But this morning, Astra was alone, left to her own devices, still wrestling with a lingering ember in her chest and guilt picking her apart. It was unconscious, pulling him into her dreams like that, but didn’t that mean something alarming about the wants hidden in her heart?
She needed fresh air and a break from his relentless sear. Perhaps he needed a break, too.
She took her book to finish in the quiet of the rustling moonblossoms, tendrils of green rapidly fading to brilliant oranges as Autumn tightened her grip. She slipped into a chair, unfolding the stack of parchment, and flipped back to the spot she’d left off last night.
Aurelle reached for Gladrious’s face, her hands cupping the sharp jawline, worried his light would scorch her as she pressed their skin together. She marveled at the faint glow that seeped from his jaw to her palm.
“What if I destroy you?” Her heart was at risk of bursting.
“Then I’d find you in the next life.” Gladrious shrugged. She knew it was true.
She pressed her lips to his, a spark pushing her back for just a moment before he stepped forward, sweeping her up into his arms. The world around them fell away, the space between swirling as the light within him ignited her Soul and her Shadows drowned him.
They dissolved into color and dust and deep darkness and brilliant white, twisting together until they were no more than a whisper of who they used to be. They stretched across the sky in dazzling colors, a river of what could have been, now bursting with the potential for something new.
“Wait,” she whispered, flipping the next page. “Are they… did they become the Rift?” Her heart thumped against her ribs.
“Who?” Nayson slipped into the seat across from her, already dressed in his golden Autumnal hues for the holiday.
“It will only bore you,” she laughed, folding the pages back into their paper wrapping. “How are you holding up? Big night without Mother.”
A sharp pain ran through her father’s chest, concentrated in the center, a purple and black bruise.
“I miss her terribly,” he said, his tone something between sorrow and reverence. “She thinks they’ll be home soon.” He said it for his own benefit more than Astra’s.
“Good,” she breathed.
Nayon’s eyes narrowed, studying his daughter’s face. “Not exactly the excitement I’d expect from a young bride waiting for her betrothed to return.”
She winced. “No. It wasn’t, was it?”
“You know you don’t have to marry him, right? A Tether is a Tether, but you’re still Astra. You have a say.”
She glanced around the garden, all too aware that this was a dangerous topic.
“Do I?” she scoffed.
“Of course! Your mother would certainly be the first to understand.”
“Mother would never understand a damn thing about me,” she snapped, his eyes softening.
“Your mother understands you much better than you’ll ever know, Astra.”
She shrugged. “You’re quite biased, Father.”
“And you only know Oestera Aurellis as your mother. You never knew her as the Rebel Queen.” He smiled just at the thought of her old nickname.
“By her design,” she sighed. “Can I ask you something I’ve always wondered?”
“Of course.”
“Does she keep me at a distance because I’m too much like Leona? Does it just hurt too much to look at me?”
Nayson held her gaze for a long moment, a whisper of a smile pulling at the corner of his lips.
“You do not remind your mother too much of Leona,” he said, rising and waving to a courtier across the garden, arriving for the festivities. “You remind your mother too much of herself.”
He left Astra to ponder that shocking observation, the fire in her veins stirring at the comparison.
