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Chapter Fourteen

I t took nearly two weeks of tense dinners and late nights holed up in Astra’s study before Ameera’s contact in the city could translate Ehlaria’s book.

Astra spent most of her mornings drifting around the palace in wide circles with Riverion, more tempted by the day to burst into the Rift and get out of the court.

Most afternoons were spent with Ameera, leafing through old texts about the Rift, should they find anything relevant to their suspicions.

In the evenings, she managed her correspondence with Cameren.

Celene had suffered a flood after a late Summer storm.

Astra sent a list of repairs to her builder in the villages and a hefty bag of coins.

Any spare moment she had went to the commander and his lessons on Mercurian history and customs.

They’d settled into somewhat of a routine.

She half-listened to his lengthy lectures on whatever war reshaped Mercury’s economic policies two hundred years prior, inevitably he’d notice her attention waning and say something sharp that pushed against her bruises.

She’d seethe for a few hours before they glared at one another over dinner.

It was in the middle of yet another drawn-out complaint about her lack of discipline that Ameera appeared in the library with a stack of pages wrapped in parchment paper.

Is that the translation? Astra beamed as she hovered behind the commander, on his fourth point of why Astra’s inability to rise above his heat was going to be what eventually got them both killed.

She’d heard it enough times now that she knew she had about two minutes left before his exasperation gave way to hunger and he quit their lessons for dinner.

Freshly delivered. As soon as Lux leaves, we can dive in. The translator said it was an unfamiliar dialect to anyone in her circle, but with enough patience , she was able to get us ninety percent of the way there.

“Could you at least pretend to listen to me?” Luxuros sighed, leaning against the white marble tables of the Lunarian Royal Library.

“I’m listening,” Astra insisted, her eyes unable to tear away from the package in Ameera’s hands.

They both concluded the same thing at the same time. Astra leaped from her seat and reached for Ameera, but Luxuros was much closer.

“Hand it over,” he growled.

Ameera’s eyes widened, unsure what to do as she ducked below his outstretched arm and shoved the parcel into Astra’s hands.

Astra jumped up and down. “Yes! Ha.”

Lux huffed. “You’re thirty, Astra. Have some pride.”

“Don’t be a sore loser,” she snapped, unwrapping the pages. The original text was tucked into the folds, falling to the floor with a loud thump. Before Astra could stoop to grab it, the commander snagged it.

He turned to Astra, imitating her. “Ha. What in the Nether is this?” He cracked the spine open, flipping through a few pages.

Astra thought quickly. “Ameera wrote a novel. She wanted me to read it.”

Luxuros’s brows arched as he read a page somewhere in the middle. He turned to Ameera, who blushed. “What’s it about?”

“You wouldn’t like it,” Astra yelped. “It’s a romance.”

His nose scrunched. “And?”

“And… you’re not exactly… the romantic type?” Astra reached for the book, but he pulled it away.

“And how could you possibly know that?” Luxuros leaned in closer, singing the hair on her arms with his heat.

“Intuition, remember?” Astra tapped her temple, smirking.

Luxuros laughed, a deep, thunderous sound she rarely heard.

“You and I both know your intuition doesn’t work for shit around me.

You’re too preoccupied with not melting because your stubborn ass refuses to ask for help.

” Astra huffed a sigh as he read another line.

“Do you speak Solar Elvish?” He asked Ameera.

“Do you? ” she threw back.

“Of course.” Luxuros shrugged as if everyone should. “This is a very old dialect. Where in the worlds did you learn it?”

Ameera glanced at Astra, a wave of vermillion panic drowning her.

“Did you say Solar Elvish?” Astra asked.

“Yes. The Solar elf king and his clan have lived in the Solar Court for thousands of years. Why do you Lunarians always think you’re so unique? The Solar Court is your counterpart in just about every way, Princess.”

“Don’t call me that,” Astra warned, turning to Ameera. “Why would Ehlaria have a book from the Solar elves?”

The commander’s eyes narrowed. “Why do you have a book from the Lunar elf queen?”

Ameera slipped into Astra’s mind. Just tell him. Maybe he can help? If he’s fluent in the language…

“Please stop thinking about me like I’m not here,” Luxuros muttered as he glanced between the women.

“Fine,” Astra grumbled in defeat. “Ameera and I are investigating some strange occurrences in the Rift. Solarians are getting through it,” she said, gesturing at him.

