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Chapter Forty-Three

I f a soul could balk, Leona’s did.

“What?”

“She traded it to the Nether Queen, in exchange for something. We don’t know what, but we believe Selenia intentionally led you all astray about the results of severing a tie,” Astra explained.

Leona wilted before her. “I don’t understand. Solan attacked the court, he?—”

“The reaction after the release wasn’t planned, Leona. It wasn’t an attack. It was pain. The Flare was Solan’s grief over what he cost you.”

Leona’s shadow turned away, caving in on itself.

“He’s never recovered, Leona. They call him the Mad King. He’s been alone all these years, festering in Solaris.”

“How do you know this?”

“I went within, I went back to The Flare. Selenia saw me and she brought me to the Court Above to make a deal. She sent me down here to bring your soul back to her, she said she wanted to clear the air between you so you could Ascend, but I think she has an ulterior motive.”

“She doesn’t want you to have access to me,” Leona whispered. “If she knows you can go within, she knows that you can find me, or any other Shadow Goddess. She’ll take my soul and she’ll destroy it, Astra. She doesn’t want me to be able to train you.”

Astra’s heart drummed against her ribs, the words falling off her so casually. “A what? What do you mean ‘train’ me?”

“In some ways I already have. Every time you read someone’s emotions or illuminate something… every time you move shadows or cast a spell, that knowledge flows in your blood?—”

“Hold on,” she gasped. “Move shadows? Cast a spell?”

Leona frowned. “Are you not casting?”

“No! What did you say about the shadows?”

Leona suppressed a sigh. “Your mother really stuck to the bans then?”

“Everything. We aren’t allowed to practice any of it. I just thought I was extremely intuitive. We chalked the sunlight up to The Flare.”

Leona drew closer. “You are a Shadow Goddess, Astra. One in a line of hundreds of generations of women who have carried on the tradition. You were blessed and cursed by the same ancient magic that sent me here.”

“I am an intuit?—”

“That’s not a thing,” Leona snorted. “But it is a convenient explanation for what you must be able to do without even trying. They fear you. They’ve always feared us. You were chosen by the Mother. Did you say sunlight?”

“Yes, we thought it was fire, but Ehlaria said it was sunlight!”

“Ah,” Leona whispered, chewing on her bottom lip. “So you Tethered to a Solarian, then?”

“How did you?—”

“How do you think I got into this mess, dear girl? When I Tethered to Solan and inherited his light, the clock started ticking with the Court Above.”

Astra touched her forehead, a bead of sweat rolling down her skin as she tried to take this in.

“My gods,” she sighed. “But I’ve always had the sunlight, I didn’t Tether to Luxuros until?—”

“Luxuros Soleras?” Her wispy fingers tightened into fists.

Astra winced. “We didn’t know who he was. He was thrown into the Rift during The Flare... where Mother and I both touched him,” she said, realizing now that they’d always been Tethered in some way, then. “He’s been training me, but we didn’t know anything about Shadows or casting.”

She shook her head. “He wouldn’t. Even an experienced Light God only has so much to teach you.”

“A Light?—”

“The Solar and Lunar Courts are not what they seem, Astra. You need to speak with your mother. She knows all of this!”

Astra clenched my jaw. “She never speaks of any of it, Leona. It’s too painful for her. I think she blames herself for not stopping you.”

Leona’s shoulders sank. “It was all my fault, not Oestera’s. But of course, she blames herself. She always kept me on a pedestal.”

“You didn’t cause it, Leona, we’re sure of it. I saw it with my own eyes, Selenia lied to all of you!”

“Perhaps I could still make my Ascent then.” Her eyes lit with the notion. “I don’t understand why she would do this to me?”

“We aren’t sure, either. We’ve only been able to piece together a small part of the story. But she did indeed bargain her own shadow with the Nether Queen in exchange for something, and we think my mother knows.”

“Oestera would never betray me,” Leona snapped.

“She certainly is covering something up.”

She shook her formless head. “The only secrets Oestera would keep are to ensure your safety, Astra. Oestera’s loyalty is the only thing I’ve ever been certain of.”

Astra’s chest tightened, immediately rejecting the notion her mother did anything out of protection. “I didn’t come here to fight with you, Leona. I need to know what Selenia got in exchange from the Nether Queen, and the only way to do that is to get her shadow.”

“You could always ask the Nether Queen yourself,” Leona said. “She won’t be too fond of you barging in here with demands, but sometimes Luciela surprises us.”

Astra ignored her suggestion, wholly uninterested in tangling herself up in any other ancient being’s strike list.

