Luxuros stopped pacing as Lunelle said, “No!”
Ameera stepped between them, reaching for Lux’s chest. She yanked at an amulet around his neck, snapping the leather knot as she held it out to him.
“You can find her,” she said quietly. Luxuros’s eyes searched Ameera’s for truths he could not say out loud, but within a moment of the amulet falling away, his head snapped skyward.
“Meet me in Mercury,” he said to Mirquios. “I do not know what shape Astra will be in. Gather your medical supplies, Meer.”
Meer, Lunelle thought as she looked at her sister’s maiden. Ameera was too busy mentally cataloging what she needed to meet Lunelle’s gaze.
Mirquios grasped his brother’s shoulder. “We’ll be there. If you do not return before daybreak, Maeve will activate the Nova response.”
Luxuros was gone before Lunelle could catch her breath.
Lunelle watchedthe Sun climb over the city below, the morning beams waking the Mercurian Gate.
“Mirquios, perhaps it’s time to send for Maeve,” Ameera said from a table laden with food no one had touched in hours.
“Yes—”
“No need,” Lunelle gasped, taking perhaps her first full breath since Luxuros had come for them, pointing through the window as the commander and Astra faded from the Rift. “He’s got her!”
She smacked the king’s arm as she raced from the library into the hall.
Lunelle cried, “You found her!” and flung her arms around her sister’s neck, desperate to know she was really there, she was safe. “Are you hurt? Who took you? How did you find her?”
She could not stop the flow of questions as she looked between Astra and Luxuros.
“I’m fine, Lu,” Astra mumbled into her neck, pulling away from her clutches.
Lunelle dragged Astra down the hall and into the library, even bigger than the one she’d fallen in love with back in Pluto. The morning Sun seeped in through the windows, painting the crimson carpets in shadows and flames. Ameera’s eyes widened as they approached, the tension in the air thinning.
“I’m fine,” Astra assured everyone. Lunelle had not noticed her sister’s warmer tones in the moonlight—the gilded freckles falling over her skin.
She rather looked like the Sun herself.
Gods, she’d fucked up letting Astra out of her sight. She should never have told her about any of this, they would have been none the wiser.
“I cannot believe I let this happen. Anyone could have grabbed you. I told you she shouldn’t be in the Rift!” She glared at Mirquios, who gracefully did not argue with her.
Astra sneered. “You sound like Mother.”
Lunelle stopped pacing. Of all the things she could have said to justify her pit of loathing, that was the cruelest.
“Sorry,” Astra apologized. “But I wasn’t in the Rift. I was dreaming, Lunelle. It could have happened anywhere.”
Lunelle sighed. “You were gone for hours, Astra! The Lunar Court will awaken any moment and we’re lucky we aren’t bringing back a corpse!”
Her sister sat on the couch, the silver slips of silk and the crown on her head lighting up in the sunbeams.
“I attended a ball with a bunch of deities and drank some wine, Lunelle. That’s a Tuesday in the Lunar Court.”
Lunelle glared at her king as he scoffed in the corner.
“What did Selenia want?” Ameera asked.
Astra shrugged nonchalantly as if all of this were normal.
“To make a deal.”
