“Where did you go?”
Solan hadn’t murdered Leona in cold blood—he’d been trying to save them.
“Oh gods.”
Everything they knew was a lie. They were rebelling, too.
“No, no, no, no, no.”
Oestera was there. She knew.
“Wake up!”
The Flare was Solan’s grief, not an attack on the courts.
“Come back to me!”
They were Tethered.
“As!”
Chapter
Thirty-Seven
Astra’s eyes shot open, no longer floating in the Rift, but back in her study, on the floor, wrapped in warm arms that smelled like oak and leather.
She gasped for a breath, her head swirling from the lack of air. Two brown eyes came into focus, hovering before hers.
“Oh, thank the gods,” Lux breathed, sitting back on his heels, untangling his arms from her body against every instinct within him.
“What are you doing here?” She pushed herself to her feet, rising over him, a wild expression set in his jaw.
“The Tether disappeared,” Lux gasped, clutching at his chest, “I thought—I thought you were gone,” he rasped, his chest heaving. “I thought you were dead!”
The anger within her melted away at the panic gripping him, so unchained it flowed over whatever walls he maintained with such a rigid grasp, spilling onto the floor in flaming currents. She kneeled before him, gripping his shoulders and forcing him to look her in the eye. “I’m unharmed! I’m here.”
“You were gone,” he said again.
“I was stuck,” she nodded, rubbing small circles on the hard muscle of his shoulders with her thumbs. “You pulled me back,” she insisted, moving her hands from his shoulders to his chest, his heart hammering against her fingertips.
Astra pictured a calm breeze wafting through a red canyon during the brilliant colors of the sunrise, just as her father had painted them, and pushed it against the wall within him. She met nothing but resistance.
“Let me in.” Astra pushed the image again, searching for a crack in the wall. She slithered her way into his head, his heart slowing as she set him on the edge of the canyon with a gentle breeze, a bird singing. His breath relaxed and settled into a steadier rhythm. Astra watched his face smooth over, the terror easing from the lines in his forehead.
She tried to wriggle from his grip, but his arms did not loosen their stronghold. Something about the desperation in his hold coaxed more out of her than she’d planned to tell.
“I went to The Flare,” she whispered.
Whatever calm she’d achieved disappeared into a crimson mist. “You did fucking what?—”
“I know! I know. It was dangerous.”
Lux dropped his hold on her, grasping her face in his hands. “Dangerous! It was—it was beyond danger! You’re trying to kill me, I swear to the gods.”
She pushed through the flailing tendrils of anxiety from his chest as he worked to tuck them away again.
“Leona and Solan were Tethered. You were right. It wasn’t an attack. Selenia told them they could sever the Tether to stop the gods’ interference. They were trying to rebel, but it didn’t work. It killed Leona. The Flare was a reaction to Solan’s grief?—”
