“I’m sorry about the dreams,” she said quietly, watching Ameera ahead as she spoke. “I didn’t know. I thought… I thought they were just dreams. Before, when we met in the Midwood, I’d been cognizant of it. It was intentional. These were… not.”
The commander’s lips twitched as he reached for the cord around his neck. “It’s all right. I was only teasing you this morning. You’ve been left alone too long, Astra.” He pressed his fingers against his chest as he sauntered beside her. “The Tether must be driving you to madness.”
“That’s not—” Astra stopped herself. He was offering her an out. “Yes. Quite maddening.”
“But I would like to set the record straight,” Luxuros murmured, his voice edging into a lower register that raised the hairs on her arms. “The blood of the cruelest warriors in the universe flows through my veins. I’m the decorated commander of one of the strongest armies in all thirteen courts. I won wars in four realms before you were out of your governess’s care.”
He yanked on his mare’s reins, circling in front of Astra and cutting into her path. She reared back, her horse huffing as she held his blazing gaze.
“I wouldn’t beg.”
Lux dug his heels into his mare’s sides and sped away, the rhythmic thumping of her hooves perfectly paced against Astra’s heart. She rolled her eyes and told herself the sudden rush of fire-orange adrenaline filling her lungs was a pathetic attempt on her body’s part to regulate.
She told herself it was just a little lust.
What she hadn’t noticed was the way the alarm curled around her ribs and pulled, crushing the bones together in a desperate warning. She didn’t notice it rising from her right side, not hers to hold at all.
The force of something, someone slammed into her and sent her soaring off her horse and crashing against the muddy forest floor, an explosion of furious color and sound shoving her into the brush.
A scream ripped through her lungs as she pushed back, but her arms were pinned beneath a suffocating weight.
The last thing she heard before her assailant smashed her head against the ground was the metallic ping of a sword and the fury of a warrior unleashed.
A scarlet rage settled over her like a blanket as the world released her mind into the ether.
Chapter
Twenty-Four
She came to seconds later, the base of her skull protesting at the very notion of opening her eyes as the world faded back into view.
She coughed, the Midwood’s grainy dust coating her throat as her ears rang.
Shuffling feet and cracking twigs—no, was it bone?—revived her from wherever her mind slipped when she hit the ground. Everything hurt as she rolled to the side and shoved herself upright, her boots tangled in the overgrown ryegrass.
“Get down, As!” Lux roared as his arms swung over her head, Ameera’s dagger clutched in one hand and his sword in the other.
Ameera! Astra glanced around frantically, searching for her.
Behind you! She panted back, a strange echo around her words. Gods, her head was a mess. Astra spun, locking onto Ameera a few dozen paces away, scrambling through the brush to gather as much as she could from Astra’s pockets.
Astra twisted back at the sound of metal on leather to find Luxuros tangled with a large wall of a man. They blurred into two bronze ghosts grappling with one another’s speed. Lux kicked him square in the chest, sending him flying, a streak of crimson fury and disdain lighting up the Midwood as he landed with a thud to her right. Astra reached for her pin, but everything she’d had on her was gone.
“You hit the ground hard,” Ameera called out, throwing her pin at her. She pointed to the grass, Astra’s various belongings strewn about.
“Shit!” Lux screamed as his arm twisted behind his back. The man used his weight to spin and throw the commander to the ground. He skidded across the clearing, hardly coming to a stop before he rolled over his shoulder and popped back up, ready for another hit. There was just enough space between them to make out the man’s face, grizzled in the same deep tones as Lux, a recognizable heat rolling off him in waves.
Astra glared, the fire in her blood sparking at the sound of Lux’s pain. She let it boil and build in a crest she rarely permitted, ready to send it across the clearing?—
You’ll hit Lux! Ameera cried against her skull.
She was right. Fuck.
She watched as her assailant’s eyes fluttered in her direction, his chest alive with a fluorescent rage—no attempt to hide his hatred for her behind a wall. But there, in the center, a small twisted knot of something else.
Fear.
Fear was the quickest route to desperation, and desperation scrambled even the most dangerous of minds. The man’s eyes widened as she let sparks fly from her fingertips, wincing at the shock. He struck his sword into the commander’s ankle, a blunt thud sickening Astra’s stomach. Luxuros hissed in pain, reaching for the injury as Astra let another flare cut through the clearing, distracting the Solarian.
