Chapter 3
THREE
Nova
It was always haunting, coming back. Always a moment, between pressing through the portal and my feet hitting the ground, when I was like a hovering ghost, adrift and untethered to any solid realm.
Sometimes, I thought about how nice it would have been to just keep floating, ignoring all the weighty things trying to settle over me—a fleeting, blissful thought that shattered the instant Thalia and I touched down on dusty, black ground, steadying one another as our bodies regained their substance and burdens.
Phantom, in his typical black dog form, was waiting for us exactly where we’d left him, loyally sitting atop a nearby hill next to a large tree with golden, glowing leaves.
As Thalia stepped away from me, busying herself with securing our haul from Midna, my gaze caught the glimmer of a knife in the ground beneath the golden tree. Its hilt was wrapped with bracelets featuring a multitude of beads and brightly-colored threads.
It had been a month since I’d stabbed that knife into the ground. A month without the bracelets that had once tempered my powers.
Those bindings had been a necessary evil when I lived in the Above, in the Light realm of Soltaris, hidden away with no understanding of my abilities’ true depth and alignment.
My former guardian and mentor, Orin—who was also Thalia’s father, it turned out—had created them to help guide my magic, to keep it from overwhelming me until I was ready to embrace it.
The time for temperance, however, was well behind us.
Of course, putting those bracelets down had been easy enough… resisting the urge to pick them back up was the more difficult thing.
The temptation was there, but I didn’t spare them more than a glance today, instead fixing my eyes on my beloved dog as he leapt to his feet.
(You look terrible), he informed me, his pointed ears twitching as his words entered my mind.
“That’s rude.”
He let out an unapologetic snort.
It was a relatively short walk back to the palace, but he still insisted on shifting into a larger, but still canine-like, form that could carry both Thalia and me with relative ease.
I climbed onto his back without protest, happy for the chance to let him pay attention to the path while I let my mind drift to other things. Other problems.
I had no shortage of them, after all.
The world around me now was different than it had been when I first touched down in it months ago.
No longer as dark and hopeless as the hell I’d once thought it to be.
There were signs of life clawing its way back everywhere we looked—a glowing edge to most of the plants; the occasional chatter of birds; a sky that was easing toward the color of an old, healing bruise, and which sometimes shifted to reveal an almost proper-looking sun.
But life was a fragile thing.
What we’d managed to give back to this world—the magic we’d funneled toward it from the center power source in Midna—had not been enough to fully reverse the centuries’ worth of decaying.
It had only given the struggling survivors of Noctaris a taste of what could be. What had once been.
Which honestly had caused more problems than it had solved so far.
Thalia was silent for most of the ride, focused on keeping her balance while also keeping the overflowing bag properly secured across her body.
Once we reached the main courtyard of Rivenholt Palace, she slid from Phantom’s back first. I braced myself before jumping down after her.
My head was pounding, my legs shakier than I’d anticipated; they nearly crumpled beneath me as I hit the ground.
Thalia shifted the bag over her shoulder, tapping her fingers against its strap. “You overdid it. You should have told me you were ready to come back sooner.”
“I’m fine.”
She tsked, but I waved off her concern, even as a rush of dizziness had me reaching for Phantom’s shoulder to steady myself. My fingers clenched into his fur. He leaned closer, placing a paw on my boot, his weight a comforting anchor.
“Fool,” Thalia muttered, with equal parts fondness and exasperation.
I started to protest, but my vision chose that moment to flicker, and my legs again threatened to give out.
When I managed to blink back into awareness, Thalia was staring at me, her hand braced against my arm—a testament to how far our friendship had come; she didn’t like touching anyone unless she had to.
Slowly, she pulled her fingers from my skin, though her eyes remained fiercely fixed on me.
“Just don’t tell my brother,” I mumbled.
“Don’t tell me what?”
I twisted toward the sound of Bastian’s voice as he appeared on the path just behind us.
Perfect.
The regent of the Rivenholt Kingdom looked tired and troubled—as though the meetings he’d been holding all morning, with various leaders of the surrounding territories, had not gone well.