“Who knows what else is wrong? That afternoon we met in the woods, I was speaking to Ehlaria in the clearing and she gave me this book. She confirmed that whatever is happening in the Rift isn’t right. ”

“What are your theories?”

She shook her head, her loose curls bouncing off her shoulders. “We don’t have any yet. This book was hopefully going to help spark something.”

“We’ve been trying to find more information about the Rift’s origins,” Ameera cut in. “Every court seems to have a different story.”

Luxuros squeezed his eyes closed, searching his memory. “The Mercurian Court and the Solar Courts have differing legends. In Mercury, they learn that one of the demigods of the Solar Court fell in love with a human queen in Mercury in a dream and tore a hole through space and time to get to her.”

Ameera nodded. “That’s similar to the Venusian mythology. A golden goddess in the Court Above falls in love with a shadow goddess in the Court Below and their love forms the Rift through the realms to connect them.”

Astra frowned. She’d never heard any such story. “We don’t learn about it at all here. It just is. Like Spring or rain.”

“There was a story when I was a child,” Luxuros ventured, but quickly struggled to hold on to the thought. It was like grasping for wind. “Something about a Divine Queen. I cannot remember the details?—”

“That’s okay. We’ve already concluded that none of the courts know the truth, but the common theme seems to be that the Rift appears as a mechanism to connect two lovers. We were hoping Ehlaria’s book could clarify.”

“The Space Between,” Luxuros read aloud, running his hand over the tattered pages. “It’s fiction. A romance after all,” he chuckled quietly as he skimmed a particularly intriguing passage.

“Appears that way,” Astra mumbled, leafing through the translated pages. “I’ll have to spend some time this week reading.”

We should consider going to Ellume , Ameera suggested silently.

Ellume?

The High Priestess requested a similar translation a few months ago from my connection. She turned her down at the time because her books were full.

Ivonne is always up to some shit, Astra beamed.

“You two are relentless,” the commander groaned. “I’ll go so you can stop your ridiculous silent conversations.”

“See you at dinner,” Astra laughed.

“I’m taking this,” Luxuros muttered, holding up the book. “I love a good romance.” He winked at the women, disappearing between two shelves.

Astra couldn’t help but shiver in the sudden chill of his absence.

* * *

“I think it’s time we moved on from history,” Luxuros rumbled in the palace gardens over lunch.

He set down the letter he’d received that morning from Mirquios, ingesting the latest discussions between courts.

His fingers drifted toward his chest, rubbing at a sore spot in his muscles.

“I can’t watch you suffer anymore, and I know you’re never going to admit you need my help, so why don’t we just skip the part where we argue for days and I show you how to mute my heat? ”

Astra looked up from her tea, dropping the silver spoon against the crystal cup. She’d been several chapters into Ehlaria’s novel, though she hadn’t read a thing that made any connections to the Rift. She folded the pages into their package and rested her hands on the wrinkled brown paper.

“I’m getting used to it,” she insisted.

Luxuros leaned forward, a tidal wave of heat crashing over her as she leaned away. “Name four cities in the Mercurian Court.”

Her head swam, the bastard had been holding back for her benefit, she realized. “Cereulia, Jestine, and, um, fuck,” she murmured, closing her eyes against him.

The commander leaned away, taking his boiling temperature with him. “You hear half of what I say on a good day, Astra.”

“That’s because you’re boring,” she teased.

“My gods, you are stubborn!”

She straightened her shoulders. “I prefer ‘dedicated to my craft.’”

Luxuros gripped the bridge of his nose. “Have you considered that whatever you call it, it’s extremely off-putting?”

“Have you considered, Commander, that I’m not trying to be on -putting?”

“Fine,” he sighed, rising from the small garden table. “Let me put this in a way I think you’ll appreciate. You need to get over me, or we’re fucked, Fire Queen.”

It stung, the disappointment in his eyes. The expression was so similar to the way her mother would look at her.

“Okay,” she whispered, stuffing the scarlet shame back into the box she kept all her self-loathing. “Impart your wisdom on me, oh wise one.”

“Do you meditate?”

“Not frequently,” she confessed. She knew she should. It always helped when she did. But shaking off the thoughts and feelings of dozens of other courtiers, let alone her own, was daunting at best.

“Why not?”

“My mind is not one that thrives on silence.”

“That’s because you’re undisciplined,” he said, shrugging. “It’s a cyclical problem. You don’t meditate because you can’t stand to be alone with your thoughts. And you can’t stand to be alone with your thoughts because you don’t know how to observe them or parse them out from the surrounding ones.”