Chapter
One
The clearing of a throat pulled Astra out of a spiraling thought.
“Sorry,” she mumbled, her hands folding the book in her lap. She smoothed the silk of her skirt over her long legs, attempting to shake the mounting heat sizzling in her veins. The weight of something strange—unfamiliar—had pressed down on her shoulders a moment before, a shift in the air she wasn’t sure what to make of.
Perhaps she’d merely felt the interruption in her morning gate duty coming.
She did not have to look up to identify who begged her attention. The cool greens and blues of Cam’s inner world spilled over her, an energy she could pick out of a crowd of hundreds. The tranquility she’d come to expect of her friend faded quickly, overtaken by something hot, something grating.
There, nestled between blood and bone, a bright spot of crimson worry on behalf of Astra.
Cam’s midnight-black hair floated on the breeze in a serene contradiction to her mood, spiraling deeper into uncertain reds by the second.
Astra rose from her well-worn spot in the grass, bracing herself as her eyes dropped to the roll of parchment clutched in Cam’s tan fingers.
“This came for you,” Cameren said. The nervous red swirled into angsty maroon within her lungs, unsettling Astra as she caught the royal seal along the scroll’s edge.
Ah. Of course.
Astra took her time gathering the half-drained mug of tea she’d perched on a gnarled root, buying time to work through her friend’s emotions before they became her own.
When she surfaced, she took a long, slow breath hoping it would cool the fire brewing in her soul instead of stoking the vicious flames.
Cam’s focused sapphire eyes widened as Astra pinched the bridge of her nose. She could never fully understand the burden of Astra’s sensitivity, but she’d witnessed the chaos Astra reined when it consumed her. The women of Celene tried to conceal their emotions for Astra’s benefit, or at the very least mute them, but Cameren’s concern about the note’s contents overrode the hold she had on her feelings.
Astra reached for the parchment, tucking her book against her chest and balancing the mug on the edge of the spine. Cameren plucked them both from her hands as they strolled across the humble village, alive with the early-morning bustling of women tending to their duties.
Astra weighed the paper in her palm, pursing her lips as it settled. “Hmm,” she sighed. “Feels like something I’m going to regret opening. Who brought it?”
“Someone new.”
“I suppose she wouldn’t chance sending someone with an affinity for me,” Astra laughed. “You can relax. I dreamed of a hatchling clawing my eyes out a few nights ago. Should have expected something from her Royal Highness soon.”
She attempted a laugh, but the sound was too dark. Too heavy. Cameren didn’t need Astra’s heightened intuition to see the anxious tug at her sleeve as they passed through the village and down a set of steps carved into the cliffside before coming to a wooden platform.
Cam reached forward and gently tugged on a fraying rope, ringing a bell at the city’s gate below.
“What do you think it is?” she asked.
“All the intuitive gifts in the world couldn’t tell me,” Astra muttered.
Both women leaned over the platform, watching the pulley cart ascend the cliffs. Astra held the gate open for Cam, following her onto the small cart and steeling herself against the railing as the ropes began moving, lowering them into the city.
As they descended through the morning mist, the open-air moonstone towers of Celene emerged, overlooking the Somnia River racing out to sea. The unfiltered feelings of a thousand women permeated the air as Astra drew in a slow breath, readjusting her tolerance from the dozens of women in the village to the busy city streets.
Cam chewed her bottom lip as she hopped off the cart. “Perhaps a birthday note?”
Astra cast a heated glare. “How many birthdays have passed without so much as a whisper?”
Cam nodded, weaving a trail from the pulley landing to the crystalline bridge over the river, sparkling in the half-Moon glow above. As Astra slipped her finger beneath the wax seal, a flock of young girls rushed them.
“Astra!” One of the smallest girls chirped as they fell in a dense circle around the women. “Alura said you survived The Flare!”
Both Cam and Astra flinched, unprepared for such a heavy hit so early in the morning. Astra tucked the scroll back under her arm, searching for the words—they were only children. They knew just enough to be dangerous to their elders. She glanced across their faces, each round with the benefits of full plates and uninterrupted sleep—they did not know the exhaustion of war or how their questions poked at ancient bruises.
“Who said that?” Astra asked calmly, maintaining a soft smile to soothe herself more than the girls at her feet. They shuffled, pushing one of the older girls to the front, her face lit with silver freckles and curious amethyst eyes. She could not have been older than ten or eleven, an infant practically.
