Risk | Chapter One

The ring hadn’t felt quite so heavy when the Martian prince first slid it over her knuckle, had it? 

Perhaps the collective fawning of onlooking courtiers had distracted her from its heft. Oestera flexed her fingers, desperate to circulate some blood as her sister spoke.

“We’re headed to Venus tomorrow,” the Mercurian king added after something she hadn’t heard. She should have been listening—Leona needed her to pay attention. The sisters had wrapped themselves up in a particular danger that required everyone to stay alert, but from the moment that ruby settled on Oestera’s hand, she’d felt anything but. 

Leona paced forward in the shadows of The Dune, Mercury’s Nova Rebellion hideout, and rested a finger on one of Maeve’s oddities, her red curls woven tightly into a neat braid. Oestera had always admired the soft pastel greens and silvers that ran through everything in Mercury, sparkling beneath their jade banners, and The Dune’s basement was no exception. 

Leona reached a strong hand toward the king, nodding as she spoke with a clarity Oestera envied. 

“Earth is arriving at the Lunar palace at any moment. We’ll wine and dine them this week and feel them out. My sources believe Mother Nature will be thrilled with a chance to stick it to the gods.” 

“The numbers are on our side,” a low thunder rumbled from the corner. The soft golds and bronzes of the Solar king washed over the shelves of strange findings as he approached. 

Solan was broad and tall and angular in all the ways a demigod ought to be, mirroring Leona’s enticing warmth, but there was a coolness to his demeanor that the Lunarians did not possess. Oestera forced herself to look away as her sister’s chest caved inward, that nightmarish string between the pair pushing an ancient curse through their veins. 

She understood the Tether was a compelling force, but she still struggled to grapple with how much Leona would give up for a man she could never truly be with.

“I had a full map of the courts drawn up to track our progress,” Maeve, the Nova Captain, said, handing each leader a thick scroll. “I didn’t want to send them through the Rift, just in case. Take them with you, and Oestera?” She leaned closer to the young princess, her bright green eyes always seeing far more than Oestera could tolerate. “What’s going on with the…” Maeve gestured vaguely to her chest, her eyes slipping around the room as though she’d missed someone entering at the start of their meeting. 

Oestera twisted the ring faster around her rapidly chafing flesh. 

“The what?” 

Maeve pointed a gloved finger at her. “Something in there is weird. Different.” 

Oestera shrugged, never certain of what Maeve saw with those strange eyes. They were capable of drawing so much information from anyone in their path. 

She climbed the steps behind her sister, Leona’s shoulders carrying a tension she’d started to associate with the Solar king’s presence. The pair paused at the top of the steps, a weighted silence falling between them dark enough to push Oestera out into the early Mercurian Sun. 

She folded her arms and let the amber rays soak into her skin as she listened for the shuffling of boots and sniffling of a pained farewell. Solan brushed past her, tapping her shoulder just once—it was all he could ever give when he walked away from Leona. 

Oestera turned, catching her sister’s fiery gaze, but Leona merely shook her head.

Fate had been cruel to them, indeed. 

Leona remained silent as they darted back through the Mercurian palace, hardly stopping to check for Oestera before she dove back into the Rift. They’d only just settled back onto the Lunar palace’s cobblestones before Leona sighed.

“I’ll see you at breakfast.”

She left Oestera alone in the gardens, the Moon’s silver light brushing against blossoming trees as petals released sweet perfume into the dark sky. Oestera glanced toward the tower she shared with Leona in the palace, but decided the cool Spring air was worth enjoying for a few more moments. 

She perched on the edge of a fountain, watching her reflection ripple and bend in the water below. A deep pull in her muscles threatened to cramp between her ribs as she inhaled slowly. She released the breath as a cacophony of boots against pavers yanked her away from her reflection. 

Dozens of soldiers—Earthen, she could tell from their clay-dusted leather and mossy green tunics—flooded the garden. They appeared from the Rift’s whirring colors one after the other as maidens flocked toward their trunks, welcoming them to the Lunar Court. 

Aponi, Mother Nature, faded into the garden, a torrent of gilded feathers and Sun-kissed skin. Leona had always admired the Earthen regent, and it was easy to see why. Like Leona, Aponi commanded every surrounding eye.

As they rushed past, Oestera’s gaze followed the queen, distracted by the way the entire mass of soldiers moved in gentle currents around her. Her hand came to her chest, an ache catching her breath as she watched the horde disappear into the palace.

“Princess?”

The voice was low, warm—it reminded her of the way it felt to cradle fresh tea in the Earthen clay mug Leona had brought back for her after a visit. 

Oestera turned toward the voice and, though her body stopped moving, the entire world took up in a swaying motion she couldn’t explain. The garden toppled in circles, the moonblossoms rustling as her head spun and her chest cracked open. 

It was not slow like she’d read it would be in romance novels and poetry.

It was not met with an overwhelming sense of love and clarity.

No, Tethering to the Earthen soldier stepping from the shadows was an undeniable disaster.

The thread between them tightened as she fought for a breath. Her hand reached for the strange anchor within her sternum but found nothing physical to grasp. The soldier did not move, his amber gaze wide as it settled on the glinting stone wrapped around her ring finger. In one breath, Oestera’s entire world collapsed, and she painfully understood what her sister had been battling for years now.

Why Leona always rushed off to her room and wept whenever they parted. 

Why she’d lost her ability to speak when Solan had been forced to wed a Jovian princess, and when their own mother had set the date for Leona’s coronation trial. 

Why her bright eyes faded to such a hollow shade as the years wore on between them.

Oestera understood it all, and she thought she might be able to cleave the entire universe in two with the rage that bubbled in her blood as she realized how utterly cruel the gods were. 

