Luna pushed herself up on her arms, and then she collapsed again.
Lukas was standing by, watching with concern.
After the exhilaration of the night, she felt drained, as though she had just run all the way here from Alaxia. They still hadn't figured out what exactly she had done to Lukas. She didn't know herself, and him grilling her hadn't helped at all.
"I was going to say we're going out, but it doesn't look like you're in any condition to be leaving bed," he noted.
Luna whimpered quietly.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I've never... met someone like you before."
She had stopped herself from saying she'd never kissed anyone like that before. She still wasn't sure if she should trust him with her entire being, though she didn't know if she really had a choice now. He had already unknowingly taken control over her mind, her impulses, her personality, her everything. She didn't know if she even could hold something back at this point.
He turned to leave, walking over to the door.
"I'm in love with you, Lukas," she blurted out. As if he didn't already know. And still, she felt like a blushing fool, saying it out loud like that.
He froze, one hand on the door, the other at his side. His shoulders slowly tensed, then relaxed.
"I'll see you tonight."
That got her heart racing, and she barely restrained herself from calling out to him and trying to get another teaser.
If she was going to get this tired from just one night, how was she going to survive even a week with him?
If muscles weren't given a chance to heal, how were they supposed to get stronger?
Luna had a thought then.
She cast around the room, looking for a button, a bell, or a lever, something.
Since he was technically a high noble, it stood to reason that he would have something in his room to call in a maid. After all, most of them wanted a way, and the rest had them regardless, because of their father's or their father's father's paranoia.
There, beside the table. It was on the other side, opposite the bed, out of sight from where she had been lying, but now that she had sat up and cranked her neck, it was clearly visible, the only copper amenity in a room full of brass- or gold-lined objects.
It was green, clearly out of use, and it was obvious that no one had bothered to polish it for a while.
Come to think of it, there had been deep scrapes in the floor leading up to the foot the bed. Luna had been too distracted to notice them properly, but now that she though back she could picture the room perfectly.
Deep gouges in the wooden floor, as though something heavy had been dragged across it.
Something heavy like a large, metal-backed feather mattress bed.
Although Luna was pretty that it would be a simple matter for Lukas to lift the bed and set it wherever he wanted, it seemed almost more likely that he had refused to sleep on the bed until it had been moved, and his maids had then had to make do with the request.
There were also signs of other scuffed-up areas, though most had been replaced. The only problem was that the grain of the wood used to replace them was a bit too rough, and it had been sanded much more than the original floor. That pointed towards the maids having had to rearrange the entire room, which would be another reason why he didn't just move it himself.
Then Luna paused, and frowned.
Since when had her memory been so utterly flawless? She didn't even know her own room that well, and although the exact same thing had happened when she had moved in, though it was because she had felt spiteful at first and had wanted to make her mother's maids suffer, she had never been able to tell the old and new wood apart.
That was the moment when she had realized that she should be focused on getting at her mother, and it was just a petty move to lash out at the maids just because she could.
Although there was also a hint of jealousy for them that motivated that decision as well, because most of them had practically been taken from the street when they were a year old or less, and she had been forced to live there for years, it simply didn't make sense to continue. After all, she had risen far above them.
After that incident, she had gotten to talk to the maids more, especially the ones assigned specifically to her, and she had grown a pseudo-respect for them.
But this was something new. Something different.
She had seen without vision, unless her memory had been tuned in entirely to those few seconds where she had seen the floor in its entirety, most of which happened as Lukas was carrying her.
Something was off.
And last night may have been the cause of it.