A Court of Secrets and Moonlight

56: Opportunity

Leur

207 years after the lie, 293 years ago

-

Cylos was coming to visit.

Adhira had taken the biggest hit after the rebels attacked again. I lost countless soldiers and civilians in the battles, as my territory was home to the majority of the fighting. Acantha had yet to let it go that she was right, and I had been wrong. Perhaps we should have taken them out sooner. Perhaps I would have seen what they were planning sooner.

But my life had turned on its side.

It had been 55 years since I remembered who I was.

The pain, day in and day out, was utterly blinding. The absence of my family, the knowledge that I was probably long forgotten to them by now, weighed on my chest like an anvil. I couldn't blame them, couldn't blame my father, who I had learned was now dead.

There was only myself to blame for my exile, for my mother's death, for-

No.

I couldn't remember that. I would die from the pain.

207 years since I had last seen them, since I had heard their voices, spoken to them. The memories of them played on a near constant loop in the back of my mind. 30 years spent with them seemed so small in comparison to all of the time that had passed since. I would have thought that this life, Solarea and it's wars, would have come to mean more to me than where I had hailed from.

It hadn't even come close.

There was nothing that could ever come close.

Not when my mate, my brothers, my cousin, were so far away. Not when Velaris, my home, was utterly lost to me. Not when I could never step foot there again, never speak to them again.

Tamlin came by often. No matter how many times I shut him out, how many times I hid from him, he always came back. I don't entirely know how, but he always managed to track me down. Even as far away as I was now, in the Moonlight Palace, he had managed to find me. This manor nestled in the center of my territory was meant for me, the General of Adhira. I hated it from the first day I walked into it, all the blue only served to remind me of him.

I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I saw my mate everywhere I went. In the dark black hair common in the people of this territory, in the commitment I had to re-teaching myself to fly, in the Illyrian training I did every morning, in the moon, beautiful and shining in the sky. Sometimes, on nights where I couldn't sleep, I spoke to him. Whispered words I never said leaving my mouth as I stared up at the night sky, as I prayed that he was on the other side of the world talking to me too.

When the second resurgence ended five years ago, I planted forget-me-nots outside the Moonlight Palace in his honor. Rows and rows of those tiny blue flowers, of the only thing I had left of my mate. The moonstone bracelet he bought me had vanished into the Ingysi along with my crown when I died. I had since paid a jeweler ridiculous amounts of money to recreate them for me, even sneaking the memory of what they had looked like in his head when I first requested them. The recreations were beautiful, nearly identical, but nothing could replace what had been lost.

That same bracelet hung loosely on my wrist as I welcomed guests into the palace. Balls such as these were the only times the Generals were expected to be out of armor, instead meant to dress in courtly attire with the crown of our territory atop our heads. I had chosen a gown of palest blue embellished with gold details and a flowing skirt. It did enough to hide my tattoos, the ones I now recognized as clear markers of my court, my home. The Crown of Moonlight sat atop my head for the first time since I had been coronated, all twists of gold and sapphires against my dark hair.