Rift | Chapter One

The clearing of a throat pulled Astra out of a spiraling thought.

“Sorry,” she mumbled, her hands folding the book in her lap. She smoothed the silk of her skirt over her long legs, attempting to shake the mounting heat sizzling in her veins. The weight of something strange—unfamiliar—had pressed down on her shoulders a moment before, a shift in the air she wasn’t sure what to make of. 

Perhaps she’d merely felt the interruption in her morning gate duty coming. 

She did not have to look up to identify who begged her attention. The cool greens and blues of Cam’s inner world spilled over her, an energy she could pick out of a crowd of hundreds. The tranquility she’d come to expect of her friend faded quickly, overtaken by something hot, something grating. 

There, nestled between blood and bone, a bright spot of crimson worry on behalf of Astra.

Cam’s midnight-black hair floated on the breeze in a serene contradiction to her mood, spiraling deeper into uncertain reds by the second. 

Astra rose from her well-worn spot in the grass, bracing herself as her eyes dropped to the roll of parchment clutched in Cam’s tan fingers. 

“This came for you,” Cameren said. The nervous red swirled into angsty maroon within her lungs, unsettling Astra as she caught the royal seal along the scroll’s edge.

Ah. Of course.

Astra took her time gathering the half-drained mug of tea she’d perched on a gnarled root, buying time to work through her friend’s emotions before they became her own. 

When she surfaced, she took a long, slow breath hoping it would cool the fire brewing in her soul instead of stoking the vicious flames.

Cam’s focused sapphire eyes widened as Astra pinched the bridge of her nose. She could never fully understand the burden of Astra’s sensitivity, but she’d witnessed the chaos Astra reined when it consumed her. The women of Celene tried to conceal their emotions for Astra’s benefit, or at the very least mute them, but Cameren’s concern about the note’s contents overrode the hold she had on her feelings.

Astra reached for the parchment, tucking her book against her chest and balancing the mug on the edge of the spine. Cameren plucked them both from her hands as they strolled across the humble village, alive with the early-morning bustling of women tending to their duties. 

Astra weighed the paper in her palm, pursing her lips as it settled. “Hmm,” she sighed. “Feels like something I’m going to regret opening. Who brought it?”

“Someone new.”

“I suppose she wouldn’t chance sending someone with an affinity for me,” Astra laughed. “You can relax. I dreamed of a hatchling clawing my eyes out a few nights ago. Should have expected something from her Royal Highness soon.” 

She attempted a laugh, but the sound was too dark. Too heavy. Cameren didn’t need Astra’s heightened intuition to see the anxious tug at her sleeve as they passed through the village and down a set of steps carved into the cliffside before coming to a wooden platform. 

Cam reached forward and gently tugged on a fraying rope, ringing a bell at the city’s gate below. 

“What do you think it is?” she asked. 

“All the intuitive gifts in the world couldn’t tell me,” Astra muttered. 

Both women leaned over the platform, watching the pulley cart ascend the cliffs. Astra held the gate open for Cam, following her onto the small cart and steeling herself against the railing as the ropes began moving, lowering them into the city.

As they descended through the morning mist, the open-air moonstone towers of Celene emerged, overlooking the Somnia River racing out to sea. The unfiltered feelings of a thousand women permeated the air as Astra drew in a slow breath, readjusting her tolerance from the dozens of women in the village to the busy city streets.

Cam chewed her bottom lip as she hopped off the cart. “Perhaps a birthday note?” 

Astra cast a heated glare. “How many birthdays have passed without so much as a whisper?”

Cam nodded, weaving a trail from the pulley landing to the crystalline bridge over the river, sparkling in the half-Moon glow above. As Astra slipped her finger beneath the wax seal, a flock of young girls rushed them. 

“Astra!” One of the smallest girls chirped as they fell in a dense circle around the women. “Alura said you survived The Flare!” 

Both Cam and Astra flinched, unprepared for such a heavy hit so early in the morning. Astra tucked the scroll back under her arm, searching for the words—they were only children. They knew just enough to be dangerous to their elders. She glanced across their faces, each round with the benefits of full plates and uninterrupted sleep—they did not know the exhaustion of war or how their questions poked at ancient bruises.

