In the heat of the fight, Diana didn’t notice anything different beyond her blinding new powers. She could feel the moonlight course through her veins in a way she’d never felt the Sun before, almost as if she hadn’t been chosen randomly to embody the Aspect of the Moon.
Later, much later, after the Aspect’s power wreaked havoc in the chambers of the Lunari high priests, Diana realized she was completely alone for the first time in a long time and that everything hurt.
It wasn’t the kind of pain she felt after a long sparring session, it felt one degree removed from her but still present. She found a cave where she could spend the night and took off the armor she was clad in, inspecting her body for injuries.
She found her arms covered in bruises just blossoming on her pale skin. The fight with Leona had been intense, she was lucky all she had to show for it was some heavy bruising. Diana idly wondered what injuries Leona had sustained. The wind blew stronger the moment she thought of Leona, a painful reminder she was on the run, alone, because Leona didn’t want to come with her.
Anger filled her once more. Diana begged her not to go back to the Solari, to explore this new path together but Leona didn’t listen. Diana felt the moonlight rising inside her body, ready to lash out, but she pushed it down, taking a deep breath to remain calm and centered. She wouldn’t let the Aspect’s power control her.
Once she felt a resemblance to normal, she methodically put the armor back on, aware that she didn’t have the luxury of lowering her guard just yet. She wasn’t far enough from the Rakkor city and if she knew Leona at all, she’d be one of the first to go on the hunt for her.
No, she would rest tonight and leave Mount Targon as soon as possible. The idea of meeting Leona again and seeing hatred in her eyes where once there had been only sweetness, maybe even love, was too hard to contemplate.
Diana woke up to the tell-tale pain of a heavy shield crashing against her body. She wasn’t sure at what point she fell asleep, but she must have passed out from exhaustion somewhere around dawn. Her head pounded with the beginnings of a headache and her right side still rattled with the crash of something against it.
A quick look around the cave reassured her that no one had slammed against her, still, she removed her glove and vambrace, rolled her sleeve and watched as her bruised skin reddened as if she’d been hit.
Puzzled, she brought her arm close to her face and saw she had new markings on her skin. They were as pale as she was, but still visible: silver lines that looked a lot like the markings she had once seen at a cave that was out of bounds for the acolytes back with the Rakkor. Leona could believe anything she wanted, but Diana knew Leona shared the knowledge she had now: the Lunari and the Solari don’t need to be foes. Diana would give her time while working towards what the Aspect had shown her in fragmented visions.
She put the vambrace back on, but hesitated when putting on her glove. At the back of her right hand there was another mark resembling a small sun. It was different from the other marks because it shined in pale golden lines that reminded her of Leona, bathed in sunlight before she fought Diana. Without an explanation for it, she put the glove back on, determined to stop thinking about the past she left behind.
Days passed and Diana became more accustomed to her new powers, following trails shown to her in trance-like visions, she found more places down the slope of Targon where the Lunari once thrived. Lakes surrounded by stone pillars that bore silver markings, paths lined by Lunari markings for protection and healing, the burnt out husk of an old temple. There wasn’t rhyme or reason to the places she was shown, but they protected her while she rested a few hours during the afternoon.
During one of those quiet afternoons in the temple, just as she was falling asleep, she felt the slice of a blade on her shoulder, violently waking her up with a start.
She looked around the temple, but it was as empty as ever. Pain shot down her arm from her shoulder as if she was struck on the injured arm once again. She removed her armor up to the pauldron and watched fascinated as the blood ran down her arm, warm and real. Diana looked around but there wasn’t anything to soak up the blood except the clothes she was wearing.
At a loss of what to do, she removed all the armor she wore and took off her top, ripping up a strip at the waist to fashion some bandages to stop the bleeding. Once she did that, she leaned back, letting her head fall back against the wall. She felt the beginnings of a new headache coming up, a sure sign of the visions coming back.
Diana took a deep breath and let her eyes close, welcoming the images that might hold an answer to her questions.
