There’s a new one, and the silhouette of the man she believes might be her mate is clearer this time.
But the feeling it gives me as I stare at it for so long isn’t loving. It isn’t warm by any means. In fact, my skin prickles with unease, and adrenaline pricks my fingertips as the red-washed night sky blooms around a bluish-silver figure in the center. Did he just move? Did his faceless form look over his shoulder at me, at Ella?
“Maddy, you’re shivering!” Ella's voice bounces through my ears. I turn to her, forgetting I’m not supposed to move.
“I’ll go get the space heater,” Hannah says nearby. “But if anything catches on fire again, King Isaac’s going to tan our hides.”
“Again?” Rosie laughs. “You mean that's happened before?”
Their voices retreat as they leave the studio. I look up at Ella, who's watching me closely, but then her eyes move to where I’d been looking, and her curious, somewhat concerned, expression drops to something dark and withdrawn.
“Do you know who he is?” I ask.
Ella turns back to the canvas to make a few marks with her pencil. “Maybe. I’m not totally sure. I never see his face, remember?”
“What do you see in the dreams?”
She hadn’t gone into details before. Her cheeks flush, a ripple of weariness passing behind her eyes. “War,” she says after a long moment of heavy silence. Her eyes stay fixed on the canvas in front of her where her sketch of my face is nearly complete. “I see death, chaos, and… desperation. He’s desperate to find me, but I can’t talk to him. I try. I scream out for him, but he just stands there.”
“Ella–”
She turns to me abruptly, her signature cat-like smile erasing any hint of negative emotion in her expression. “It’s silly, isn’t it? I think it’s just my stress over the upcoming war and the unknowns. Isaac still doesn’t know if he’ll need to send the entire force of our kingdom to battle. Everyone is just waiting, and waiting. It’s a weird feeling.”
Wait, no! I want to know more about the dreams!
“This man in your dreams,” I say, trying to circle back. “Have you ever met him before?”
“I feel like I have. That’s the craziest part. Something about him is so familiar it nags at me when I’m awake. I think maybe he’s one of my brother’s warriors. Maybe he’s going to be stuck on the battlefield one day soon and doing everything he can to fight his way back to me. It’s a romantic notion. Silly, really. Don’t tell anyone.” Her last words are suddenly very, very serious. “Especially not my mom. She’ll think I’m having visions of the future and nag me incessantly about it.”
“Are you having visions of the future?”
“Well, if I am, it’s nothing but fire and bloodshed.” Her pencil tip cracks, and she curses under her breath. “No, I think I’m just…. Part of me thinks I’m making him up, and that’s why he doesn’t have a face. Not yet.”
The door to the studio abruptly opens. Neither of us are surprised, knowing Hannah and Rosie should be on their way back any moment, but when I see it’s not them, I yelp, shifting my weight to try to cover myself from Isaac’s surprised stare as he enters the room.
“Get. Out.” Ella whirls on him, pointing to the door, but Isaac’s eyes are locked on mine. His focus slides from my face to my bare shoulders, and then down the laundry pins preventing me from exposing myself entirely.
“I’m here to fetch my fiancee.”
“No, I need her right now,” Ella retorts. “You were the one who said–”
I stand as if in a trance. His suddenly heated gaze flicks back to mine and holds there. What’s happening right now? Sure, I’ve known there was a heavy attraction between us, and he knows now that I am the girl he danced with at the ball years ago, but something in his eyes is new and dark in a way that causes tension to coil at the base of my spine.
Ella snorts, looking between us. “Fine. I’ll finish up what I can by myself.”
“I’m sorry,” I whisper to her as I step behind the room divider again and try to get myself dressed as quickly as I can. The pale pink dress is impossible to zip on my own, but when I step out to ask Ella for help, she’s gone, and the door is wide open. Isaac is staring at the portrait of himself, still unfinished, and propped against the curving wall. He turns to me and smiles softly.
“Can you–” I blush deeply, holding my dress up on my chest. “I can’t reach the zipper.”
Wordlessly he beckons me forward. I give him my back and feel his featherlight touch on my skin as he zips up the dress. “You’re freezing.”
“It’s cold up here.”
“Well, I have a few moments of peace. Come with me, there’s something I want to show you.”