Equinox (Book One of the Firebird Chronicles) WATTY AWARD HIDDEN GEM WINNER 2015

Chapter Seven: the Queen Candidate

A/N: Media is a rather dark Lumina. What do you think??

It was dark, and there were crickets chirping. A huge full moon lay sweetly in the sky, and two people sat beneath it, staring at the stars from a blanket.

'Happy birthday, Lumina,' Fabian said. He smiled towards her; it was a beautiful, loving, one-person-only kind of smile. And she took it and smiled back in her own adoring way. The world seemed as though only the two of them existed in it.

Around them was their midnight feast, their glasses filled with bubbling wine, and the basket nearly empty of food. Baked sweet bread and cake still remained, half gone.

'This has been my best birthday ever,' she said, her eyes filling with joyful tears. 'I can't believe I'm one-hundred-and-eighty already.'

I gasped, although they couldn't hear. 

'And I still remember when we were children,' Fabian agreed, and his hand reached tentatively towards Lumina's face.

'We're not children anymore,' she breathed.

The memory fuzzed, as if someone were trying hard not to remember. I panicked; I wondered if Fabian was trying to shut me out. I concentrated harder, and the two people focused once more.

'I got you a present,' Fabian said, and he pulled a box from his pocket. 'It isn't a ring, before you get your hopes up.'

Lumina blushed deep red. 'I wasn't hoping!' she said.

Fabian raised his eyebrows. 'You can't deny you want to spend the rest of your life with me,' he said cheekily, but Lumina only reddened further. As she looked down, she shook her head.

Fabian bit his lip, the colour draining from his cheeks.

'No?' he said faintly. 'No you don't want to?'

'No,' she whispered. 'I can't deny it.'

She met his eyes, and he flushed red. Shakily, he handed her the box, and she opened it.

Inside was a necklace. It depicted a moon, and next to it was a star. But the star glowed.

'I thought,' he said, 'because of your namesake— Lumina is radiant...and you— to me are— r-radiant...'

'I love it,' Lumina said simply, and she reached around her neck to tie it on. When she looked back up at him, Fabian leaned towards her.

--- 

The scene had dissolved, and Lumina and Fabian were engrossed in what seemed like a desperate argument in a corridor, standing at odds from one another. Lumina looked deeply hurt, while Fabian looked so distracted he seemed at breaking point. 

'Fabian, you...you and Freya?' Lumina looked at him with burning eyes filling with tears. 'But...'

Her face turned to anger, and when she raised her eyes to his, they were defiant and filled with loathing. 'Were you lying to me, Fabian?'

'No!' he said firmly, and he tried to reach out to her. She shrugged him away. 'Why do you question me and not your precious friend? She has set this up! I swear I didn't know we were engaged!'

The word made Lumina's body jerk. Rigidly, she pulled her hand up to her neck, and yanked with all her strength on a chain there. It made her cry out with pain as the metal bit into her neck before snapping off.

She threw it back at him; he caught it, almost desperately, as if not losing the necklace would keep her.

'I don't understand you,' she said, and she turned to run away.