by Claire Luana
“Both of our lives,” Hanae said.
“We’d still have Father,” Kai said sadly.
Hanae nodded slowly. “Yes. But do not look backwards with regrets. Your upbringing made you who you are. Things unfolded how they were destined to.”
Kai grasped her mother’s hand and squeezed. “I think they did.”
Kai’s coronation that night was resplendent. The great hall was filled with the silvery glow of moon orbs and white string lights that had been added for the occasion. Everyone was dressed in their finest clothes, shades of blue and purple, green and soft grays and browns. Kai was dressed in a white dress covered in swirls of silver thread and crystals. Her hair was done in elaborate braids, and her face had been painted with rouge and kohl. Butterflies flipped in her stomach.
She turned to Quitsu. “How do I look?”
He had been bathed and fluffed; his fur positively glowed silver. He examined her. “Passable.”
She rolled her eyes. “Great. At least I’ll always have you to keep me grounded.”
He chuffed his cheeks out in his signature laugh. “That’s what I’m here for.”
The coronation was a blur—Kai walked down the aisleway, surrounded by smiling faces. Master Vita, clutching her mother’s arm, the Oracle standing in the front row, Emi, Stela, Leilu, Nanase and Pura. Faces that had become her friends and her family. Even Chiya was there, though sitting down and still looking pale and weak from her ordeal with Airi. Kai thought with a pang of Maaya, whom they had laid to rest in the royal crypt after the Battle at the Gate, as it had become known. She thought of her father, too. She wished he could see her that day.
Kai said the words that made her queen, and the lunar crown was placed on her head. The applause was deafening. She couldn’t help but grin, despite the weight of the responsibility that now rested on her shoulders.
The women at the front released a set of tiny gray koumidi into the air, their soft wings and bodies swooping over the heads of the crowd as they admired the show.
But then one fell, dropping from the air like a stone. Its small, delicate body landed on the step before Kai with a sickening thud. Kai stared at it, mouth open.
A voice rang out, loud and methodical.
“And in the reign of Kailani Shigetsu, daughter of Azura, there will be a great war. A war of gods and men. For Tsuki and Taiyo are displeased with the lands of Kita and Miina, and only one side will remain standing when it comes to the end.”
It was the Oracle. She had gone straight as a board, her head tilted back, her eyes glazed white. Giselli fluttered above her head in distress. Kai’s mother clutched Roweni’s arm, her face pale. There was no doubt that they were witnessing a true prophecy being told. As quickly as it had begun, the Oracle returned to normal.
She shook her head. “What happened?”
A deafening silence filled the room as the audience took in the Oracle’s words.
Quitsu and Kai glanced at each other. Disturbing. Kai shrugged.
“I think we should head to the grand dining room for the royal feast,” she announced, the audience still dumbstruck. If she was going to have to fight a great war, at least she’d do it on a full stomach.
And with that, she lifted up her skirt, stepped over the broken koumidi body before her and marched from the room, Quitsu at her side.
Burning Fate
Azura, heir to the throne of Miina, is resigned to her fate. She must marry her mortal enemy in the hopes of ending a centuries-long war. But when a handsome and enticing stranger appears on the horizon, she is swept up in an illicit but undeniable romance.
But when a false accusation threatens her new love’s life, Azura is forced to choose between the man and the nation that she loves. Can Azura find a way to save them both, or will she give up all she knows in a daring and desperate plot to free him?
CHAPTER 1
Azura
“Azura, the building is on fire.”
“Hmm?” Azura said, pulling her gray eyes up from the lock of silver hair she was examining to meet those of her tutor.
Master Vita stood with his hands on his hips, eyebrows raised above his half-moon spectacles. “That was a test to see if you were listening. You failed. What was I lecturing on?”
Azura wracked her brain. She had drifted off into a daydream about thirty minutes into his lecture on the importance of maintaining a stable currency. “The treasury?” she ventured a guess.
“And what was I saying?”
Azura flashed what she hoped was a rueful smile. “Something about money?”
Master Vita sat down at the large wooden table with a sigh, running his hands through his shock of balding hair. He was beginning to look…old, she thought guiltily. Maybe serving as her royal tutor was too stressful for him.