“If I captured Selenia’s shadow instead... if I used the locket to hold it hostage and destroy it… what would happen?”

If Leona could have frowned, she would have. “I don’t know what kind of deal she made with Luciela, but she definitely wouldn’t be able to Ascend again.”

Astra flashed her a smile, feeling in her soul that she was making the right choice as the plan came together in her mind.

“I have to go. This has been incredibly helpful—is it possible to come back to visit you?”

“Not here,” Leona sighed. “Too many eyes. But we can make arrangements.”

“I would very much like that, Leona.”

“Astra? When you figure out why she did it… how she could do it… find me and tell me.”

She felt the pain again, unbearable to hold.

“I will,” she promised.

* * *

She began the journey back through the canyons, her legs aching from balancing in the gray silt as it shifted under her boots. When she stumbled back onto the set of their diverging footprints, she followed four strands of boots back over a dune and to the edge of the Shadowlands.

Gnarled trees wept over each other, tangling their branches into harrowing tunnels and murky pits.

The air was so still within the black leaves she could hear her heartbeat as she stepped over fallen logs.

Lux was close. She could feel the pull in her chest loosen as she made her way toward the forest’s center.

A high-pitched cry yanked her attention from Lux.

Lunelle?

Over here!

She followed the trail of her sister’s wild emotions, Mirquios’s own signature blend of cerulean calm fading into angst and stress as she got farther into the twisted woods.

“On your left!” he called out, Lunelle grunting as something came into contact with someone.

“They don’t need your help,” a slithering voice hissed in her ear. “At least not yet.”

Astra spun, face to face with a black serpent, onyx scales towering over her head as she wound around the hollowed-out log of a fallen tree.

“You don’t like this form, then,” she said. “So be it.” A fog of deep black shadow twirled around her and in the serpent’s place stood who could only be the Nether Queen.

Her cold eyes fell over Astra, black as night set in sickly gray skin, deep charcoal waves of hair slipping over her back. She was clothed in shadows, an ink-black dress rippling into waves of night sky at the hem. Her skeletal hands bore black diamond rings on all but her thumbs.

“Astra Leona,” she said, stepping closer and washing her in an insufferable cold. “What in the Nether are you doing here?”

She could lie, but something told her the Nether Queen was not one for asking questions she didn’t already know the answers to. “Selenia sent me to retrieve Leona’s soul.”

Luciela’s lips curled, amused at her explanation. “Oh, is that all?”

“It’s why I’m here.” Still not a lie .

“Hmm.” She paced back and forth, her skirts whispering awful secrets against the dusty forest floor. “Take what you came here for, and nothing else.” She shrugged. “I’m curious to see what you do with it.”

“That’s it?”

“What, you want the Goddess of Death to pay more attention to you? It’s the Solstice, I have celebrations to attend.”

“Oh,” Astra sighed, relieved.

“Besides, who am I to get in the way of the age-old Lunar Queen, Solar King Tether cycle? It’s always an interesting cleanup for us down here. Gives us something to talk about.”

“I hate to disappoint you,” Astra grumbled. “But neither Lux nor I sit on thrones. We’ll only bore you.”

She twisted back, her skirt swirling in an unholy wave of grief and sorrow. “I suppose we’ll see. I do have one question for you.” She slinked closer, running a frail finger across Astra’s face and tilting her chin toward the muted light filtering through the trees.

“Why risk it at all? You know the stories. You’ve seen where your dearly Descended aunt ended up, you’ve seen what the Tether did to your rotten grandmother?—”

“Selenia?”

Her brow sloped, forming an amused arch. “She doesn’t know,” she said to the Shadows that clung to her. “I love that I get to tell you this.” Luciela tapped Astra’s forehead with a shriveled finger, sending her falling backward through a sulfuric mist.

“You’re a fool,” Luciela mocked, resting against a throne built from the spines of who knows how many creatures.

Astra stood at the edge of a dull palace, the walls carved from onyx stone. In the middle of the room, just a breath away from Luciela, stood Selenia. No dark ring around her, no chill, but the silver glimmer of a newly Ascended goddess.

“I did not ask for your opinion. I asked if it could be done.”

“Anything can be done for a price, Selenia.”

Her face contorted, lips pursing as she weighed what she was willing to give up. Something inside her broke, a violet pooling in her chest drowning her. “Name it.”

Luciela swallowed, her appetite for tragedy piqued. “Your Shadow.”

“And you can promise it will work?”

“Hmm.” She glanced from the window to her right, eyes falling on glass etchings in runes Astra didn’t recognize. “I guess you’ll just have to trust me.”