Her father took this in, always careful to weigh every word that left his lips—one of the few traits his daughter hadn’t inherited from him, for better or worse.
“Things are not always as they appear, Astra. Your mother is beholden to thousands of lives. That’s not a responsibility many could bear.”
“And yet she will not allow any of us to take up any of the weight.”
“Perhaps you both could spend some time reacquainting yourselves with one another. You’ve both constructed stories that aren’t necessarily true.” Nayson rose, kissing her one more time, lest she escape from the hall and never come back, and smiled warmly, despite the prickling in both their chests. “Come and find me when you’ve settled in. I’ve missed our afternoon teas.”
His footsteps faded, leaving Astra alone to listen to the crash of the sea below. The only thing louder than the waves breaking against the cliffs was the all-consuming hum of the orb before her, begging her to touch it as she stared.
Perhaps many of the narratives she’d been taught her entire life needed to be pulled apart at the seams.
Chapter
Four
It was simply irresponsible of the queen to leave the object on the table.
At least, that’s what Astra told herself as she smuggled it under her robes and tossed it into a sack, the weight of it dragging against the black cloak she wrapped around her shoulders.
It only took a few gold coins to convince the stable maidens to let her take a midnight-black mare into the Midwood, breaking away from the watchful eyes of the palace courtiers. Her shimmering silver mane slipped through Astra’s fingers like silk as they edged their way into a clearing where she knew every fallen log, every babbling stream.
She paused at the treeline, the wound on her shoulder still very apparent as she gripped the reins of her mount. The expanse of gnarled oaks and twisted birch hid plenty of creatures, both mystical and terrible, but now she wondered who else lurked in the shadows.
She closed her eyes, sinking beneath flesh and muscle, letting her bones have their say—would they push her into the darkness, or back into the stoic halls of the palace? The orb at her back whirred, answering before anything within her could.
She took that as enough of a sign.
Though off-putting in its tangled appearance, the Midwood had always called to her, even as a small child. Hundreds of Lunar Queens upheld a bargain—the Midwood would act as a protective barrier to the palace as long as its inhabitants were not bound to the same strict laws around practicing magic as Lunarians were.
Anything that happened within her dark woods belonged to the Midwood’s stewards, the Lunar Elves, and their ancient queen, Ehlaria.
She had neither beginning nor ending, she always was and always would be—some stories passed down claimed she was the mother of all life in the Lunar Court, but she denied it. Ehlaria had been through centuries of Lunar queens and seen them each through their struggles, though the last few generations had a more tenuous relationship than previous rulers.
The magic that ruled over Astra’s veins was not always a forbidden practice in the court. It had once been commonplace—any of the women born within the court could access the flow of mystic power from their souls. They all had the blood of their Mother Goddess pumping in their hearts. Astra would not have been an outlier a few short centuries ago before everything crumbled.
The Lunar and Solar courts had always been enemies, really, but they’d at least been dignified about it in decades past. It was when a Lunar queen was murdered by a Solar king while traveling her inner astral realm that things got murky. It had never happened before—the women of the Lunar Court had always felt safe exploring their deepest selves, but her death toppled centuries of tradition and ritual in favor of strict regulations and the rise of the priestesses of the court who banned any use of magic as a protective measure.
Temporarily, of course. To keep them safe, of course. That it resulted in a complete shift of power from the people to the priestesses and the royal family was merely a strange coincidence.
Of course.
Before she ventured too far into the Midwood’s marred depths, Astra reached into her cloak and pulled a small velvet pouch from her pocket. She tossed a few gold coins onto a smooth stump she’d left dozens of trinkets on over the years.
“I seek nothing but a blind eye,” she said to whatever forest spirits might be listening. A soft whoosh and clink of coins whispered through the trees, followed by silence.
She didn’t have to make it far into the woods for her safe space—though it felt less so this afternoon. She aimed for a small meadow just far enough away from the city that she’d be unlikely to get caught practicing illegal magic, and far enough from the elusive village of the Lunar Elves that she wouldn’t be a disturbance. She could buy the forest’s peace for a moment with her gold.
She tied up her mare, slipping off the saddle and gripping her pack as she settled into the middle of the meadow, tucking her feet beneath her. Overturning the bag, she watched as the orb rolled away from her, still singing its inaccessible song into the fluffy ryegrass. The moonlight above bounced off the crystal, amplifying the unbearable ethereal glow.
Before the bans, powers ranging from divination to elemental practices were honored as a gift, not shamed into compliance. She’d never been able to silence her strange alchemy of flames and intuition, despite many attempts made by her mother and the councilors.
She had no way of accessing information about her capabilities; the texts had long since gone missing, but if Astra trusted anything, it was her gut.
An onyx river opened within her chest as she mourned the knowledge she’d never have. Breathing in to still her heart, she let the song of the night larks above her lull her into an easy state.
She peered into the orb, the light warming her face.
Show me your user, she imagined herself saying, closing her eyes and letting the humming music swirl over her skin, pulling her under its spell.
