Something sparkled in her eyes that should have warned me. Defiance? Determination. She stood on her tiptoes and circled one hand around my neck. Leaning forward, she clumsily pressed her lips to mine.
I placed my hands on her arms and gently tried to push her away from me. She clung, her hand tightening on my neck and her lips mashing harder to mine with a mewl of determination. My eyes were still open as I struggled to break the kiss in the most sensitive way possible. I didn’t need to overly wound her ego. The last thing I wanted to do was to send her crying to her father about me. Tebald already didn’t trust me. One look in his eyes and I knew that, but I needed him to think I was agreeable to this marriage. I needed Maris on my side. At least until I was gone . . . and then I wouldn’t care.
From the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of movement. With a little more urgency, I gave a final push and set Maris away from me to look down the corridor. Luna and a guard stood a few yards away.
The guard chuckled, looking us up and down with a lecherous grin. “Getting a head start on the wedding night, eh?”
Maris gasped and released a small breathy giggle. “Mind your tongue, guard,” she reprimanded without any real heat.
The guard’s smile vanished from his face. “My apologies, Your Highness,” he said, his tone at once circumspect.
Luna made a small strangled sound. Myriad emotions crossed her face. “Fowler?”
I stepped forward, extending a hand as though to touch her. “Luna . . .” My voice faded at the sight of her taking a sudden step back. She angled her head, staring at me in that uncanny way of hers. As if she could in fact see me.
The betrayal was there, written all over her face. Of course she’d heard that kiss. Luna heard everything. Of course she misread the situation. She thought it was mutual.
“Luna.” I tried again for speech and then stopped short, glancing uneasily at Maris and the guard. I couldn’t very well reveal that I had been a victim of Maris’s advances. If I upset her, she would run to her father, and I didn’t need to alert him to the fact that I wasn’t receptive to marrying his daughter. He could figure that out the day he woke to find me gone.
Maris returned my stare, pressing her fingertips to her lips, looking up at me beneath her eyelashes with a very coquettish expression.
“It’s good to have you up on your feet again, Fowler,” Luna said, her voice that of a stranger.
“Isn’t it?” Maris chimed in, smoothing a hand against my chest possessively, intimately.
I looked back and forth between the guard and Luna, noting she wasn’t dressed properly. Were those tears in the white fabric of her nightgown? I took a step closer. “Luna, is anything amiss? Why are you up from bed?”
“Nothing to fret over. Just a little squabble with a dweller.”
“What?” Immediately tense, I looked around as if one of the creatures might suddenly jump out at us.
“Yes. It appears that’s what they do for entertainment around here. Throw victims into a pit for dwellers to eat.”
My gaze shot to Maris. “Is this true?”
“I-I . . . it has nothing to do with me. Father and the other men enjoy it . . . for sport, you know.”
“No. I don’t know,” I growled, thinking of the risk involved with bringing dwellers into the castle. It was stupid and unnecessary. Luna could have died. And who were the chosen victims anyway? What did they do to deserve such a fate?
Maris must have read some of the emotions on my face. She added a second hand to my chest, her voice softly cajoling, “It doesn’t have to remain that way. When you and I are wed, we can change things. Make them better here. However you like.”
Nothing appealed to me less than staying here and fighting for change in this place where I didn’t want to be. Not to mention Maris was a little na?ve if she thought I would ever be given any power. Even if her father was no longer a consideration, Chasan was. He would be king next. He wouldn’t roll over for his sister or me. No one would be making changes without Chasan’s consent.
Recalling what Luna had said, I demanded, “Wait. You said you had a squabble with a dweller?”
“Um. I happened to fall in.”
“You fell in?” I looked her up and down, searching for injuries. She turned her face away and I knew there was more to the story than that. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine. Just a few bruises. Nothing like the poor man those dwellers butchered, and nothing you should worry about.” This last she said with pointed antagonism. Her message was clear. I shouldn’t care about her. My jaw locked hard. It was too late for that. She wasn’t going to get her way in this. We’d come too far, I was in too deep to give up on her.
Chin lifted at a haughty angle, Luna turned to the guard. “I’m weary. Let us go.”
They continued, moving away from me. I watched, helpless to pursue her with Maris watching, her hands still locked on me like she would never let go.
TWENTY
Luna