Wait for Tebald to die. That was what he was saying. We had to wait until he was no longer in power and we could take over.
“You have a good heart, Luna,” he continued, his voice insinuating into my spinning thoughts. “Better than my own. Better than anyone I’ve ever met before. You want to do the right thing even if it hurts you. Only I don’t want you to be hurt.” His lips ghosted over mine. I gasped at the brush of contact.
I didn’t have time to pull away from his almost-kiss. It was over as quickly as it had begun, but I still felt a tight clench low in my stomach. Regret whispered through me. I could have kicked myself for the weak thought. Why should I feel loyalty to Fowler when he had already forgotten about me?
“I want to try to be more like you, Luna. Together, with you, I think I can. We could be good together. We could be good for Lagonia and Relhok.”
His words wove through me, a seductive spell sinking deep. Could he mean that? I weighed the possibility. Relhok and Lagonia united, without Cullan or Tebald at the helm. The black eclipse and its dwellers would still exist, but things wouldn’t have to be so hopeless.
Marriage to Chasan meant not living for myself, but it also meant making a difference in the lives of others. I could make this world a better place. Wasn’t that what Sivo and Perla had groomed me to do? They had believed that was my fate. They taught me to believe it, too.
“I can see you’re thinking about it, Luna.” His hands fell to his sides with a whisper. I nodded once, relieved at the distance between us so that I could think without his hands touching me. “Good. Consider it. You have time. A little time,” he amended. However much time his father would give us.
He moved away toward the door, his steps soft and steady in the great expanse of my room. “We’ll talk again soon.”
Then I was alone in the pulsing silence of my bedchamber with only my clamoring thoughts for company.
TWENTY-ONE
Fowler
IT TOOK A little longer than I’d hoped to disengage myself from Maris and send her on her way to her own bedchamber. She was tenacious. I would give her that. She had been waiting all her life for me. Not me specifically, but the prince she had been promised. There was a distinction. She didn’t know me. She didn’t care to know me, and she certainly didn’t love me. I was merely the prize that had been dangled before her nose all these years. Now that I was here she did not know the meaning of self-control.
I eased out from my chamber, headfirst, relieved to see that there was no guard at my door and no one in the corridor. I crept along, heading in the direction I had last seen Luna and her escort take. I listened at doors, hoping for any indication of which room might be hers.
A door creaked open somewhere ahead of me and I ducked to the side, flattening against the other side of a beam that jutted out from the wall. Peering around the post, I watched as Chasan stepped out of a room and into the corridor. He turned back to look inside the bedchamber before closing the door. In that moment I glimpsed Luna standing a few feet from the threshold, staring in his general direction as he left her.
What was Chasan doing in her room? A wave of helplessness washed over me at the possibility that I was too late, that she had already changed her mind about me.
I gave myself a hard mental shake. She had just happened upon Maris outside my bedchamber. I had no right to these feelings. Jealousy, annoyance . . . the dark impulse to grab Chasan and stomp all over him wasn’t something I could give in to. It wasn’t something I wanted to feel.
The prince turned and I quickly pressed myself against the wall, pressing hard into the stone, trying to make myself invisible. Chasan passed by without glancing left, then turned the corner.
With a deep breath I collected myself and stepped away from the wall. I strode to Luna’s room, determination fueling me. I couldn’t be too late.
I knocked once lightly, so as not to frighten her, and then walked inside.
She whirled around as I shut the door behind me. There was a flash of panic on her face, and I hated that I made her feel that way. For all she knew I was a stranger storming into her room.
She sucked in a deep breath—hopefully not to scream—and the alarm subsided from her features. By scent or sound, she knew it was me.
“What are you doing in here?”
“Does Chasan visit your room in the middle of the night regularly?” I couldn’t help myself. The ugly beast that had stirred inside me when I spotted him leaving her room insisted on surfacing.
“I don’t know. Does Maris visit yours?”
I sighed. “That wasn’t what it looked like.” I stared at her, waiting for her to offer me the same reassurance. It never came. She crossed her arms over her chest and cocked one eyebrow.
I rocked back on my heels, fighting down the impulse to demand why Chasan was in her room as though it was my right to know. It was a battle lost. “Why was he here?”