“You could always ask the Nether Queen yourself,” Leona said. “She won’t be too fond of you barging in here with demands, but sometimes Luciela surprises us.”
Astra ignored her suggestion, wholly uninterested in tangling herself up in any other ancient being’s strike list.
“If I captured Selenia’s shadow instead... if I used the locket to hold it hostage and destroy it… what would happen?”
If Leona could have frowned, she would have. “I don’t know what kind of deal she made with Luciela, but she definitely wouldn’t be able to Ascend again.”
Astra flashed her a smile, feeling in her soul that she was making the right choice as the plan came together in her mind.
“I have to go. This has been incredibly helpful—is it possible to come back to visit you?”
“Not here,” Leona sighed. “Too many eyes. But we can make arrangements.”
“I would very much like that, Leona.”
“Astra? When you figure out why she did it… how she could do it… find me and tell me.”
She felt the pain again, unbearable to hold.
“I will,” she promised.
She began the journey back through the canyons, her legs aching from balancing in the gray silt as it shifted under her boots. When she stumbled back onto the set of their diverging footprints, she followed four strands of boots back over a dune and to the edge of the Shadowlands.
Gnarled trees wept over each other, tangling their branches into harrowing tunnels and murky pits. The air was so still within the black leaves she could hear her heartbeat as she stepped over fallen logs. Lux was close. She could feel the pull in her chest loosen as she made her way toward the forest’s center.
A high-pitched cry yanked her attention from Lux.
Lunelle?
Over here!
She followed the trail of her sister’s wild emotions, Mirquios’s own signature blend of cerulean calm fading into angst and stress as she got farther into the twisted woods.
“On your left!” he called out, Lunelle grunting as something came into contact with someone.
“They don’t need your help,” a slithering voice hissed in her ear. “At least not yet.”
Astra spun, face to face with a black serpent, onyx scales towering over her head as she wound around the hollowed-out log of a fallen tree.
“You don’t like this form, then,” she said. “So be it.” A fog of deep black shadow twirled around her and in the serpent’s place stood who could only be the Nether Queen.
Her cold eyes fell over Astra, black as night set in sickly gray skin, deep charcoal waves of hair slipping over her back. She was clothed in shadows, an ink-black dress rippling into waves of night sky at the hem. Her skeletal hands bore black diamond rings on all but her thumbs.
“Astra Leona,” she said, stepping closer and washing her in an insufferable cold. “What in the Nether are you doing here?”
She could lie, but something told her the Nether Queen was not one for asking questions she didn’t already know the answers to. “Selenia sent me to retrieve Leona’s soul.”
Luciela’s lips curled, amused at her explanation. “Oh, is that all?”
“It’s why I’m here.” Still not a lie.
“Hmm.” She paced back and forth, her skirts whispering awful secrets against the dusty forest floor. “Take what you came here for, and nothing else.” She shrugged. “I’m curious to see what you do with it.”
“That’s it?”
“What, you want the Goddess of Death to pay more attention to you? It’s the Solstice, I have celebrations to attend.”
“Oh,” Astra sighed, relieved.