“Who said that?” Astra asked calmly, maintaining a soft smile to soothe herself more than the girls at her feet. They shuffled, pushing one of the older girls to the front, her face lit with silver freckles and curious amethyst eyes. She could not have been older than ten or eleven, an infant practically. 

“Alura,” Astra repeated her name, a blush crawling over the girl’s face. The muscles in her back tightened as she exchanged a look with Cam. “Well. I do not think it’s fair to the brave people who lost their lives in The Flare to say I survived it. I was still in my mother’s womb, unaware of the Solar King’s cruel attack or the pain those who did survive endure, even to this day.” 

She blinked a vision away of the burn scars across her mother’s chest, always obscured by robes and high-necked gowns, but they were a presence in her life from even her earliest memories. Though, Astra knew the physical scars were nothing compared to the emotional damage inflicted on her mother—not that she’d ever allow either to show. 

She took another breath, digging deep within herself to be the leader she strived to be, despite wishing she could dissolve into the air and escape this topic entirely. 

“What other questions can I answer? Get them out now, ladies.”

Another tiny voice spoke up. “Is that why your hair is red?” 

Cam barked a laugh beside her. The innocence of the question hit the release valve they desperately needed. Astra laid a gentle hand on the girl’s shoulder. 

“I’ll tell you the truth—I’m not certain. Bloodlines can be finicky things, girls.” She winked at them, grateful they could leave this conversation on a lighter note. 

Cam pushed her shoulders back into an intimidating stance. “Now, if I go check the gardens right now, will today’s chores be done?” A chorus of nervous giggles sent the girls running toward the temple beyond the bridge, moving in one fluid mass of pastel braids and silver robes. 

Astra raised her eyebrows at Cam, who exhaled with a soft chuckle. They continued their trek into the city, the weight of the scroll in Astra’s arms growing with each step. Cam bumped her hip into Astra’s. 

“I heard your hair is red because you fucked Mars in a past life.”

Astra’s jaw dropped as she snorted and shoved her shoulder. “The gossip in this city is a rapidly spreading blight! You should do something about that, you know.”

“Ah! She does not deny it!”

Astra pursed her lips, a wicked smirk unfolding. “You act like you’d pass if the God of War propositioned you.” 

“A man? Please,” Cam scoffed. “Venus, however...”

They entered the tower at the very edge of the city, pale moonstone floors bouncing light back at them. Cam set Astra’s things on the abandoned desk at the front of the small library they frequented in the mornings. She knew Astra preferred to stay tucked away into the corner of her tower over the busy three-story collection of books in Celene’s center—here she could breathe easier, away from the constant waves of vivid color that plagued her strange senses with each fleeting feeling in her vicinity. 

“Why do you think they were talking about The Flare?” Astra asked as Cam sank behind a table she’d worked at late into the night, an aged map of a Neptunian city sprawled across the polished oak. She shifted one of the quartz markers she used to plot the city’s ports—a hobby she’d inherited from her mother’s fascination with the Outer Courts. 

“Same reason you aren’t talking about it,” Cam said, glancing up between crystals. “Next week is the gauntlet for you—isn’t it?”

Astra laughed at her phrasing, but as always, Cam was spot on. The Summer Solstice used to be a time of celebration, with week-long festivals and tributes to gods of the Court Above. Things were more somber now, thirty years after the Solar King killed the Lunar Queen and attacked the Inner Courts with a lethal light. The Flare left deep scars on the Lunar Court and her allied human courts, claiming thousands of lives. 

Now, the Summer Solstice was a solemn reminder of the bloodshed, marked by temple ceremonies and memorials. 

“You know what I never understood?” Astra said, tossing the scroll onto the table. “Why was my mother even in the Solar Court at all that day? She was living in the Earthen Court by then.”

“You… could ask her?” Cam eyed the scroll, treading lightly into the territory of Astra’s complex relationship with her mother. The arch of Astra’s brow was all the answer she needed. “I think you’ve avoided opening it long enough.” 

Her shoulders collapsed. Cam was right once again. She plopped into one of the plush armchairs and unfurled the note. 

It was simple. No flowery prose or birthday felicitations. Just a single line.

I need to speak with you.

