Chapter 2
Morning light streams through the windows, harsh and unforgiving.
The light catches red dust motes drifting through our small main room, and illuminates the simple wooden table where Mother and I should be sharing breakfast. I’m still on the floor by the hearth, its red Martian stone the same colour as the dust that coats everything on this planet.
As I sit up, an uncomfortable tingle ripples through my body – an inconvenient reminder that I haven’t used my healing magic since last night.
The withdrawal sits beneath my skin, making my fingers twitch and my thoughts scatter: I should look for Mother now that the sun is up. I should do something, anything…
But I’m too much of a coward to even move.
No wonder I couldn’t save that boy in the alley.
A cheerful knock at the door startles me.
“Cyra! Are you ready to go?” Astrid’s voice calls through the wood. “I brought extra supplies today – heard there was some trouble near the east market yesterday, so we might have more patients than usual.”
I stare at the door, paralyzed. How do I explain that everything has changed? That the woman who raised us – even though Astrid isn’t of our blood – is gone?
The knock comes again, more insistent. “Cyra? Are you all right?”
I force myself to stand, my legs unsteady. When I open the door, Astrid’s bright smile falters immediately.
“Stars above, you look awful. What happened?” She pushes past me into the cottage, already dropping her satchel to examine me.
Her hands, always smelling like medicinal herbs, reach for my face.
She’s taller than me by half a head and older by a few years, her dark eyes missing no small detail as they scan me. “Are you sick? Did someone hurt you?”
“Astrid—” My voice cracks as I gesture helplessly around the disheveled room. “She’s gone...”
Astrid steps back and follows my gaze, taking in the overturned chair, the abandoned tea, the absence that fills every corner. The golden-brown skin on her face loses colour.
“Liora? What do you mean, gone?”
“Last night. I came home and—” I pick up the summons with shaking hands. “This was waiting for me.”
I hand her the note and watch as her eyes scan the words quickly.
After a moment, Astrid sets the summons down, her fingers trembling. “But … Cyra, this doesn’t make any sense. Are you sure Liora wasn’t just sent on an errand by His Grace? Maybe they just need an interim palace healer for a few days while she’s away…”
“Then why don’t they use one of their Royal medics or something,” I say, sinking into one of the cushioned chairs by the hearth.
“Maybe they think I’m a Daughter of the Moon?
I mean – Mother trained me in healing, and in some of the ceremonies, but I don’t have enough experience to be a royal adviser – I haven’t even done the ritual—”
“But you have the power,” Astrid says, leaning on another chair.
“What you do, it’s not normal medicine. It’s the kind of healing only the Daughters could do.
” She pauses. “My mother used to say the Daughters were meant to keep rulers healthy in body and mind. That healing magic came with the responsibility to counsel, too.”
I nod in agreement. Mother prepared me to be a Daughter in almost every sense of the word, convinced I could keep the Sisterhood going.
The one thing she didn’t prepare me for was the counselling, the advising – she barely told me anything about her work at the palace.
And I was too wrapped up in my own problems to ask.
Astrid sighs. “Liora was so young when she took the rite and became a Daughter,” she continues quietly. “Not even twenty, and sent to the Star Court to help the Sun King at that. I can’t imagine what that must have been like.”
The words fall heavy between us, weighted with everything we don’t say aloud. Everything Astrid has always known about me, about the blood running through my veins.
We had all heard the stories, whispered rumours of what happened after the Sun King fell.
Entire families executed for carrying a drop of royal Sun blood – even those who simply worked in his court were persecuted.
Mother left before things escalated and rebuilt her life as a healer here on Mars, laying low at first and taking a new name.
The Sun King’s reign left famine and ashes in its wake, and the system has spent two decades trying to scrub his name from history.
No one wants a reminder of all the horrible things he did.
I flash her a dangerous look, an unspoken understanding passing between us that we don’t broach the subject any further.