Instead, Diana saw two people who she didn’t recognize at one of the Lunari ruins she hadn’t visited yet, a stone circle at Dragon’s Roost, a mountainous area in the very outskirts of Mount Targon. A woman with Lunari tattoos on her face ran towards a man wearing a Ra’Horak uniform, only worn by the holy warriors of the Solari. They embraced when she reached him.
The sun was slowly being covered by the moon. When the Moon blocks the Sun, our path to freedom will be illuminated, said a voice by her ear. Then, the two lovers were being chased into a peak and Diana was looking from the sidelines, her stomach falling when one of the Solari warriors wounded the Lunari girl. Then she was looking down on Leona, putting down her weapon instead of charging towards her.
She came back to her own head and the temple with an intense headache, wondering why Leona was chasing a Lunari girl and where were all these Lunari from her visions, anyway.
Idly, she pondered what visions the Aspect of the Sun showed Leona and how it did it. The pain in her shoulder had gone down to a dull throb, almost forgotten in the background of her latest revelation. If that was the future, then Diana would try to avoid it for as long as possible, the idea of facing Leona still made her heart hurt.
As she fell asleep, she dreamt of Leona wrapping her shoulder in bandages, a Ra’Horak soldier was correcting her form in the latest skirmish, scolding her for lowering her guard. Leona said, “I can’t control the visions. If the Aspect wants to speak, I must listen.”
“And what did it say?” asked the woman.
“That’s only between me and the priestesses,” she replied.
The dream dissolved around her and all she saw afterwards was darkness.
Diana woke up slowly, the last traces of the sun disappearing beyond the horizon as the moon rose. For the first time since the day she fled the Rakkor town, she felt well rested. She checked her injured shoulder to find that the cut was nothing but a thin, pale line of healed skin. Was this a side effect of being a host to the Aspect’s power? Once again she cursed the partial teachings they received under the Rakkor. She didn’t know the first thing about the reach of the Aspect’s power or how much of herself was still human or what she was supposed to do now.
Besides fragmented visions, all she had to go on were markings left in abandoned trails, stone pillars and the temple. She wished she had more to go on, to find the people who needed her help the most as the Solari hunted them down.
That night, she walked for hours down one of the longest paths the visions had shown her. It ended abruptly in a cliff, but down the side of the mountain, Diana could see steps that bore the same markings she saw back at the temple.
Carefully, Diana made her way down until she reached down the valley, where a small tribe made their home amongst the trees. She didn’t want to intrude, but the markings that guided her came all the way down here and there were more silver markings in the trees that surrounded the settlement.
Diana was so focused on her discoverings, that she didn’t hear the men come up behind her, but she felt the tip of a spear at her back when a man spoke.
“Who are you? What are you doing here?”
Instinctually, Diana pulled from the moonlight that coursed through her and fashioned a shield to protect herself. The men around her gasped, some of them cursed, but no one came closer to Diana. She took a look around herself and decided it was luck that only four men were there to stop her, in case the moonlight spiraled out of control again.
“My name is Diana, I’m—”
“You’re one of the Aspects,” said one of the men. “We heard the rumors all the way down here.”
“Are you alone?” asked another one.
“Yes,” she replied, her hands tensing on her blade, ready for a fight.
“Good,” said the first man. “They say Aspects are only near immortal, but I don’t want to take a chance against the Sun.”
“Why, Vlasis, are you scared of a little sunshine?” joked one of the men in the background.
The first man, Vlasis, rolled his eyes and turned to Diana. “You are safe here. We might be the last Lunari tribe still in Targon.”
Diana’s insides warmed. So this was it, the questions she’d been harboring for years would finally have an answer. She let her shield drop and watched as the men gaped in confusion. “I need you to show me the Lunari scriptures.”
“There isn’t much in the way of scriptures left. No one here can actually read the Lunari markings,” Vlasis said. She wondered if something showed on her face, because he quickly added, “there are some books our priest has. They might be helpful to you.”
“Take me to him,” she said.
The dwellings of the tribe were small, just a bunch of small cabins that surrounded a stone circle where a bonfire illuminated the clearing. The men who stopped her went back to their jobs, whatever they were, except for Vlasis, who took her to a cabin partially obscured by the trees surrounding it.
