Chapter 29

“If it’s a date,” Orion says, leaning back in his chair and studying me. “Clearly, we should just get the awkward part out of the way and make out – just to see if there’s any chemistry there to begin with –“

My mouth falls open to emit a shocked little squeak, but when Orion again starts to laugh I just set my water glass down hard on the table and grab my pastry, hurling it at him. It smacks satisfyingly against his chest.

“Not funny, Underworld Boy,” I snarl, even if my wolf huffs in disappointment and lays her head down on her paws.

“You do like to throw things, Princess Sinclair,” he murmurs, brushing the crumbs calmly off his shirt and putting my pastry safely on his own plate.

“You do so deserve to have things thrown at you,” I murmur, shaking my head at him.

He grins. “But seriously,” he sighs, leaning back and picking up his cocktail. “Let’s just…get to know one another. Tell me about your life, Juniper. This world filled with donuts and internets and comedy tours.”

I can’t help but smile a little as I sigh, mollified. “It’s not internets. It’s just ‘the internet.’ And…what do you want to know?”

The conversation flows with shocking ease after that. Orion asks me questions about my family, my home, and as I speak I realize passively that he either lucked onto the right topic or knew what he was doing. Because as much as I am annoyed by most of them at some point, I love my family more than anything in the world. And as I find myself spilling out all the details of what it’s like to grow up in my perfect big sister’s shadow, and with Rafe watching over me, and my cousin Jesse always making me laugh – I wonder about that first night when I met Orion.

Did I really spill all the details of my life out to him because I was drunk on shadowroot liquor?

Or was it because he’s just such a good listener?

Orion – he watches me intently as I speak, his eyes never wavering. He hums with interest when I go deeper and laughs at my jokes. He smiles when I talk about Mark, who drives me nuts but whose constant presence and irritation I’m starting to miss. When I go deeper and talk about the intense connection between my parents and their strange and funny story, having met only after mom was already pregnant with dad’s child, I swear that he even goes a bit misty-eyed, touched by the beauty of it all.

“You’re very lucky,” he murmurs, nodding to me as I lean back in my chair. “It must be nice to have such a wonderful family.”

“Is it just you?” I ask quietly, turning my head. “No siblings?”

“Just me,” he says with a shrug, looking down into his glass. “And I was raised mostly by my mom. Mostly here,” he says, nodding around to the little garden. “We’re outside of the palace now – on the estate dad gave her when he discovered she was pregnant. I think, like your brother Rafe, I was something of a surprise. But not a welcome one.”

“Because your being born meant…the end of his reign?” I ask quietly, remembering Laila’s story and the prophecy.

“She’s perceptive,” Orion murmurs, giving me a soft smile. “As well as temperamental.”

“Watch yourself with those judgements,” I murmur, taking a sip of my water and glaring at him over the edge. “I’m temperamental enough to bite.”

Orion’s smile deepens like he’s not sure he’d mind that.

I blush and look away.

“So, your sister has two mates?” Orion asks after a moment, giving me time to let my blush fade. “That’s quite…unique.”

“It is,” I say, turning back to him. “My dad had two fated mates as well, though, so perhaps not as rare within our line as it is elsewhere. But only one of her mates is good – the other’s trash – so I don’t know why the Goddess bothered to give her both except to torture her.”

Orion grins at my description of Luca Grant but doesn’t push on it. “And do you have a mate?”

I tilt my head, curious. Because while Orion has let me go on and on about my family and surely gleaned a great deal of information about me in the process, this is the first time that he’s asked about me specifically. But I straighten my shoulders and look him in the eye.

“I do.”

“How do you know?”

“My aunt Cora saw it in my baptism vision, on the day I was dedicated to the Goddess,” I say quietly. “Do you not have those?”

“No,” he says with a smirk. “A baptism dedicating a child of Death to the Moon Goddess…wouldn’t have gone over well here.”

“But your mother was a wolf,” I say quietly. “Surely she’d have been tempted to keep up the tradition.”