I stood up straighter, suddenly hellbent on not betraying my own tiredness. Our realm faced so many problems; I was determined not to be another burden for my brother and our advisors to shoulder.
He gave me an appraising glance as he approached, just as he did every time we ran into each other now—checking to make certain I was still in one piece.
He was always the first to notice any new bumps or bruises I’d sustained during my training sessions.
The first to make sure I was eating enough, sleeping enough, breathing enough.
Sometimes, it felt like he was trying to make up for all the years we’d spent apart by cramming twenty-five years’ worth of brotherly concern into every interaction.
“Don’t tell me what?” he repeated, arching a brow.
“About all the books and artifacts we uncovered, but then had to leave behind, in the Palace of Midna,” said Thalia. “You’d be devastated at the amount of knowledge rotting there. Though we brought back as much as we could carry, of course.” She shoved the bag of our collected spoils into his arms.
The distraction worked; the concern in his grey eyes gave way to curiosity as he picked a book out, shouldered the bag, and then gently started to flip through crinkling pages.
“…In rough shape,” he mumbled after a moment. “But there’s still plenty of legible reading to make sense of, isn’t there?” He seemed to be talking to himself—and he answered his own question, too. “I’ll share these things with Eamon, and we’ll see what we can extract from it all.”
“So that’s your afternoon sorted,” Thalia said, pointedly. “We were on our way to go wash the dust of the middle realm off ourselves, anyhow.” She poked me in the back, urging me to move before Bastian could protest.
We hurried toward the palace without looking back. We lost Phantom at the entrance, his attention caught by two squirrels who scampered across the front steps.
The rodents were a welcome sight—another sign of life returning.
Little by little, creatures like these were being reintroduced into our world.
They had likely come from the sanctuary in the center of the nearby city of Tarnath, where royal scholars had been raising and protecting all manner of flora and fauna during this realm’s prolonged period of decay.
While the rest of Noctaris had withered into a wasteland of dust and drifting ghosts, Tarnath had been spared, protected by magic that radiated out from the palace.
Now, as other parts of Noctaris fought their way back to life, we were testing things, letting smaller creatures venture into wider perimeters to see how they fared.
These squirrels looked lively enough so far.
Hopefully, they would survive my overzealous dog, too.
Once inside, we didn’t make it far before we spotted a familiar, careworn face—Aveline.
Her pale hair was slicked back in a tight braid.
Flour coated the bright blue, smocked dress she wore.
She smelled of sugar and spice, which wasn’t unusual for her; she’d likely been baking all day, making treats to coax our political visitors into calmer, more rational discussions.
We certainly needed all the bribery and help we could get with that.
She swept a quick, concerned look over my disheveled appearance, just as Bastian had done.
“We’ve had a long day,” Thalia informed her.
“I should say so,” Aveline replied, propping a hand on her hip. “You look as though you were dragged from one end of that day to the next.”
“I’ve looked worse,” I pointed out.
She pursed her lips. “Nevertheless, you have several obligations to attend to this evening, and you can’t very well walk into your meeting with so many important leaders while looking so…unkempt.”
I didn’t ask how she knew who I was scheduled to meet with this evening; nothing happened in this palace without her being aware of it, even if it didn’t truly involve her.
“Come with me,” she ordered, beckoning and starting to walk without waiting for my reply or to see if I followed. “We’ll get you cleaned up and revitalized. The pools are ready by now, I suspect.”
I felt a bit like baggage being tossed from one handler to another.
But my head was pounding too hard to argue, so I let Aveline lead the way toward the pools in question—warm, natural springs that flowed through several rooms carved out beneath the eastern wing of the palace.
Another sign of life erupting back into Noctaris—quite literally, in this case.
A week ago, the ground had rumbled, and then steaming mineral water had started to seep into the rocky, empty basins for the first time in ages.
Palace records suggested these natural baths had once been a favorite gathering place of royalty and visitors alike. Aveline had insisted on returning the space to its former glory—a plan I’d wholeheartedly endorsed.