When Vlasis knocked on the door, a man inside said, “it’s not time for the prayers yet.”
“You might want to come out anyway, Polymnos,” replied Vlasis.
The man who came out was old, older than most Solari priests she knew, and his face was partially covered by black tattoos with the shape of Lunari runes. He looked pissed about being called, as if they woke him up earlier than it was allowed.
“What is it?” he croaked.
Before Vlasis could speak, Diana said, “I need you to show me the Lunari scriptures. Anything you have will be helpful.”
“And why would I do that?” he asked, turning to her.
“Because I’m the host to the Aspect of the Moon and—”
“Anyone can claim they’re a host,” said Polymnos.
“I’ve seen it,” interrupted Vlasis. “She can call on the Moon’s power, it’s true.”
The priest looked at her suspiciously for a long moment, suspended in time. “Fine, but you may not take any of the books with you.”
Diana felt a small smile forming on her face. This was it, the answers the Solari could never provide. For a brief moment, she fleetingly thought of Leona and how their debate sessions would always boil down to we’re missing some crucial information, but she decidedly focused on the here and now. Dwelling on the past would bring her nothing good.
Diana quickly realized that she would not be able to go through all the books the priest kept, since most of them were written in Lunari runes that she could only read very slowly. Those that were written in Middle Rakkoric were far easier to understand, but just as the texts the Solari kept, they were incomplete, entire chapters ripped out that had Diana doubting about the truth in those remaining pages.
Still, she spent almost the entire night reading under Polymnos watchful eye. When asked about the missing pages, the priest at least had the decency to appear ashamed before answering. “Back when the Lunari had their own temples, we were encouraged to teach only about the Moon, the Sun only mentioned in passing as a complement to the Her light. I wish I had kept those pages, but alas, it was another time.”
As the priest spoke, a word on the page caught Diana’s attention. “What is this? Soulbonded warriors?”
“Ah, there are stories about two warriors, one Solari and one Lunari, who are destined to bring the faiths together once more and reunite the Rakkor people. But these are only stories, I have never seen a Lunari and a Solari who were bonded like this.”
“How would you know? That you’re soulbonded to someone?”
The priest took a long look at her before replying, “the warriors would just know. Or at least, that’s what we knew about it.
“You have to understand that the Lunari faith was never into war in the way the Solari are. Not because we were weaker, but because less people chose to fight against the Sun. There was no need. For the Lunari, the Sun and the Moon were always two halves of the same circle.”
Unconsciously, Diana touched her right hand, where the small sun shined in golden lines under her glove. She wondered how much of Polymnos' story was based on reality, but didn’t have much time to do so because suddenly, there was screaming coming from the outside.
Diana took her blade in her hand and went out to find a group of Solari soldiers fighting the men who welcomed her when she arrived. One of them laid dead among the group, the light behind his eyes gone. She recognized him as the man who joked with Vlasis about being scared of the Sun.
Anger rose inside of her at this display of violence and she quickly drew from the moonlight inside herself, dashing to the clearing with her blade at the ready. She pulled on her shield and slashed across one of the man’s chest with her blade. The man did not rise up again.
Apparently encouraged by her intervention, more men in the tribe came closer to the fight, spears at the ready. When Diana hurt a Solari soldier, one of the men would finish him off swiftly. It went on like this for a few minutes until another group of soldiers came in charging, shields and swords ready to kill. In the background, two archers shooting like lightning, arrow after arrow.
In between them stood Leona, directing the battle like a seasoned general when both of them knew it was the first time Leona was out there fighting for her life. Sure, it was Diana’s first time as well, but at least she wasn’t pretending to know what she was doing.
Four soldiers came charging at her and she yelled to the Lunari men who were closest to her, “fall back!”
Diana doesn’t know if it was her face or her voice, but they immediately moved to the back, leaving the path open for those soldiers. Diana summoned all of her light and when the men were close enough, she let it drop in a powerful burst of moonlight.