Astrid moves to her satchel and pulls out a small wooden box, mementos kept from her own mother before she passed away. Dried plants, a beautiful silver moon pendant, and some small glass vials. I watch as she thumbs through, looking for something.
“There’s more.” Astrid’s eyes grow serious as they meet mine from across the room. “Liora taught me some things in preparation for this. Emergency protocols, you might call them. Ways to hide magical signatures, to communicate without being detected, to protect ourselves if the worst happened.”
She moves to our hearth and kneels beside it, running her fingers along the red stones until she finds one that shifts. I watch as she pulls from it a small leather pouch.
“Emergency supplies,” she says, showing me the contents. “Coins, herbs that can mask magical auras. Liora made me promise to keep these hidden, to only use them if we were in danger.”
The realization of how much I didn’t know about my own life violently washes over me.
“W-What? How long have you been preparing for this?”
“Since we were children,” Astrid admits. “Liora – I don’t know how to explain it – somehow she knew this day would come.” Astrid hesitates, chewing her lip. “My mother admitted to me once that Daughters of the Moon can see more than illness in a body. They can see patterns … threads of fate.”
She runs a hand through her braid, eyes going distant.
“Do you remember last winter? When that merchant caravan went missing in a sandstorm? Liora told me not to take my usual route to the market that day. She said the winds would ‘turn hungry.’ I thought she meant I’d catch a cold or something.
But the storm hit exactly where I would’ve been.
” Her voice drops. “Liora always seemed one step ahead of danger. Maybe she left for a reason, Cyra.”
I sink into my chair, turning the information over in my mind.
Maybe that’s why it felt like Mother hadn’t only been teaching me to heal the sick or patch wounds in dark alleys.
Every rule she ever gave me … how to stay calm when others panicked, how to make decisions fast, how to listen before acting …
maybe those were lessons she knew I would need one day.
Maybe she saw something that convinced her to leave without a trace.
The thought lodges somewhere deep in my chest, uncomfortable and sharp: why didn’t she tell me any of this? What else has she kept from me?
I start to spin out, jumping up from my chair to pace. “What if something terrible happened, Astrid? What if someone killed her? She was the last Daughter of the Moon that we know of … what if there are still people out there who want anyone connected to that time dead?”
“We don’t know for sure that she’s in danger, Cyra,” Astrid says gently.
“But why is she gone, Astrid? Why now?” The words pour out of me in a rush. “This is all connected, it has to be...”
Astrid shoots me a look of confusion.
I take a deep breath, realizing that this needs explanation.
“Something happened last night,” I continue, “The hunger was so intense, I just needed to find someone to heal, and there weren’t any more leads in the market …
so I tried the slums. I found a boy in an alley, but this man tried to attack me, and then—” I pause, realizing how insane this will sound.
“Then what?”
“Shadows. Someone who could control darkness saved me. He wore a white mask, and the shadows obeyed him like they were … alive.” I watch Astrid’s face for disbelief, but she just nods thoughtfully.
“Shadows?” she questions. “That sounds like old magic. Dangerous magic.” Astrid furrows her brow.
“There’s a spice merchant I deal with at the docks – he used to import from Pluto decades ago, before the kingdom fell.
He’s seen things.” Astrid begins pacing now, long black hair in a single braid down her back swinging like a pendulum.
“He mentioned to me once that shadow wielders are usually executed if they’re found out.
Said the Cardinals consider them too unpredictable, too powerful to control. ”
“It was beyond anything I’ve ever seen.” I sink back into my chair, exhaustion weighing me down. “Now Mother’s missing, and I’m being summoned to court. It can’t all be a coincidence.”
Astrid stops pacing and looks at me seriously. “I could ask the herb traders – see if there are others who whisper about people who control shadows, and about what might have happened to Liora.”
The implication is clear. Whether anyone’s been digging into the past. Into bloodlines. Into survivors.
Before I can respond, another knock echoes through the cabin – but this one is different. Demanding.
