That was what? The two-thousandth and eighty-third Harvest Moon? Next week’s Summer Solstice would be the two-thousandth and eighty-sixth Strawberry Moon.
Nearly three years.
The math was right, but it sounded impossible.
She turned to Cam as she stared at her map. “You’ll send word if anything happens?”
“Of course,” Cam murmured, skimming over rivers and forests. “You know, Celene got along just fine for decades, perhaps even centuries, before you showed up.” A smirk played at Cam’s curved lips, her jewel-toned gaze ungluing from the map and meeting Astra’s.
“Is that so?” Astra crossed one leg over the other, tossing the scroll back onto the table.
Cam shrugged. “We weren’t as well-funded.”
“Is that all I am to you? A financier?”
She wiggled her brows at her friend. “Certainly made taking in someone with your reputation easier.”
Astra sat up straighter. “I haven’t set anyone on fire in nearly two years and you know it. Just admit you’ll miss me!”
“Dearly,” Cam assured. “Aren’t you even a little excited to see your family?”
Astra’s heart stuttered. She so rarely allowed herself to think of the things she’d left behind in Lunaria, and even then, she avoided any faces entirely. Her sister’s silver eyes and brazen white hair flared in her memory before she could will the image away. Everything about Lunelle’s bright and frigid complexion contrasted Astra’s warmth—the girls were fire and ice from the moments they entered this world, crafted by the Mother herself to orbit one another.
She unclenched her jaw. “Excited doesn’t feel like the right sentiment.”
“Lunelle must miss you terribly?”
“I know she does,” Astra mumbled. A stack of letters bleeding with Lunelle’s elegant prose sat unanswered on her desk. Astra wrote when she could, but she’d neglected their correspondence over the last few months. “At least one person will be happy to see me.”
Cam sighed. “Please, your father thinks you hung the Moon.”
Astra waved her fingers between their faces, glowing with a faint lick of fire, fueled by her anxiety. “The flames hear you, but they don’t believe you.”
Cam nodded, knowing her friend far too well to attempt to soothe her nerves. She marked another mountain range with an azure crystal, one she always saved for her favorite spaces.
“The thirtieth anniversary of The Flare, your birthday, and the Solstice all at once… can’t imagine why the queen would want to speak with you,” Cam chuckled to herself.
Astra’s lips dropped into a frown, out of reasons to delay her departure. “She’ll want me to stay at least through the Solstice. I’m sure of it.”
“That’s not that long.” Cam set another marker near one of Neptune’s moons. “You’ll be back here before you know it. Besides, who wouldn’t want the royal treatment on such a significant birthday?”
Astra rolled her eyes. “Yes, I’m sure there will be many moonshine fountains in my honor. A parade, at the very least.” Astra reached across the table for a piece of obsidian, sliding it along the edge of Neptune’s capital city. “The southern side is more vulnerable.” She rose, smoothing her dress. “I’ll be home as soon as I can.”
“Bring that Ameera of yours back with you,” Cam muttered, tapping her finger against the obsidian. The corner of her mouth ticked up into a sorrowful smile Astra ignored for both their sakes.
“I mean it, Cam. Even a whisper of something wrong and I can be back here in three hours. Two and some change if Riv is in a good mood.”
Cam nodded, she understood the urgency Astra felt.
“Go then, before moonfall.”
Chapter
Two
Riverion’s roost, a tall, skeletal tower, loomed over the Somnia.
Astra skipped across the rickety bridge, noting she should send for the builder in the villages that helped construct the pulley system last Summer as soon as she landed in Lunaria.