The men were dead before they touched the floor.
Chaos followed when two more men charged against her, ignoring Leona’s command to stay back. One of them died with a swift drop of her blade, but she didn’t move fast enough to avoid the second one, who stabbed her on the side directly where her armor was at its weakest.
Diana didn’t move as one of the Lunari men came from the back and finished off the man who stabbed her. She watched in horrified fascination as Leona’s armor became soaked with blood when she fell to her knees. In a moment of distraction, she didn’t raise her shield fast enough and one of the archer’s arrows pierced through her shoulder.
Leona screamed.
She had never heard her friend scream in pain before and it brought her back to where she was, barely standing on her own two feet.
The other archer yelled, “we have to leave, now!”
“I can get her,” the first archer said.
But Diana was still a host to the Aspect of the Moon and all it took was a quick dash towards her and after being stabbed by Diana’s blade, the archer fell to the floor, unmoving.
Diana glanced at Leona, then at the archer who was helping her to her feet.
“Don’t come back here,” she said. “This tribe is not a threat to you and I protect them now.”
Leona finally stood up, leaning heavily on her shield. “You are a threat to the Solari.”
“A traitor? Maybe. A threat? Unlikely. I just want to do right by the people who believe in harmony and the balance of Day and Night.”
Leona looked like she wanted to say something else, but her face contorted in pain. She nodded to the archer and both of them started making their way towards the forest.
Satisfied that they would not come back, she fell to her knees and breathed out a heavy sob. Leona, Leona, Leona, her thoughts whispered, spiraling out of control. Why was she wounded? What did it mean? A second sob left her body, louder, more desperate. A moment later, two women and Vlasis came over to her side.
“Thank you,” said one of the women.
Vlasis put a hand on her uninjured shoulder. “Let us help you.”
Diana nodded, letting herself be carried to a smaller cabin, where they bandaged her injuries and let her rest for the remainder of the night. As she fell asleep, she saw a vision of Leona, who was spending the night at the infirmary of the training center back in town, being scolded by Priestess Thalaia for her recklessness.
“Next time you encounter Diana, you are not to fight her alone.”
“I wasn’t alone. And I didn’t do much fighting.”
“Right, because they wounded you early on in the fight.” Thalia’s tone implied she didn’t believe Leona for a second.
“It won’t happen again,” said Leona through gritted teeth.
“No, it won’t,” replied Thalaia.
Before sleep took her, she thought of Leona lying to Thalaia about the nature of her wounds and wondered if maybe, just maybe, Leona had questions of her own.
Diana stayed for a few days with the tribe, who were endlessly thankful to her for standing up against the Solari. They told her that, for most tribes, a fight with the Solari ended in imprisonment or death. She didn’t feel worthy of their support when a man had still died at the hands of the Solari before she intervened.
Polymnos thought it was wasteful thinking. “You did what you could and that was more than we could’ve done ourselves to protect our own.”
“I still don’t get it, though,” she argued. “Why come here at all? Why are they chasing Lunari tribes?”
“It’s easier to control the narrative when there’s no other side to the story,” the man said. He put down a cup of herbal tea on the table where she was reading. “Here, drink this.”
“I told you, the injuries have already healed.”
“And I told you these concoctions are to strengthen your mind and your spirit. You can’t break down crying the next time you see her.”
Diana frowned at the page she was reading, but refused to meet Polymnos’ eyes. “I wasn’t crying because I saw her. I was in pain.”
“So was she, from what I saw. Yet no one touched her.” He paced around the small room, looking for something. Diana heard him carefully open one of the fragile books and read out loud. “Ah, yes, ‘those touched by a soulbound might share each other’s thoughts, dreams and pain.’”
“I’m not sharing my thoughts with anyone, if that’s what you’re asking,” Diana said.
After a moment of silence, the man sighed deeply, then added, “drink the tea, Diana.”
She wanted answers, now she was getting them. Piece by piece, she was figuring out her place in a world she barely understood anymore.
Diana drank the tea.