She glanced my way several times as we walked. Her lectures weren’t generally as stern as Bastian’s or Thalia’s, but I could tell she was biting her tongue as she looked me over, trying to keep herself from giving her opinion on my latest dangerous mission.
I kept my gaze forward. “I can tend to myself, you know. If you have other things to do.”
“Never mind the other things I have to do. They can wait.”
I breathed in deeply through my nose and exhaled slowly.
She stopped to gather towels and toiletries before steering me onward with a dogged determination. “That’s the second time you’ve visited that dangerous middle realm this week, isn’t it? I do think perhaps you could take a longer break before next time, if there’s any chance—”
“I prefer to stay busy.”
I didn’t elaborate on why.
I didn’t have to—she already knew.
She pursed her lips but remained silent.
It was the unspoken solution I’d settled on: If I filled my days with training sessions, missions to Midna, and more diplomatic meetings than I could count—all these grueling, mind-numbing, but necessary things—then I wouldn’t have time to think about what I was missing.
Who I was missing.
We were passing the hall where Aleksander’s bedroom had been.
For weeks, I’d looked the other way when I walked by his door.
It had been a mistake, looking at it on the day after I’d lost him.
A mistake I wouldn’t repeat now, regardless of how weak and foolish it made me feel to not even be able to look at a fucking door without feeling as though a bottomless pit was ripping open inside of me.
Don’t look.
Eyes ahead.
Keep walking.
I kept walking, following Aveline in a sort of trance, somehow ending up undressed and sinking into a pool of steaming water some time later.
While I piled my long, dark waves into a messy bun on top of my head, Aveline sectioned off part of the baths with the aid of folding privacy screens.
She left and returned several times, carrying various scrubs and soothing oils; an assortment of fresh fruit served on a silver platter; and then, finally, one of my favorite dresses—a fitted gown of scarlet with golden accents, which always made me feel like a queen forged in flames.
Everything I needed was now here. I wouldn’t have to return to my room before my meeting. I wouldn’t have to walk past Aleksander’s empty room again any time soon, and I wondered if Aveline had planned it that way on purpose.
Knowing her…yes.
She’d been looking out for me since the first moment I arrived in this palace, and that hadn’t changed.
Warmed by the thought, I sank lower into the steaming water, trying to let it soothe away the weight of the day.
Phantom eventually trotted into the space. He didn’t care for the hot water, but he was a fan of the warm stones edging the pools; he was curled up and asleep on them in no time at all. I watched his dark sides rising and falling in a steady rhythm, trying to match his calm breathing.
The heat was soothing at first, until it triggered a memory of warm light—of magic that had caressed and illuminated even the darkest parts of me.
My skin prickled.
My stomach tangled into knots.
He’s not here, I reminded myself fiercely. Your magic is the only thing you have. It has to be enough, for now.
The problem was, no matter how hard I worked to stand on my own two feet, my power was intrinsically intertwined with his. Along with my heart.
In the quiet, lonely warmth of these pools, I felt his magic like a living memory inside of me.
I saw his face when I blinked…an image that would have been a welcome sight, if not for the soft, echoing voice that often accompanied it.
Not his voice, but the voice of the one who had stolen his body—Lorien.
And yet, there were also moments when I thought I could feel Aleksander’s voice trying to break through. When I heard his words rising loudly, clearly over the beast that had come between us.
We are not a tragedy, he’d once told me.
I was clinging to those words with everything I had.
It was killing me, being unable to ignore all the other obligations I had to attend to—to not be able to drop everything and focus only on storming my way to wherever he was. On saving him.
But it had to be a calculated effort, I knew; we needed answers about what Lorien had truly done. What he was doing. What he was capable of doing.
And I had the rest of Noctaris to worry about, besides.
So for now, I would simply stay busy with what I could.
I would focus on attending to my endless meetings and other royal obligations.
I wouldn’t think of his closed door, or the empty room behind it, and I would ignore that infinite pit in my stomach that felt as if it might swallow me up if I dared to keep still for too long.
Because this once-doomed world was now on the cusp of unfolding, poised to break or to bloom.
And it needed me more than I needed time to grieve.