THE LUNA THEY’LL NEVER LOVE

6: OUT WITH THE OLD, IN WITH THE BEDROOM

PHEEONA.

My chambers in Ashenbane were larger than the throne room in Lunaris.

I noticed this while my brain was still catching up to the fact that my life had fundamentally changed overnight.

The ceilings were high enough that the chandelier hanging from the center of the room looked like something suspended in mid-air rather than attached to anything.

There was a parlor sectioned off from the main bedroom, a massive expanse of space on its own.

But the bedroom itself was disastrously grand.

The bed was positioned against the far wall and was large enough that I could have slept sideways across it and not found the edges.

The windows looked out over grounds that went on further than I could see in the early afternoon light, landscaped in the way that communicated not just wealth but the particular confidence of people who had never had to think carefully about resources.

It was, objectively, the most beautiful room I had ever been in.

I hated how much I could see myself getting used to it.

"They gave you a dressing room," Anyssa said, emerging from the door to my left with awe written all over her face. "Phee. It's bigger than my entire family's house."

"That's an exaggeration."

"It is not even slightly an exaggeration." She came further into the room and turned in a slow circle, taking it all in with fascination. "There's an en suite through there as well. With a tub you could swim in." She stopped turning. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine."

"You've said that every day for a month and it's been progressively less true each time."

"I'm upright," I amended. "That's an improvement."

It was, actually.

Two days had passed since the meeting in the throne room, and in two days of being in closer proximity to my mates than I had been in a year, my body had registered it in ways I was trying not to examine too carefully.

The grinding fatigue had eased slightly. It wasn’t gone, not anywhere near gone, but it pulled back from the edge it had been pushing me toward for the last thirty three days.

I could walk without holding onto things. I had kept a full meal down yesterday for the first time in two weeks. My wolf had stopped retreating and gone watchful instead, alert in the way she got when something she recognized was nearby.

I wasn’t better. But I was less worse, which felt enormous by comparison.

"They've thought of everything," Anyssa said, running a hand along the back of an armchair that probably cost more than a years worth income for a middle class Lunaris shopper. "Whoever arranged this room… Oh my, there's a vanity, and books and the wardrobe is already— Phee, someone stocked it full of so many clothes.”

"They said they'd handle the arrangements." I said, curling my lip at the thoughtfulness behind all this.

"They stocked it with things in your size." She appeared in the dressing room doorway again. "How do they know your size?"

I didn’t have an answer for that that I wanted to think about, so I sat down on the edge of the soft velvet sofa instead and tried to organize my thoughts into something resembling a plan.

The wedding was in a fortnight.

Twelve days from now I would be a wife, to not just one, but three men.

It still didn't feel entirely real when I let myself think about it directly.

There was a knock at the parlour door.

Anyssa crossed to it and opened it, and a maid stepped through. She was young and composed, with the mannerisms of someone who worked in a palace where standards were maintained seriously.

"My apologies for the interruption," she said, with a small incline of her head. "The kings have arrived, my lady. They are waiting for you. I was asked to inform you."

My heart began pounding for reasons I chose to ignore.

Anyssa closed the door after the maid left and turned to look at me. She crossed to where I was sitting on the bed and took both my hands in hers, the way she had in my bedroom back home when she had told me what I already knew and couldn't keep avoiding.

Her grip was firm and warm and entirely steady, which was more than I could say for mine.

"You protected Lunaris," she said. "Whatever else happens in this room or any other room in this house—you did that, you made sure Lunaris would remain standing on its own and keep its dignity." Her eyes held mine with resolve, “And now, you’re going to be put out of your misery. You fought for so long and I’m so proud of you, Phee. But you need this, you need to be yourself again, free of this goddessdamned sickness and what it’s doing to you.”

I looked at her.

"Now go," she said. "And Phee." The corner of her mouth moved. "For what it's worth, they are genuinely, unfairly beautiful."

It wasn’t worth much than the fact that I was suddenly so nervous to walk into my bedroom.

I stood up, smoothed my dress with hands that were practically shaking, and walked through the door that connected the parlour to my new bed chambers.