Page 17 of Autumn Queens & Shadows

“Erik’s funeral is in two days,” she said to Kil, angling her chair so most of her back was to me. “He will be buried in castle grounds.”

“Are you certain?” my brother asked.

“He’s been in my council for six years. Courted me for two. His father is one of my most trusted. He deserves to be remembered as the king who almost was.”

My brother’s entire mood shifted, and he smiled at her. “You want to provoke Iskyla, isn’t it?”

Thora shrugged. “I killed her general, secured myself a rich ally thanks to her, and dozens of others who adored Erik and his family are in support of me. Then there is that little failed fiasco in Tenebrose which would appear quite distasteful to Isjordians who enjoy their proprietary—it only made them remember that Iskyla is a barbarian queen after all. She must be angry.”

“You killed Andre?”

She nodded. “The day of the wedding right after Erik was shot, I went to Casmere. They had set an ambush for Emil’s ships.”

“No one mentioned anything.”

“No one saw anything.”

My brother tilted his head back. “She must think you have him in your dungeons. Could be the cause of the attack last night.”

“Possibly,” Thora calmly replied, cutting through her meal.

The playful girl was gone. The one eager for chaos. There was someone else sitting beside me. The Thora I knew had never been so orderly or calm or numb or colourless.

Something didn’t exactly feel right.

Snow sat on the seat next to mine, staring out of the balcony overlooking the lily gardens. We’d not had a moment to talk after I’d returned, and now that we had it, we both found it hard to do so. She and I carried a secret no one but the two of us knew.

“I didn’t think you’d disappear on me when I asked you for that favour.”

“Neither did I.” When I entered the portal five years ago, shortly after Snow had fallen ill during her pregnancy and almost died from Rain’s magic, I’d left this realm behind with the purpose to find Astra. To find the realm we were from, to know more about our magic, to meet more like us who could help. Rain and Sam would soon grow up and manifest magic none of us had control of. When Nubil had suggested that maybe Snow hand over her children to the heavens to live among their kind, I had not hesitated. Part of me wanted to know about myself, too. To know if all my kind lived plagued by our own power as Kil and I did.

She frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I was locked in the last world that I portalled to.”

“What?” She braced a hand on the railing. “Mal, I thought you found somewhere to stay, somewhere yours, somewhere you had liked.”

That made me chuckle a little, especially when she knew that all what she mentioned were here in this realm. “There was no magic where I went. Nothing similar to our world. It took me months and months of searching and reading to return through a portal that they had preserved from their world’s ancient civilization.”

She began pacing back and forth. “Gods. What…what if you had never found a way to return?”

“Ah, my pride,” I feignedly gasped, putting a hand to my chest.

“I should have destroyed that place when Kil told me to. I shouldn’t have asked you. I shouldn’t have sent you on this meaningless goose chase.”

“It wasn’t a goose chase.” Especially after seeing Rain. Sam had inherited more of his mother’s traits and magic, but his sister was entirely Kil. More than what Kil was, perhaps. My brother and I had found a way to tame and cope with our magic because we were brutally forced to. Even after that, we still often slipped. Thankfully, we’d never slipped long enough to cause harm. Rain, however, she was a little kid, one who I hoped my brother would never show the brutal ways of numbing what we were subject to. So, I'd gone to search for the place where more of us were—for the past five years, I’d gone to search for Astra, a realm outside Fader’s reach and right inside Nihilia’s watch. A place that for whatever reason, no one wanted us to find. Including Nubil.

She stopped, her head turning to me. “You…found it? You found Astra?”

“No. But I found out why we can't find it.” I patted the chair next to mine. “Sit, you’re tiring my nephew.”

Once she was sat and calmed down, I continued, “Astra has apparently closed all doors to the outer realms after the demon gods were sentenced to Nihilia’s prisons.”

“I should have known,” she said, sneering up at the skies. “Considering none up there will let a squeak of information out about it.”

“There is another reason. Our descendants, some call them the Astral born, were the ones who captured the Demon Gods. The gates were partially shut to protect their lineage and part to prevent the Astral born from being used to rouse them from their confinement.”

“It was a goose chase then,” she said, heaving a sigh.