Lux shook his head, a thick fog gnawing at his senses. “Wait, wait, wait, go back.”
“It’s easier to show you.” She cradled his face in her hands, reliving Leona’s last moments for him. His heart stuttered and jumped as The Flare’s unholy light began consuming the realms. It had taken Solaris first, and then claimed the Inner Courts before dissipating in the rings of Saturn, only just brushing Pluto with its lethal kiss. His arms tightened around Astra’s waist as Selenia’s chilling glare caught hers. When she dove into the Rift, she dropped her hold on his stubbled jaw.
“Gods,” Lux sighed, smoothing a curl behind her ear. “This changes everything.”
Astra nodded, holding his gaze, daring to prod at his statement. “Everything?”
He squeezed his eyes shut. He knew exactly what she meant. She leaned forward, pushing into him the way she’d stopped herself from doing so many times. Her hands crawled his chest and explored those golden dunes of his face. She nipped the edge of his jaw, reveling in the salt of his skin like she had in their dream.
Lux’s fingers wrapped into her curls, a reflex as she moved against him.
Emboldened by the way his body unfolded against hers, like two stars thrown into the same orbit, she snagged his earlobe between her teeth and whispered, “How did you get here so quickly, Commander?”
Lux hung his head back, a blush creeping over his neck she wanted—needed to chase. She laughed against his searing skin as she read the vulnerability in his posture.
“You were already here.”
One side of his mouth curved upward as he looked toward the study door.
“I went to Venus today. I came to talk to you.” Her heart sank. The Tether desperately tried to lasso around it and hold it in her chest where it belonged, but she was plummeting toward the Court Below at a rapid pace. Astra leaned back on her heels, putting space between them.
“Don’t look at me like that. History may not have happened exactly how we thought, but war is still racing toward our courts. We are still each other’s biggest threats?—”
“No.” She said it simply and felt no need to elaborate.
“What?”
“No,” she repeated herself, shaking her head. Everything in her body pulled taut as she spoke with the conviction that, in this moment, she was exactly where she should be.
“You’re wrong, Luxuros. I know it in my bones. We were born for one another.” She touched one hand to his chest and pressed the other to hers. “I was forged with sunlight in my veins, just like you. The same black shadows wrap both our hearts. You cannot escape the shades of me any more than I can exhale the smoke of you, and I will not pretend I want to. I belong to whoever you are, whoever you were, and whoever you will be—you only have to summon a shred of bravery to claim what’s yours.”
The commander’s gaze fell to her fingertips, pulling at his chest as if to wrap her palm around his very heart and squeeze his thrumming pulse back into a regular rhythm.
“I don’t want to keep extinguishing this for the sake of your nerves. You saw them—you saw Leona and Solan. They let their fear destroy one another. They thought they had to fight it to win, and they lost everything. We aren’t bound to that same Fate!”
“Astra.”
A single word. Not a question.
A boundary.
She released her hold on him and rose to her feet. She couldn’t look at him. Everything within her rolled into a black ball, tightening with each breath she took to cool the flames rushing to her fingers. She sat in the chair behind her desk and pulled a stack of parchment to the center, unable to see Cam’s elegant script through the tears that boiled against her amber irises.
The commander’s shadow moved over the letter, hovering across the desk.
“Just go,” she choked out. “I’ve laid myself bare at your boots enough times. I’ve left nothing tucked away in my soul and it’s still not enough. I cannot show you any more proof, and I am far beyond the years of thinking I can wait out a made-up mind. Go and leave me to gather whatever shreds of dignity I still have.”
“Please.” He reached for her chin, but she pulled away, leaving his hand hollow in the space between them. Gripping the edge of the desk, she tapped her foot against the rug beneath her, ready to burst. She lifted her eyes, willing the tears to stay behind the rims of her lashes. He begged again, hopeless in his resolution.
“Please.”
Astra snorted, chewing on her tongue but unable to bite back the words. “I believe you said you don’t beg.”
She’d seen Luxuros angry plenty of times. She’d seen him frustrated, irritated, annoyed. She’d seen him perplexed by his irrational affinity for her, plagued by his denial. She’d even seen him outright pissed.
But she’d never seen him seethe.
She’d never seen him burn the way she burned.
