"I built a library of worlds, yet still I find myself trapped in one girl's room. What prison rivals that?" —E
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"Luna, I plan on destroying the Church, and I have a bit of a favour to request of you."
That was how she said it—flat, soft, like it was no more than an afterthought, as if she were asking me to pass the bread at supper. We lay then beneath the heavens, stars active as the heart that drummed in my chest. The pulse inside me quickened, shifting mood like an epilogue that betrays the opening chapter. The day had begun with the brilliance of morning light, yet here in its twilight we were already conspiring against altars.
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I woke the next day like a lion stripped of its pride.
The first thing I saw was not ceiling nor wall, not bedposts nor sun bleeding past shutters, but her.
Regina sat at her dresser—already awake, already composed in that paradoxical way of hers: elegant in breath, yet her features bore the fatigue of twilight. She idly brushed her hair, a movement so casual it threatened to dissolve into nothing, yet her eyes were fixed on me, steady, unwavering.
Eyes that were nebulae—vast, impossible, shifting hues of violet and rose and faint streaks of gold, like light refracted through broken glass. Eyes that seemed to hold more sky than the heavens outside my window.
I lost my sense of space. The bed, the walls, the very floorboards beneath me fell away. Reality frayed at its seams, and only two anchors remained: her hand threading through hair, and her eyes threading through me.
My breath caught. My voice failed. I could do nothing but drown.
"Pretty," I managed at last, words no more than breath, "the night's last breath."
Her smile touched her lips but not her eyes—those remained a nebula still.
"Good morning, her," Regina replied, unapologetic in her posture, as though it were I who was intruding upon her moment, not the other way round. "Glad to see you slept well."
Heat surged to my ears. I flung the covers off, only to freeze.
I wasn't wearing my own clothes.
I was wrapped in one of her fine dresses, loose but unmistakably hers.
"Why," I stammered, "am I in your clothing, Lady Regina?"
My memory scattered, riddled with gaps. The last thing I recalled with clarity was the picnic—the sun sinking, her voice weaving through the evening air, stars pricking through velvet sky. After that… blankness.
She tilted her head, brushing another lock of hair aside, her smile softening but not faltering. That expression—the one she wore when satisfaction lingered like a sunset refusing to die—sat comfortably upon her face.
"You fell asleep while stargazing," she said, tone casual as a confession. "I carried you back. To my room. Be honoured."
"You—" My protest faltered. I looked around. Clothes strewn. A flowerpot overturned, soil scattered across the wooden floor, water pooling in uneven puddles like the aftermath of a summer storm. A scene of disorder, quiet chaos. My chest tightened with the same unease I had felt the first time we met—when disaster and beauty walked hand in hand.
"What the hell have you done?" My voice cracked as I rushed to the floor, hands scooping at soil, desperate to patch what could not be patched. Like a doctor too late to save the patient, pretending at hope.
Behind me, Regina murmured something—soft, almost too quiet.
"…and the moon."
I spun. "Did you say something?"
Her smirk deepened, vermillion blooming across her lips like a field of poppies at dusk.
"Hmph. Ungrateful."
Before I could argue, she rose from her chair, gown whispering like water against stone. "We're going out again by sundown. You still owe me that fishing trip."
My mind tripped at her words, then snagged on something new.
A painting.
Set carefully upon the wall where none had been the day before.
The moon. A waxing gibbous, silver and tender, captured in strokes of white and grey so vivid it seemed to breathe.
"Wow…" My breath caught again. "It's beautiful. But—I didn't see a moon last night. Just stars. You painted this from memory?"
She did not answer right away. Silence stretched, long enough to carry a memory from one heart to another.
Finally, she said, "It showed its face when you closed your eyes."
Her smile this time was different. Not her usual smirk, nor her satisfied sunset, but something quieter. A smile that reached into her nebula eyes, altering their constellations.
"Thank you," she added, voice hushed, "for coming out with me again."
"No thanks needed, my lady," I replied, more a tease than dismissal, but she did not laugh.
Instead she inhaled, and with the breath came words that shifted the air.
"I plan on going against the Church," she said, voice steady but threaded with something fragile. "To put torch to their altar. And I want you…"
My heart stuttered.
Her words dragged forth memories not my own but those of histories I had once written—histories where men who defied the Church did so at their peril, their ends swift and merciless. Every story screamed foolish. Yet my lips moved before my mind could halt them.
"Yes."
Her brow arched, caught off guard by the swiftness of my reply.
"Your will?" I asked, confusion furrowing across my face.
I had expected—what? To be her sword, her shield, her companion piece upon the board. A rook, perhaps. A knight. But her will?
"Yes."
The word from her mouth was not request but decree.
"My will. Because after that… I fear I will be done living for Mother."
Her eyes turned away, nebula shifting to some horizon beyond my reach.
"And I have never considered myself much. You don't live for the dead." She paused, lips curving in something between laugh and lament. "How mad I must sound, saying this while I still live for the dead. My hypocrisy spits on sainthood."
Her voice softened, waves breaking against a beach at night.
"You don't have to answer now. Take your time. After our visit to the capital, perhaps."
Her gaze rose again, not to me but to the heavens—conversing with some unseen confidant, whispering secrets her voice did not betray.
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Moments passed, and memory shed its weight like dust.
I recall fragments only: the soil still staining my hands, her smirk echoing in my chest, the moon on the canvas that seemed to glow when no light touched it.
But above all, her words remained.
She asked not for a sword, nor a shield, but for a will.
And how does one answer such a request?
And the fishing trip, we never had.
_ _ _
"Time blew dust off the memory that bore none
Because I had returned here too often for dust to ever settle.
One night, yes—but also many.
A singular moment fractured into plurals, the way a word can mean itself and its opposite when written by the right hand.
The sky remembers it as one breath; I remember it as those breaths, each replayed, each final.—"
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"She asked not for sword nor shield, but for will. And grammar cannot refuse the sentence it was born to complete." —L
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