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His hand reached out and lifted her chin, Alastair’s dark eyes finding hers. He pulled Astra to her feet. Black trees groaned and creaked in the Winter air.

“I’m sorry to call on you at such a late hour. But it’s important.”

“Where are we?”

“You’re dreaming,” he laughed, waving his fingers beside his face. “Weaver of Dreams, remember?”

“Ah,” she breathed as if that explained everything. The night came screaming back to her as she found her footing. “Why are you here? Why am I here? What did you tell Selenia?”

He held up his hands. “Relax! This wasn’t my doing.

I told you that I could sense you both, Selenia picked up on Luxuros and tortured it out of me.

” He swept his midnight-black curls away from his neck, a fresh wound climbing the column of his skin below the faded pink scar.

“You’re in deep shit, but I’m here to help. ”

She shook her head. “I don’t trust you.”

“Yes, you do,” he smiled, pointing at her chest. “ He doesn’t.

” Alastair was right, upsettingly so. “I brought you something, consider it a gesture of goodwill.” Alastair reached into his black jacket pocket, producing a thin chain, moonstones tangled in delicate gold threads.

“This was Leona’s. Selenia kept it. You can use it to summon her from the River of Souls. ”

“I was going to use the locket ? —”

He shook his head. “The locket wasn’t hers. It will hold her, but it won’t bring her to you. She was wearing this when she… appealed to Solan. Selenia kept it as a trophy. It will invoke a more visceral memory in Leona’s soul. Thirty years is a long time to forget who you are, Astra.”

She reached for it, but he shook his head, stepping behind her. He laid the necklace across her collarbones, fastening it at the back of her neck. “You’re not good enough at this to get it back safely,” he chuckled.

“A trophy? So she did do it on purpose?”

Alastair sighed, a pained look on his face.

“She did. You already saw Leona and Solan’s connection, it was powerful—too powerful.

That kind of knowledge is threatening to those on divine thrones, Astra.

It’s why she nominated Luxuros. She can’t prove you’re Tethered, of course, but she suspects it. The Threader won’t tell her ? —”

“The what?”

Alastair frowned. “Another story for another time. There are rebels in the Court Above, too.”

“Why would gods rebel against themselves?”

“Are you not doing the very same?” Alastair chuckled darkly. “I told you, there are powers beyond Selenia—even the gods have gods. And they’re fucking awful.”

“But why help me now?”

“You’re asking all the wrong questions.” He frowned, rubbing his wrist. “Wake up, Princess. Your little boyfriend wants to talk.”

Alastair reached forward, touching his fingertips to her forehead, and she jerked back through the same swirl of sound and color before her eyes fluttered open.

“I’m easily twice his size,” Lux grumbled beside her, his arm draped over her stomach. She laughed, reaching for her neck, the weight of a golden chain pressing into her flesh.

“You’re also much more handsome than he is,” she assured him. “And a prince, technically. So you have a lot going for you.”

Lux winced. They hadn’t had much time to talk about where he’d landed with the revelation of his heritage. He reached up and ran his fingers over the moonstones twisted in the necklace.

“Whatever game he’s playing, I don’t like it.”

“I know,” she admitted. “My gut says he’s on our side.”

“Then I suppose it’s a good thing I trust you more than I trust him.”

She rolled to her side, backing herself against his long frame and moving his arm so that he wrapped around her, enveloping her in his warmth. He ran his fingers along her stomach, enjoying the soft ripples of her skin in the quiet of the night.

“Are you scared?”

“No,” Astra lied.

“Wanna try again?”

“Of course I’m scared!”

Lux sighed. “Whatever happens to me tomorrow?—”

“I don’t want to talk about it right now,” she cut him off. “There is nothing to do but endure, Luxuros.”

“Understood. But there is something I still want to do.” He lingered on the last syllable, fingertips moving from her stomach to her thigh, drawing circles in the bare skin beneath the hem of her nightgown.

She wiggled her hips against him, kindling the flame that sizzled between them, but he only laughed in the dark.

“Not that, well, always that, but something more important, Astra.”

Luxuros sat up and leaned away from her, rifling through his clothes. He returned with a silver blade, the small one he’d used against his own palm outside of Celene.

“What are you?—”

Lux’s gaze flashed to hers, pulling her to her knees across from him.

“You cannot be a Nova unless you’re bound to one by blood,” he said quietly. “If something goes wrong tomorrow…”

Lux squeezed her hand as her chest ruffled with a fierce rejection of the very idea they wouldn’t both return from the Court Below.

He said softly, reverently, “I want to have been the one who bound the mighty Fire Queen.”

Astra’s eyes found his, a warmth washing over her in pale pinks she wished to stay beneath forever. He leaned forward, holding her palm as he delicately carved a shallow circle beneath her thumb.

“Is that a full Moon?”

Luxuros smirked, drawing a half-Moon shape into his palm. “It’s the Sun. I did not think you’d appreciate slicing a dozen rays into your skin.”

He held his hand up, a crescent-shaped scar smeared with crimson teardrops. She pressed her palm into his, that same strange alchemy between them grabbing hold and sizzling as they bled into one another.

“Astra Leona Aurellis, Princess of Lunaria, you will fight for the people who serve the courts alongside them, never over them. You will protect peace and reject oppression. You will never reveal your association or another Nova’s, as long as we both breathe.”

Astra exhaled, squeezing her hand against his. “I will.”

Luxuros hauled her into a dizzying kiss that stole her breath and nearly made her forget the reason for the insistence in his touch. His arms wrapped around her back, pressing them into a fiery pillar of smoke and ash.

She whined against his lips, the sound unraveling any threads of logic he’d strung together that evening.

“As,” he warned, pulling away from her for a moment before she consumed him again. “Astra,” he breathed, laughing into the space between them. He gripped her face between his palms, the Moon-shaped cut already closing over.

“We should sleep .”

“I’m fine!” she protested.

“We’re descending into the Court Below and facing the Goddess of Death in a few hours,” he whispered. “We are not fine.”

Astra returned the laugh, but the sound was hollow, like listening to herself through the wall.

Tomorrow, she’d have to hold up her end of a bargain she believed in her soul to be true, but as she lay in the dark, she wondered just how many more catches the gods had planned.