Evil Luna AU

Somewhere in a distant timeline…

Luna strode through the fortress with her head held high. She was too important of a guest here to worry about the leering stares from the Lost Society’s henchmen. Xerxes wouldn’t allow any of them to lay a hand on her. Probably. Luna quickened her pace. It wasn’t even her first time in the fortress, and yet she still felt uncomfortable here. Something about the planet itself didn’t feel right, much less the shadowed halls she walked.

A hand reached out from one of the shadows, startling Luna and causing her to flinch back. It brushed her arm and then retreated, and Luna saw it was a woman with long, black hair in waves.

“Child,” she whispered, “what are you doing here? Again?”

Luna frowned. She was younger than this woman, but very much an adult, and she would be addressed as such. “That’s none of your business.”

“Mm, you don’t remember me, do you?”

“Should I?”

A part of Luna’s innermost thoughts pained her for that response. It came out more harshly than she had desired, especially if she did know this woman. Somehow.

The woman shifted, showing herself clearer but not stepping directly into the light. “Cassandra, sister of Queen Talia of Librata.”

Luna searched her memory. She couldn’t recall ever meeting Cassandra before, but she knew the name. She was supposed to be missing, or dead. There were some rumors she had been kidnapped by secret forces, but many discredited them as conspiracy.

But it wasn’t. Unless… she was here by choice, as was Luna.

Cassandra leaned in closer, so only Luna could hear. “Whatever you’re here for, it’s not worth it.  Leave, before he keeps you here, like he’s done to me.”

Luna snapped back into her first impressions of the woman. She pretended not to care that she had just found the missing Libratan royal. She had no intention to turn her back to her family. Her future enemies. Soon.

“I think I can make my own decisions.”

Cassandra pushed forward. Something about her presence flared, the shadows twisting around her, that instantly made her more threatening. “You don’t know what you’re getting into. What he’ll do. Or maybe you do and you think it’s a small price to pay to get what you want. But men like him aren’t satisfied until he breaks you. And the longer you’re reliant on him, the harder he’ll tighten his hold on you.”

Luna stepped away. She wasn’t here for a lecture. “I need him.”

Cassandra’s shadowed aura flared again.

“I need his army,” she corrected. Xerxes himself wasn’t anything special, God or no. But he was extremely willing to lend his resources to her. One thing at a time, then.

“For what?” Cassandra asked.

Luna’s mind flashed back on its own, to that night in her sister’s bedroom. Knocked to the floor, and staring up at the assassin’s masked face. He was going to kill her, she knew it, even though he had come for her older siblings. Luna had tried to interfere, but she was weak. Helpless. But before he could raise his knife, Lutrine had already risen from bed, and ran a long slash down his back. He cried out in pain and turned, letting Luna see the wound. Any normal person would have collapsed in pain from having a knife raked down their back like that. A normal person…

Luna should have gotten up. Grabbed a weapon. Continued the assault. Flanked the assassin. Saved her sister… She just cried uselessly on the floor, anguished when the assassin plunged the knife into Lutrine’s chest, unable to do anything but become overcome in her grief.

And then he just left.

Luna’s mind returned to the present.

“Vengeance.”