Page 32 of Heavenly Bodies

Enzo dismounted, and did a terrible job at hiding his amusement. ‘You’re alive, aren’t you?’

She dropped off the horse, bounded towards him and tried to shove him. It had absolutely no effect. ‘Youcunt!’ she seethed.

One hand flew out to grapple her wrists together as she raised them to push him again. His other gripped her jaw tightly. ‘Keep using that filthy mouth and I’ll wash it out with soap.’

She stayed still in his grip, chest heaving. His eyes flicked to her lips, squished between his hold, then back to her eyes.

‘What happened to make you scared of the Light?’ he asked more quietly.

She ripped herself from his grasp, and sat on the warm grass, her legs wobbling. She took a deep breath of the salt-laden ocean air. Being near the water was calming her, now that she wasn’t about to plunge into it.

‘I was seven,’ she said. ‘And one of your father’s precious Helion soldiers broke into my room. Killed three guards and climbed up my balcony. He—’ A knot worked in her throat. But Isra’s ice must have worked, because the usual panic wasn’t quite so all-encompassing as she continued. ‘He was a lightwielder. My shadows tried to protect me. But I was a child.’ She hated how her voice broke. ‘They were no matchfor him. He pinned me down and told me to repent. To repent my worship of the Dark. When I couldn’t speak he shoved his light down my throat. Told me he’d cleanse me from the inside out. It scorched all the way to my lungs. I couldn’t even scream. If it wasn’t for Sofia, I’d have died. She fought him. Tried to pull him off with her shadows, until my father arrived and killed him on the spot.’

She pulled some blades of grass between her fingers.

‘It took months for the healers to repair the damage. Took a year for me to speak again. And even then I didn’t recognize my own voice.’ She cleared her throat.

‘That man was a fucking fanatic. Thanks toyourfather. Thanks to the propaganda he spread about our kingdom.’

Enzo had gone pale, but she couldn’t stand to look at him for a moment longer.

‘So there,’ she said, staring out at the ocean. ‘There’s your truth. My shadows sealed themselves inside me that night. Whenever I try to call them again, I remember the Light. How it felt. What it did. Are you happy now?’

‘I’m sorry,’ the prince said quietly. ‘I had no idea.’

‘I don’t need your pity,’ she spat, as she stood up. ‘And I’m done here. If you don’t take me back to the palace, I’ll walk.’

Enzo said nothing as she mounted the horse, then climbed carefully on to it behind her, leaving Elara as much space as he could, and guided them silently back to the palace.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The next few weeks weren’t better than her first days in Helios, but they weren’t worse either. Enzo’s cruelty was replaced with brooding silence. In fact, if they weren’t talking about training, they didn’t talk about anything at all. Which suited Elara just fine.

He didn’t bring up the Light again. Nor did he wield it in front of her. Instead, they focused on drills, hand-to-hand combat and honing Elara’s illusions.

Enzo showed her how to seamlessly combine her magick with her weapon-fighting. He encouraged her to be imaginative with her illusions, to make the opponent see a ravine, or a mountain; to make them feel like they were falling, or flying.

Her dreamwalking was advancing too. Most nights, she would do it wherever she could. Usually into the dreams of unsuspecting palace staff, occasionally Leonardo’s, and once, even Merissa’s. The glamourer had been delighted with that one, and they’d fed swans upon a rose-tinted Aphrodean lake before Elara had awoken.

She reluctantly fell into a peaceful routine. Merissa would pass by to glamour her for the day, followed byLeonardo—who now insisted she call him Leo, as Enzo did. The general would deliver her fruit from his mother, and then escort her to her training with Enzo. He had even begun to talk to her more often, telling her about parts of the palace that they passed, or commenting on the art and paintings and what they symbolized. After training with Enzo, she’d soak her pains away in the baths, nibble on sweet treats and catch up on the palace gossip with Merissa in the kitchen, and then head to bed, preparing to dreamwalk through the night once more.

But something inside her knew that this peace couldn’t last.

She was back in her throne room. It was her birthday. Her parents were weeping as she trembled.

‘Everything we did was to protect you, Elara,’ they said.

‘How could you keep this from me?’

Sofia paced nervously behind her as the shadows upon the walls grew darker.

‘We thought if we could keep you here, sheltered from Ariete, then he would never find out.’

The dream morphed, and she was dancing with Lukas, only a few hours later, around and around the ballroom as her prophecy chimed in her head. A bloodied card fluttered to the ground, the skies flashed red, screams rang, and Elara knew who had descended from the Heavens.

The King of Stars, so achingly handsome when he appeared that Elara’s eyes watered to look at him. And that perfect, cold face transformed into rage as he conjured two blades in a flash of starlight, and plunged them through both her parents within a breath.

Elara screamed, kneeling over them as their blood soaked her powder blue birthday dress.

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