“I don’t want it.”
“You will, darling. Oestera... is she...” She let the question linger, her voice so similar to her mother’s, but curved where Oestera’s angled.
“She doesn’t know I’ve come.”
“Of course, she doesn’t. She’d kill you first just for thinking of putting yourself in such danger.”
“Might have been a more efficient way to speak with you.” She stretched her legs, aching from slipping against the crumbling dunes.
“You’re so much like her,” Leona hummed, the admiration rolling off her form.
“That’s what I keep hearing,” she chuckled.
“You may have inherited my name and fiery mane, but the way your eyes take me in, the way your lips fall into a tight line, it’s like I’m looking at her again.” Something in Leona’s velvety chorus of voices caught, and she stopped.
It all rushed out, everything that lingered within her spirit. She may not have blood and muscle and bone to store it, but the pain was still there. Perhaps it never dies, then—the love we carry when we’re living. How unfathomably horrifying, to be haunted by life even when you’re haunting in death.
“It’s not so bad,” Leona mused.
“You can?—”
“You, yes.” Her shadowy head nodded. “Not everyone. You wear it all right there on your precious face, don’t you?”
“It’s frequently cited as an issue of mine, yes.”
“It’s a reminder of the love I had for her,” she continued, ignoring Astra’s self-deprecation. “That before I was here, bound to an eternity of slipping away, I was her sister. Her soulmate. The pain, it’s only a whisper now.”
Astra swallowed, Lunelle’s silver eyes searing in her mind. “I see.”
“Why are you here, Astra?”
She shook off the dread pooling in her fingertips and drew in a short breath, the truth leaping into her throat that she’d been trying to talk herself out of since it occurred to her last night.
“I’m here to capture Selenia’s Shadow.”
Chapter
Forty-Three
If a soul could balk, Leona’s did.
“What?”
“She traded it to the Nether Queen, in exchange for something. We don’t know what, but we believe Selenia intentionally led you all astray about the results of severing a tie,” Astra explained.
Leona wilted before her. “I don’t understand. Solan attacked the court, he?—”
“The reaction after the release wasn’t planned, Leona. It wasn’t an attack. It was pain. The Flare was Solan’s grief over what he cost you.”
Leona’s shadow turned away, caving in on itself.
“He’s never recovered, Leona. They call him the Mad King. He’s been alone all these years, festering in Solaris.”
“How do you know this?”
“I went within, I went back to The Flare. Selenia saw me and she brought me to the Court Above to make a deal. She sent me down here to bring your soul back to her, she said she wanted to clear the air between you so you could Ascend, but I think she has an ulterior motive.”
“She doesn’t want you to have access to me,” Leona whispered. “If she knows you can go within, she knows that you can find me, or any other Shadow Goddess. She’ll take my soul and she’ll destroy it, Astra. She doesn’t want me to be able to train you.”
