“I appreciate your suggestion,” Cedric says, cheery.
“I am not,” Lan says, “suggesting.”
“You must understand…we admire your intellectual pursuits very much.”
The Mercurian looks ghastly and merciless. And violently ill.
“Call what you and Ilo were doing in my Archives anything you please. But do not presume to define it as anything near intellectual.”
“Your books are so lovely,” Cedric says. A blind stab at flattery.
“Yes,” Lan seethes. “They’re even more satisfying when they are open, unwrinkled, and in front of you. Not underneath a pile of sweaty, foul-smelling, discarded robes.”
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🐥- A memory about their children (past, present, or future)
she tells him in the most sacred place she knows: the library, the place where his heart becomes holy. the only place that belongs to the two of them alone.
she tells him quietly, her hands in her lap and her eyes looking firmly into his. her courage wavers, quakes with the impossibility she is presenting to him — but yuna does not tremble. with lan, she is safest.
even when telling him that she is with child.
“it’s forbidden,” he says. confident, as usual; trusting the knowledge that has never once failed him, relying on the mind that has only perfected itself throughout the centuries. “it’s disastrous.”
“i know.” yuna takes his hand, brushing his fingers across her lips. “but it’s ours.”
“they may execute us.”
“i know.”
“if not us, then certainly the child.”
“will we let them?”
he is quiet, and yuna takes his silence as a gift. he is a scholar and a siren both, capable of ruining her with one blow — who, instead, shows her the secret corners of the universe. she knows lan is not all-powerful; she knows she is only a mortal, too.
but knowing is not the same as hoping, and lan has shown her how to do both. he looks at her as if she holds the hearth of the world in her palms, but it is he who has never let her down. who carries her through the night and keeps her spirit bright and brilliant.
“what do you think?” he asks her — and yuna kisses him deeply for it, for never failing to hear her and listen.
“i will fight for you and our child with my last breath,” she whispers.
lan smirks and says only one thing before leaning in to finish what she began: “and i’ll make sure it never comes to that.”
—
her name is mako — “for truth,” yuna tells kou as he holds her child. hoping kou will love her as much as she does; hoping kou will forgive her and lan both for their sin, their beautiful and wretched sin. look at what we made, she almost says, look at the miracle that’s born from our betrayal.
instead, she watches him silently and studies his expression closely. beside her, lan is watching as well for entirely different motivations: to protect mako from all things, even from her own brother kou. she takes his hand and squeezes gently; it’s impossible not to love mako. already a beauty, she glows like starlight and smells like a sunrise. already, mako has done the impossible: she was born.
she grows into a striking woman, terrifying all who meet her with the intensity of her gaze. mako takes after her father: cold and intimidating, tender with a select few and unrealistically demanding of the rest. the only times anyone sees yuna in her is when she is with kou, the uncle she adores more than she sometimes adores yuna and lan, or in the way that mako laughs when she’s surprised.
when yuna dies, mako stands by her father’s side and the two of them are still as they lower yuna’s body into the earth. silent and strong, the two show no grief until they are back in that sacred space, sharing memories of the princess who was able to hold a shooting star in her hands — and hold onto it.
