Astra glanced up, her stomach plummeting at the thought.
“You want me to lie to you, Commander?” She called over her shoulder as she braced herself for whatever lay on the other side of the mysterious river. Her fingers curled around the leather reins, white-knuckled as they spiraled.
“Yes!” Luxuros screamed, reaching for his forearm as another arrow sliced through his bronze flesh. Astra closed her eyes as Riverion’s mouth breached the colorful barrier, unsure if she would feel the transition at all.
It was nothing like she imagined it would be.
The Rift swirled around them in a magnificent spiral of hundreds of colored threads. They whispered as they ran past her, glittering against the night sky. They felt weightless as they crashed through the wall and floated into the current, silhouettes slipping by as Riverion’s massive wings tucked into his side.
Luxuros squeezed his knees against Riverion’s saddle, rising to wrap his hands around a gleaming silver thread. They jolted forward, barreling toward a crystal gate Astra recognized in the center of Ellume’s bustling city.
“Oh, Mother Above,” she whispered to herself as she watched Ameera and her wyvern fall through the portal. How in the Nether was she going to explain this to her mother?
She squeezed her eyes shut as Luxuros released the thread, pushing them through the gate. Several horrified shouts greeted them as they crashed onto the platform.
Astra righted herself quickly, attempting to set her face in the way a Lunarian princess was trained to do from birth. But as she looked at Ameera, she knew something was very wrong.
The last time she’d been in Ellume, the city’s center was a bustling park that stretched for miles through the middle of crystalline skyscrapers. It was lush and calming, built to frame Ellume’s heart-stopping temple at one end and a set of a dozen piers at the other.
But that sparkling amethyst and emerald park was no more.
Her eyes fixed on the dozens of boots before her as guards in mismatched leathers surrounded them. They carried various blades and one wrapped their hands around a bow that had seen better days. Each of their rib cages filled with orange anxiety as they took in the sight before them.
“Princess?” a voice called out, the attention of a dozen other guards in the trees catching and turning toward them.
“Oh, this is excellent,” another voice murmured as the guards closed in.
“Who are you?” Astra called out. “What do you want?”
“Easy now,” the first voice assured her, holding her hands up as she got within spitting distance. “We won’t hurt you, Princess.”
Astra sighed, bored with their theatrics. The nerves within their chests gave them away. Not one of them was confident in how to handle this situation.
“Get on with it then,” Astra said, waving her arms in exasperation.
“We won’t hurt you as long as you cooperate.”
“Who is ‘we?’” Astra asked. “Have any of you ever accosted a dignitary before?”
The second man sank into his hip. “It’s not every day that one falls at our feet.”
“Well, lesson one. You’re wasting both of our time with the tough guy act. Just tell me what you want,” she growled.
“For gods’ sakes, Astra,” a feminine voice huffed. The lilt of the voice did something to Astra’s stomach she didn’t quite understand until a tall, tanned woman broke through the line of guards, her opal hair gleaming from the lamplights above.
A full head taller than the rest of the leather-clad warriors, Daria’s shoulders were broad and packed with muscle that Astra hadn’t had the fortune of running her hands over in their past encounters. No wonder she hadn’t recognized her immediately.
Ameera’s fiery panic wafted over Astra as she took in the figure approaching them.
“Daria?” Astra asked, her voice dripping with irritation—if only to mask the nostalgic blue blossoming in her chest. “What are you doing here?”
“What am I doing here? You royals really are out of touch, aren’t you?” Daria stopped just a breath away from Astra’s face, their proud chins tilting upward toward one another. Her leather nearly covered her golden skin, but a few exposed patches at her chest and wrists revealed colorful tattoos Astra hadn’t seen before, either.
And she was pretty certain she’d seen every stretch of Daria several times over.
“You should get back to your palace, Princess.”
Astra watched a slow curl of peony pink rise in Daria’s chest, stroking her sternum in an attempt to self-soothe.