A looped “O” punctuated the note, filling Astra with a heat she rarely allowed herself to feel. No ignoring it then. 

“The queen herself, hmm?” Cam leaned over her, scanning the note before Astra could tame the smoke rising to her lungs. “Should I have Riverion readied?”

“I suppose.” Astra folded the note and slipped it between the leather cover of her book and its fading pages. “But take your time. I’m in no rush.” Cam leaned out of the library door, catching someone’s attention. 

What Astra wished she could say was take all night—all week—but how long would the queen wait? She brushed her hands against the pale lavender silk of her robes, desperate for something to incinerate. 

How long had it been? She chewed on her thumb as she thought back to the last holiday she’d celebrated within the pristine walls of the palace. Was it the Winter Solstice ball she’d been thrown out of? Or was that an Equinox feast? 

She’d been wearing a red dress. She remembered that much. Autumnal, most likely. 

That was what? The two-thousandth and eighty-third Harvest Moon? Next week’s Summer Solstice would be the two-thousandth and eighty-sixth Strawberry Moon. 

Nearly three years.

The math was right, but it sounded impossible. 

She turned to Cam as she stared at her map. “You’ll send word if anything happens?”

“Of course,” Cam murmured, skimming over rivers and forests. “You know, Celene got along just fine for decades, perhaps even centuries, before you showed up.” A smirk played at Cam’s curved lips, her jewel-toned gaze ungluing from the map and meeting Astra’s. 

“Is that so?” Astra crossed one leg over the other, tossing the scroll back onto the table. 

Cam shrugged. “We weren’t as well-funded.”

“Is that all I am to you? A financier?” 

She wiggled her brows at her friend. “Certainly made taking in someone with your reputation easier.” 

Astra sat up straighter. “I haven’t set anyone on fire in nearly two years and you know it. Just admit you’ll miss me!” 

“Dearly,” Cam assured. “Aren’t you even a little excited to see your family?”

Astra’s heart stuttered. She so rarely allowed herself to think of the things she’d left behind in Lunaria, and even then, she avoided any faces entirely. Her sister’s silver eyes and brazen white hair flared in her memory before she could will the image away. Everything about Lunelle’s bright and frigid complexion contrasted Astra’s warmth—the girls were fire and ice from the moments they entered this world, crafted by the Mother herself to orbit one another. 

She unclenched her jaw. “Excited doesn’t feel like the right sentiment.” 

“Lunelle must miss you terribly?”

“I know she does,” Astra mumbled. A stack of letters bleeding with Lunelle’s elegant prose sat unanswered on her desk. Astra wrote when she could, but she’d neglected their correspondence over the last few months. “At least one person will be happy to see me.”

Cam sighed. “Please, your father thinks you hung the Moon.”

Astra waved her fingers between their faces, glowing with a faint lick of fire, fueled by her anxiety. “The flames hear you, but they don’t believe you.”

Cam nodded, knowing her friend far too well to attempt to soothe her nerves. She marked another mountain range with an azure crystal, one she always saved for her favorite spaces. 

“The thirtieth anniversary of The Flare, your birthday, and the Solstice all at once… can’t imagine why the queen would want to speak with you,” Cam chuckled to herself.

Astra’s lips dropped into a frown, out of reasons to delay her departure. “She’ll want me to stay at least through the Solstice. I’m sure of it.”

“That’s not that long.” Cam set another marker near one of Neptune’s moons. “You’ll be back here before you know it. Besides, who wouldn’t want the royal treatment on such a significant birthday?”

Astra rolled her eyes. “Yes, I’m sure there will be many moonshine fountains in my honor. A parade, at the very least.” Astra reached across the table for a piece of obsidian, sliding it along the edge of Neptune’s capital city. “The southern side is more vulnerable.” She rose, smoothing her dress. “I’ll be home as soon as I can.”

“Bring that Ameera of yours back with you,” Cam muttered, tapping her finger against the obsidian. The corner of her mouth ticked up into a sorrowful smile Astra ignored for both their sakes. 

“I mean it, Cam. Even a whisper of something wrong and I can be back here in three hours. Two and some change if Riv is in a good mood.” 

Cam nodded, she understood the urgency Astra felt.

“Go then, before moonfall.”