“Princess?” he asked again, forcing her eyes to his. 

Handsome was too dull a word—he was more than that. More than his form. She could feel it buzzing in the air between them, she could see it swirl in the warmth of his eyes. He was kind—such a rarity amongst the nobility she suffered to blend into, but his was a pure thing. 

A gilded thing. 

“I—I do not know what to say,” he mumbled, running a hand through dark waves before resting it over his chest, surely aching with the same sweet sting that suffocated her. 

“I’m so sorry,” Oestera whispered, a misery clinging to her spine as the urge to bolt fizzled in her muscles.

And then she did. 

* * *

“Wait!” 

She heard him—of course she heard him—and every tendon in her body begged her to stop running, to turn and throw herself into the stranger’s arms. 

But everything in her mind screamed faster, farther. 

Oestera cut into the palace, his boots slamming against the moonstone floor as she tried to form a plan. 

She could slink into the library and lose him between the shelves, but he was already so close to catching her. She could slip into the passages in the walls the maidens used to travel quickly from wing to wing, but the thought of being trapped with him in the narrow halls, in the dark… 

Gods above, get it together, she barked at herself. 

She banked left, breaking away down a wide hall lined with crystal busts of queens both past and current. Her boots slapped against the obsidian tile in rapid succession as she skidded to a halt at the end of the hall. The bust of her mother followed her with quartz eyes as she debated her options.

There were not many.

“Princess,” he huffed, leaning his hands over his knees. “Please!”

“No!” Oestera screeched, holding her hands out. She looked to her right and left, she’d boxed herself into a corner. “Godsdammit!” 

“Well,” he gasped, stretching as he fought to catch his breath. “You’d never know I was once one of the Inner Court’s most respected lieutenants. I’ve gotten soft.” 

Oestera’s eyes narrowed as he drew closer, the foreign cord between them buzzing with each step. 

“Was that—” she started.

His brow arched, an amused smile unfurling between them. 

“The Tether? It’s that or I’ve finally lost my last shred of sanity.”

“Quite inconvenient,” she said beneath her breath, her heart pulling and aching as he rocked back and forth in his stance. 

He winced. “I’ve been called worse, I suppose.” 

Oestera rolled her eyes. “This cannot happen,” she declared.

The soldier glanced from her face to the crystalline gaze of her mother beside her.

“Well, at least your looks will hold up. Bodes well for me.” 

Oestera’s jaw fell, an annoyed squeak cutting between them. 

“Bodes well! We’re complete strangers!”

He nodded as he pushed at the muscles in his chest. “Of course. Yes. Apologies, a tad forward of me.”

Oestera pulled at the end of her braid. He took another step toward her, forcing her back in equal pace until her shoulders hit the wall. His eyes fell once more to Selenia’s bust, widening as the sconces in the hall flickered within the reflective surface. 

His words were velvet as they tumbled between them, soft to the touch. 

“But it’s somewhat inevitable… isn’t it?”

“What is?” she asked. 

He waved his hand between them, a ripple within the Tether disturbing her chest. 

“I don’t think we can undo it, Princess.” The curve to his lips sent a shiver through her. She held his gaze, tilting her head as she measured the distance between their toes. 

It was not far enough. 

“You know nothing about me,” Oestera said. “I could be vile.”

His head dropped to his chest as he chuckled. 

“Impossible.”

“Perhaps I’m a bad lover.”

“Perhaps,” he agreed. “But I am a very good one, and you look like a fast learner.”

Her shoulders tensed. She shouldn’t have encouraged his delusion. And she definitely shouldn’t have enjoyed it so godsdamned much. 

She lifted her chin, staring up at him as he edged closer. 

“I could be a cruel wretch, determined to destroy you.”

He shrugged. “I love a challenge.”

Oestera clenched her jaw, if only to prevent herself from leaning forward and giving in to the sick desire in her heart. 

“You’re a masochist!” 

“Absolutely,” he agreed again, his voice falling lower. He was only a breath away, the heat of him competing with the friction of the Tether leaping in the space between their chests for her attention. “Or perhaps I am merely a man who knows when I’ve found something I cannot live without.”

Her eyes softened, the blood in her fingers begging to reach forward and rest over his beating heart. 

“This cannot happen,” she murmured once more as he leaned toward her, his fingertips brushing at the outer layer of her skirt. 

“Mmhmm.”

“I mean it,” Oestera insisted, though she did not lean away from him. “It would be detrimental to the courts.” 

“Of course.”

Oestera’s lips parted, a wave of intoxicating indifference to the ring on her finger drowning any of the rigid sensibilities her mother had instilled in her from birth. 

“Please,” she whispered.

His lips brushed the edge of her temple. She inhaled the very breath he exhaled, the dark alchemy of it ruining the appeal of fresh air for the rest of her life. 

“Please kiss you senseless, or please release you from this torture?” 

She knew the answer she had to choose, but gods above if she wasn’t tempted to go with the former. Her eyes flickered over his sharp jaw, holding his gaze as she broke his heart. 

“I told you, I’m determined to destroy you.” 

He leaned away, tucking his hands behind his back, his eyes falling to the floor. The guilt was crushing—she was not prepared to feel such agony at disappointing him.

“I’m sorry—”

“Please,” he said sharply. “Do not apologize.”

She sighed, her lips parting again.

“I mean it. I understand,” he insisted, twisting away from her. “Good evening, Princess.”

“Good evening,” she mumbled, realizing she did not even know his name. 

But she knew what his Soul felt like, the glittering warmth of him fading quickly as he vacated the hall. Exhaling slowly, the pain in her chest did not release. 

It merely spread.

She looked to her mother’s bust, a permanent frown carved into the crystal. 

“I will never forgive you for this.”