We freeze, staring at each other.
“Cyra of the Red Market District?” a deep voice calls. “We are here to escort you to the palace, by order of Lord Zevran.”
Through the window, two palace guards in red flank our door.
“Effective immediately,” the summons said. They aren’t even giving me time to think about it.
Every instinct screams at me to run. Slip out the back window, disappear into the market crowds. If I go to the palace, I won’t be able to stay invisible any longer. But the palace may also have the answer as to where my mother is.
Astrid grabs my hand. “You don’t have to go.”
“Yes, I do.” I spit out. If I run, if I refuse, they’ll start asking questions – and that would be a death sentence not just for me, but for everyone I care about. “If there’s any chance of finding out what happened to Mother, it’s at the palace.”
The knocking becomes pounding. The stress spikes my adrenaline and with it, my withdrawal. My hands begin to shake, a bead of sweat forming on my upper lip.
“I’ll pack you a day bag,” Astrid says as she sees my face go pale, already moving toward my kit. “And I’ll start asking questions. Carefully.”
“Astrid.” I catch her arm. “Be careful. If old magic is involved, if someone powerful enough to make my Mother disappear is behind this…” I can’t finish the thought.
She squeezes my hand. “I will. But Cyra – promise me you’ll be careful too. The palace is dangerous. People there kill with smiles on their faces.”
I nod, understanding completely. Court also means being trapped in a world where I can’t slip away to the slums when the craving becomes unbearable. Then another thought crosses my mind: maybe part of me wants to go.
Maybe at court I won’t have to sneak around, pretending my healing is purely altruistic. Maybe I can finally have a patient who needs me regularly without having to search through the slums for broken bodies. The admission of this to myself causes a wave of nausea to wash over me.
Suddenly, the pounding stops. A new voice, colder: “We’re coming in!”
“Promise me you’ll be careful,” Astrid whispers urgently.
“I promise.”
The door opens without ceremony, and two guards in deep red step inside.
The first is tall and broad-shouldered, his face impassive beneath a close-cropped helmet.
The second is leaner, watchful, with a scar cutting through his left cheek.
Their eyes sweep the cabin dismissively before settling on me.
“Cyra of the Red Market District – Lord Zevran requires your immediate presence at court,” the leaner guard commands.
I look at Astrid once again, memorizing her worried face, the safety of this small house.
I have to find Mother.
“Give me five minutes,” I tell the guards.
They nod.
I need to pack a healer’s kit, need to move – but my feet feel rooted to the floorboards.
Astrid helps me find Mother’s healing satchel, her lavender scent still clinging to the worn leather. I can’t shake the feeling that I’m walking into a trap. That whoever orchestrated her disappearance is now drawing me exactly where they want me.
If Mother is in danger … if the palace has any answers … I have to go. I have to try.
When I step outside, Astrid follows.
“I’ll watch the cottage until you come back tonight,” Astrid whispers quickly. She pulls me into a fierce hug. “Be safe, sister,” she says, using the old Daughter of the Moon farewell.
I follow the guards down our front path to the street.
The Martian morning is harsh, the sky a dull rust colour veiled in the ever-present haze of industrial smoke from the forges in the distance.
Our neighbourhood is a warren of small cottages pressed close together, their walls the same red-brown as the planet itself.
We pass by our small herb garden, the plants struggling in the rust-coloured soil.
Neighbours peer through cracked windows, curtains twitching as we pass.
A transporter ship waits at the curb, sleek and angular, its hull painted in the deep crimson of House Mars. It hovers a few inches above the packed dirt street, humming with contained power. Steam vents along its sides hiss softly, releasing pressure in rhythmic bursts.
The doors slide open, revealing a narrow interior lined with bench seating. I step up into the cabin, and as I sit, the cool metal sends a chill through me. I clutch Mother’s satchel to my chest, breathing in the lingering scent of her.
Whatever game this is … I’m pretty sure I’m now a piece on the board.