“Yes, well,” Orion says on a sigh. “Dad didn’t precisely privilege the things mom cared about. So this mate – was it your fiancé?”

I rankle a bit, my wolf’s hackles raising, at the past-tense way that he speaks of Blythe, as well as the answer to the question.

But I only hesitate a second, clenching my jaw. “No.”

“Really?” He leaning forward towards me with new interest. “You know you have a mate. And you know this man is not it. And yet you agreed to marry him?”

I set my shoulders and raise my chin, looking him in the eye, refusing to feel ashamed even if it’s the same question I’ve been asking myself since the moment I met Blythe and fell in love with him. “Life is short, Orion,” I say quietly. “If the world expects me to wait around for my mate to show up to begin living, it’s got another thing coming.”

One corner of his lip curves into a smile. “I respect that,” he says softly, holding a hand out towards me. “But why not just…date him? Why agree to marry him?”

I sigh, looking down into my lap, my wolf curling supportively around my heart. She, after all, understands. “He offered me a life I very much wanted,” I say quietly. “One in which I had a great deal of freedom of choice and complete control over my circumstances. Even the idea of a mate…rankles me,” I murmur, looking away.

“What do you mean?” he asks.

“The idea that my grandmother has chosen someone for me, that I have no choice in the matter. That I’m going to just…meet him and fall madly in love, no matter who he is.” I shake my head. “I’d rather choose who I love.”

“Do you not trust your grandmother?” He watches me curiously and I hold his gaze, hard.

“My father’s first mate destroyed his life and then, even years after he rejected her, she came back and tried to kill my mother. One of my sister’s mates marked and then ruthlessly rejected her – plus, he was a prick and I suspect actively stupid.” I shake my head. “Given the choice between that and a nice man who makes me laugh and wants to give me a good life? I think the choice is obvious.”

“Sounds to me like you’re taking the easy choice over the love that challenges and changes you.”

“Do you really want to have a conversation about easy choices, Orion?” I ask quietly, leaning forward towards him, fighting to keep hold of my temper. “When you’re the one willing to let nineteen women go to their death just because you can’t pick a girl?”

“It’s more complicated than that,” he snaps, his eyes flashing with anger.

“How?” I ask, a growl tracing the word.

“None of this has been done lightly, June,” he says, leaning forward to match my glare. “Each step in this process has been taken under the guidance of decades of divination in order to determine the identity of my mate –“

“Your mate?” I cough out, appalled. “Orion, if one of us is your mate, you’d just know –“

“No,” he snarls, shaking his head. “Mate bonds can’t snap into place down here, Juniper. This is not a world governed by your Goddess. Her connections have no sway.”

My mouth falls open as I stare at him because…I…I didn’t know that.

“So…” I whisper, staring at him unblinking. “Why don’t you just…go to a world that is? And bring us all there and find out which of us is your mate, if any?”

“Because,” he says, his teeth gritted, “I cannot leave this world, ever, without ceding my place in the line of succession.”

“Great!” I say, tossing out a hand. “So do that!”

“I am the only one in the line of succession,” he snaps, willing me to hear him. “If I give it up, it all goes back to the God of Darkness at the time of the eclipse.” He casts out a hand towards the moon, which looks so lonely in the sky just now without its brothers. “You speak to me, Juniper, as if I’m taking all of this very lightly, as if there are solutions beyond those which this courtship Game pursues. But there are not. Clearly, you think me lazy and foolish if you think that I have not spent my life trying to find another way through.”

I grit my own teeth and stare at this Prince, realizing that I don’t think that of him – not at all. Lazy and foolish…no, those certainly would not be my words.

“I can’t help but think that it is still easier for you to accept the terms of this bargain and not seek alternatives,” I whisper, doing my best to hear him and yet still hold my place. “When it is not your life on the line.”

“Oh, don’t worry June,” he sighs, leaning back in his chair and breaking my gaze for a moment, looking out over the landscape before us. “You’re not being eliminated this week anyway. You can relax.”

I blink in sudden shock.

“I – I’m not?”