Days later —on the afternoon the Moon would block the Sun—, Diana found herself at the ruins at Dragon’s Roost, standing in front of a flat stone circle that was supposed to be a place of annual gatherings and worship, now half buried in the dirt. She touched the sharp edges of the rock and sent a prayer to the Moon as Polymnos had shown her. He said that the Aspect would work with her instead of against her, showing her visions that didn’t hurt her.
It worked well so far, her headaches had gone down, but they didn’t disappear completely. Diana thought that Leona must be having her own painful visions somewhere back in the Sunward Temple or wherever they were keeping Leona to keep an eye on her.
As Diana ran the tips of her gloved hand along the edge of the disk, the runes glimmered and she heard the words When the Moon blocks the Sun, our path to freedom will be illuminated whispered by her ear. She remembered the old vision and wondered if it was best for her to leave or if she should stay to avoid that girl’s death.
Eventually, her legs took her to a cave, where she sat for a while, watching the rocky valley below her, turning her thoughts around her head until they no longer held any shape. Leona would be here today. Did Leona receive a vision as well? Diana found herself missing the woman even more than before she saw her at the village. She’d been hurt and confused. Diana would’ve given anything to be able to help her, to tell her everything she discovered about the Lunari and, possibly, about the two of them.
Diana’s thoughts refocused when the eclipse started, the sunlight dimming slightly. She heard people running and stood, watching from her position as two people climbed the mountain together. Diana recognized the woman from her vision, her pale hair glittering in the dimming daylight. Behind them, two soldiers led by Leona chasing them to a cliff.
Stunned, she watched as one of the soldiers lifted a bow and prepared an arrow. “Wait!,” yelled Leona.
But it was too late.
The woman, seeing the arrow traveling towards them, pushed the man behind her and the arrow hit her square in the stomach.
“Lyra!” called the man.
Diana saw the man kneel next to her as the sky darkened completely. She couldn’t hear them, but she somehow knew that they weren’t saying their goodbyes. Diana watched fascinated as the man stood once again and lifted his lover’s body, walking to the edge of the cliff.
Then he walked over the edge.
Instead of falling to his death, a path illuminated before him, bright light exploding all around them.
The Lunari woman —Lyra, Diana would not forget her— walked hand in hand with the Solari man, ascending to the sky with each step they took. Eventually, they reached the end of the path at the top of Mount Targon, where more light wrapped around the peak, then shot to the sky in an explosion of brightness that overtook the sky for a moment.
When it was over, the sky went back to darkness. Diana watched as the Solari retreated, but at the last second, Leona turned around looking directly in her direction, drawing her sword.
For a moment, time stopped and all she saw was Leona’s shiny brown eyes glittering under the darkness, her mouth partially open in surprise, her hair flowing in the wind, and nothing mattered.
Diana’s grip on her blade tightened, then she sighed and put down her weapon. In the distance, Leona put her sword down too. They stared at each other for what seemed hours, but couldn’t have been more than a few seconds, then Leona turned around and walked away.
Diana went back to the village of the tribe that adopted her after that and, as they ate, she told them about what had happened at Dragon’s Roost. Vlasis, who was good at questioning everything in a way that reminded Diana of herself, asked, “what do you say the girl’s name was?”
“Lyra. At least, that’s what he called her.”
“I don’t know, Diana. It doesn’t ring a bell.”
“And you would know of every Lunari to ever exist?” she joked.
“The ones we are left, yes,” he insisted.
Polymnos intervened then, “she probably was from another small tribe that survived. We don’t know. What matters is that there’s more of us, we can still survive.”
After eating, she went back to Polymnos’ cabin and stayed up reading the texts written in the ancient Lunari books, leaving notes for Polymnos to organize later when she would be gone.
Polymnos was right. There were more of the Lunari out there and someone had to help them. Diana couldn’t stay stationed at one place.
When the Moon reached its zenith, she grabbed her moonblade, a small bag of supplies, and slipped out of the cabin as quietly as possible. Just by the edge of the clearing, she chanced a last look at the tribe and silently sent a prayer to the Moon to keep them safe.
