“I’ll have to catch tomorrow’s send,” Astra admitted. “I haven’t quite finished my response.”
Nayson’s head tilted. “How is the king finding Pluto?”
“Uh, fine, I suppose,” she said.
The commander’s brows slipped toward each other. “Is that what he told you?”
Astra set her face into a hardened mask she learned from her own mother. “I prefer to keep our conversations private, thank you.”
“Of course,” Luxuros said, returning to his breakfast. “Apologies.”
If she had looked at either of the men, she would have caught a curious glance between them, so quick she would have thought she misread it.
But she did not.
She was too busy composing a letter to the king in her mind, stuck on what to say other than she hoped his travels were smooth.
Chapter
Fourteen
It took nearly two weeks of tense dinners and late nights holed up in Astra’s study before Ameera’s contact in the city could translate Ehlaria’s book.
Astra spent most of her mornings drifting around the palace in wide circles with Riverion, more tempted by the day to burst into the Rift and get out of the court. Most afternoons were spent with Ameera, leafing through old texts about the Rift, should they find anything relevant to their suspicions. In the evenings, she managed her correspondence with Cameren. Celene had suffered a flood after a late Summer storm. Astra sent a list of repairs to her builder in the villages and a hefty bag of coins.
Any spare moment she had went to the commander and his lessons on Mercurian history and customs.
They’d settled into somewhat of a routine. She half-listened to his lengthy lectures on whatever war reshaped Mercury’s economic policies two hundred years prior, inevitably he’d notice her attention waning and say something sharp that pushed against her bruises. She’d seethe for a few hours before they glared at one another over dinner.
It was in the middle of yet another drawn-out complaint about her lack of discipline that Ameera appeared in the library with a stack of pages wrapped in parchment paper.
Is that the translation? Astra beamed as she hovered behind the commander, on his fourth point of why Astra’s inability to rise above his heat was going to be what eventually got them both killed.
She’d heard it enough times now that she knew she had about two minutes left before his exasperation gave way to hunger and he quit their lessons for dinner.
Freshly delivered. As soon as Lux leaves, we can dive in. The translator said it was an unfamiliar dialect to anyone in her circle, but with enough patience, she was able to get us ninety percent of the way there.
“Could you at least pretend to listen to me?” Luxuros sighed, leaning against the white marble tables of the Lunarian Royal Library.
“I’m listening,” Astra insisted, her eyes unable to tear away from the package in Ameera’s hands.
They both concluded the same thing at the same time. Astra leaped from her seat and reached for Ameera, but Luxuros was much closer.
“Hand it over,” he growled.
Ameera’s eyes widened, unsure what to do as she ducked below his outstretched arm and shoved the parcel into Astra’s hands.
Astra jumped up and down. “Yes! Ha.”
Lux huffed. “You’re thirty, Astra. Have some pride.”
“Don’t be a sore loser,” she snapped, unwrapping the pages. The original text was tucked into the folds, falling to the floor with a loud thump. Before Astra could stoop to grab it, the commander snagged it.
He turned to Astra, imitating her. “Ha. What in the Nether is this?” He cracked the spine open, flipping through a few pages.
Astra thought quickly. “Ameera wrote a novel. She wanted me to read it.”
Luxuros’s brows arched as he read a page somewhere in the middle. He turned to Ameera, who blushed. “What’s it about?”