“Not even a goodbye?” said Vlasis coming out from behind a tree.
“Shouldn’t you be sleeping?”
“Guard duty,” he replied with a cheeky smile. “So, not even that?”
“I don’t like goodbyes,” she said, lamely.
“Sure thing, sweetie.” He rolled his eyes as he said so. “Where will you even go?”
“Back to the Sunward Temple.”
“If you have a death wish—”
“I’ve got to start somewhere. Back at the Rakkor city is as good a place as any.”
Vlasis sighed, as if he was stopping himself from saying something else. “Take care of yourself, Diana.”
“When have you known me not to?”
The man shook his head and turned away, blending back into the forest while Diana started walking.
It would be a long trip.
Halfway back to the Rakkor was another Lunari temple, one that Diana hadn’t visited before, where she planned to rest. She put down her bag of supplies and took off her gloves, inspecting the mark at the back of her right hand shining in pale golden lines. She blew a sigh of frustration and kicked her bag of goods.
“Now, what did that poor bag do to you?” a voice asked from behind.
A familiar voice.
She turned around and, surely, Leona stood by the entrance of the temple, leaning against the frame, her shield resting opposite to her.
“What are you doing here?” Diana asked.
“I followed you, obviously. You need to get better at being aware of your surroundings or it’ll get you killed.”
“You’re already here, I don’t see the point.”
Leona smiled and Diana’s stomach did a flip. That smile felt dangerous, too similar to what they had before either of them became a host. She grabbed her shield and came closer inside, taking in the ruins with a curious look.
“Where did Lyra come from?” Diana asked, her mind immediately looking for answers.
“Lyra?” Leona said, puzzled.
“The girl your marksman hit. The one who escaped with one of your guys.”
“Ah, that girl,” she said, a hint of disappointment in her voice. “Prison.”
“Why was she in prison?”
“Heresy.” With that, she dropped her shield. She was close enough for Diana to reach and touch her, but that was the most dangerous of thoughts. “Are we really going to talk about someone else when there’s so much else we need to talk about?”
“Such as?”
“Do you know why I bled when you did?”
“I might know something.”
“But?” Leona nudged.
“What’s the point? You’re going to find out when you kill me.” She felt as if she was testing Leona, but she didn’t know for what.
“I just want to understand,” said Leona.
Diana sat down next to her bag and pulled out a bottle of Polymnos’ secret spicy teas. She pulled out the cork and drank a big gulp, its warmth reminiscent of the honey liquor the acolytes sneaked into the Sunward Temple training ward. She offered the bottle to Leona, who looked at her strangely before sitting down in front of her.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“Just drink it, I have no idea myself,” the lighthearted tone won her another of Leona’s beautiful smiles. For a brief moment, she wondered if her lips were still as soft as they’d once been. Uh oh, that was a bad path to take when she should stay alert.
Leona grimaced at the taste, but drank a couple more times before passing the bottle back to Diana, who drank more of it, then put the cork back in. She reached into the bag and pulled out the loaf of bread one of the women gave her the day before along with a block of cheese wrapped in wax paper.
She cut a slice of bread with a small pocket knife and gave it to Leona.
“I’m not hungry,” she said.
“You are if you spent all day waiting for me to leave the village.”
Leona ducked her head as she received her piece of bread. After getting a few slices of cheese for herself, she passed it along to Leona.
“So, what’s the story up there?” she asked once she swallowed her first bite.
Leona hesitated, but eventually said, “that the Moon’s power drove you to insanity and that’s why you want to kill the Solari. They’re calling you ‘an example of the corruption of the darkness.’”
“That was Nemyah, wasn’t it?”
“How did you know?”
“Call it a hunch,” Diana replied.
They ate in silence after that, sharing a meal alone for the first time ever as if this was the most natural occurrence for them.
“Will you tell me what you know?” asked Leona finally. She kept her eyes trained on the ground, but Diana could tell she was genuinely curious about what Diana had found out during her time with the Lunari tribe, and because Diana wanted nothing more than to have Leona understand the Lunari, she told her what she had learned so far.
Diana spoke for hours, answering Leona’s questions when she had an answer for them, committing to memory those questions that did not yet have one.
After a while, Leona asked, “Diana, what’s going on with you and me?”
Ah, the dreaded question. How to begin to explain it? Diana didn’t even understand it fully herself. “There are stories,” she began, “about two warriors who are supposed to bring back the balance between the Lunari and the Solari, reuniting the Rakkor in the process… But the priest back at the village had never seen a bond like that, it might just be a story.”
Leona was staring at Diana’s hands as if she was seeing them for the first time, then she took off her gloves and reached out, grabbing Diana’s right hand at the wrist.
“That’s not the Moon,” she said, her voice serious.
“I’m aware,” replied Diana.
“But this is the Moon,” Leona added, turning her hand so Diana could see the mark at the back of her hand. There, in pale silver lines, the same marking on Diana’s forehead stood out against Leona’s tanned skin.
Diana’s stomach tightened and she knew without a trace of a doubt that Polymnos’ story was true.
“Do they know?” asked Diana. She didn’t have to mention who ‘they’ were.
“Yes, they made me write down all the new markings on my skin. Thalaia said it meant I was destined to fight the heretics.”
“And you believed her?” she said, incredulous.
“Not really, but you know how it is. You’re not allowed to question the Priestesses, so I came to find answers of my own.”
“And? You believe me now?”
“Well, you were right about the restricted tablets, most of them are also incomplete or, supposedly, lost. I’m afraid you were right in questioning the temple’s teachings,” said Leona. “They haven’t even let me access all of them and it’s beyond frustrating. I am not a child, I can be responsible with the knowledge they contain.”
“Leona, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but they don’t care about anything but staying in power. It’s how it’s been for the last who knows how many years. Polymnos was only an initiate when the Solari raided his town and he went on the run. And Polymnos is old.”
They sat in silence for a while, Diana looking at the stars through the caved in ceiling of the temple, appreciating the faint glow of the moon as it traveled across the sky.
“You had an opportunity to kill me and you didn’t take it,” said Leona. “Not just in the village, but also at the peak of Mount Targon, that night when—”
“I know.”
“Why didn’t you take it?”
Oh, Leona.
“I thought you knew. You must know,” said Diana, a desperate plea in the night.
“Tell me anyway.”
Before Diana could say anything, she heard steps in the distance, the telling march of soldiers on their way. Leona turned in the same direction as her, paling as she did so. “No,” she whispered.
Diana turned to her, feeling anger rise inside of her chest. “You set me up?”
“I swear I didn’t,” she said quickly. “Diana. Diana, look at me. Look at me, please.”
She looked at Leona’s pleading eyes and saw truth in them, along with anguish and something else, something soft that reminded her of the Nightless Eve they spent together looking at the stars. It was her turn to believe Leona and Diana knew in her heart that it was the right thing to do.
“I didn’t call them, you have to believe me,” she pleaded.
Diana stood up and reached a hand to Leona, who took it and hesitantly got to her feet. “You asked me why I didn’t kill you before. I thought it was obvious.” She took a step closer to Leona. “And if this is my last chance to do it—”
She put a hand on Leona’s cheek, guiding her face closer, inspecting Leona’s face for any signs that she didn’t want Diana’s touch, but instead the other woman nodded, swallowing as she did so.
Diana leaned forward and kissed Leona.
And Leona kissed her back.
For a precious moment, all time stopped and the whole world was reduced to the point where she was touching Leona: Diana’s hand on her cheek, Leona’s hand on her waist, their lips moving softly against each other. Diana had been right, Leona’s lips were still as soft as they’d been back then.
Their kiss felt eternal, even if it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes. They were interrupted by the loud clash of spears against the floor, the steps outside coming closer and one man yelling, “there’s the traitor!”
Leona pulled back and put a hand on her shield, ready to lift it to defend herself. Looking at Diana, she said, “together?”
Diana didn’t even have to think about it. With the first signs of dawn beginning to bleed gray into the sky, she pulled on her light and raised her shield.
“Together.”