Azura flopped her head on her crossed arms before her. “I’m sure you were saying something incredibly important, and I’ll be a truly terrible queen if I don’t listen.”
“You won’t be a terrible queen,” Master Vita said. “Just uninformed. At this point, I believe Lyra knows more about the working of the Miinan currency than you do.”
Her seishen Lyra, a silver lynx with white tufted ears, chuffed in laughter from her stretched out position on the floor.
Azura lifted her head and kicked Lyra softly with her slippered foot. “Traitor,” she muttered.
Master Vita’s scowl softened and he patted her arm. He had been tutoring Azura since she was a small child; in many ways Master Vita was more a parent to her than her actual father, whose identity her mother refused to reveal.
“I know this isn’t your first choice of pastime,” Master Vita said. “But your mother has asked me to prepare you to rule as best I can. And I intend to do so.”
“But Mother is young!” Azura protested. “She could be queen for decades! I don’t see why I have to study all the time.”
“You forget that we are at war, my dear. The last few years have been relatively quiet, and I am hopeful that the sunburners’ upcoming visit will result in a permanent cease-fire; but something could happen to your mother at any moment…Tsuki help us…and if it did, you would need to be ready.”
At the mention of the upcoming visit, Azura’s already foul mood blackened considerably. It didn’t help that at that moment, her younger sister Airi breezed into the library, her dragon seishen in tow.
“Are you helping my sister decide what to wear when she is whored out to the sunburner king?” Airi asked, with a smirk on her face and a half-eaten red apple in her hand.
“Airi!” Master Vita’s voice cracked like a whip. “Must the first words out of your mouth contain such language? You know better than to make such a joke. At your sister’s expense no less.”
Lyra was standing now, her silvery hackles raised. Azura glared at her sister, her stare as sharp as daggers, but any snappy retort soured on her tongue. It was true. Her mother, Queen Isia, her royal highness, Daughter of the Moon, and Protector of Miina, was trading her to the king of Kita in exchange for a permanent cease fire between their two nations. Azura was to be married to a man she had never met.
Master Vita continued his defense of the queen’s plan. “It is an honor for Azura to be considered for a political alliance that could bring an end to centuries of war. Few people have the opportunity to make such a difference with their life. You would be so fortunate.”
Airi took a bite of her apple, her dark eyes glittering. “Yes, I suppose I am resigned to the sad fate of marrying who I want, when I want.”
“Maybe, when I am queen,” Azura said, fury building, “I will make a decree that all second-born royal daughters dedicate themselves to serving our goddess Tsuki through a life of chastity. Or perhaps there is some fat old sunburner you can marry to further cement our ties to Kita.”
Airi’s smug smile faltered. “You wouldn’t.”
Azura smiled at her sister with more teeth than was strictly necessary.
“Girls, girls, enough.�
�� Master Vita said with exasperation. “Airi, is there something you need? Or are you just here to make cruel jabs at your sister?”
“I’m bored,” Airi pouted. “I thought I’d join your lesson.”
Azura’s eyes opened wide and she tried to signal “NO” to Master Vita with a shake of her head. But it wasn’t necessary.
“Airi, you know these lessons are tailored to Azura specifically; to prepare her to be queen. I would be happy for you to join us another day when we cover more general topics.”
Airi sighed dramatically. “I didn’t want to join your stupid lesson anyway.”
“Perhaps you could find Mistress Adiru and work with the koumoris a bit,” Master Vita suggested, referring to the huge black bats used by the moonburners as mounts.
“The koumoris smell,” Airi said.
“Or work with Headmistress Lakota in the armory.”
“I don’t want to get sweaty.”
“Maybe you could work with the other novices on your moonburning technique,” Azura suggested, knowing even as she said it that her comment was petty. Her sister didn’t have any friends among the novices. She had played one too many pranks at their expense, and now they avoided her whenever possible.
Airi’s small perfect mouth tightened into a straight line for a moment, before her look of carefree nonchalance returned. She took another bite of her rapidly disappearing apple. “I’ll think of something. Enjoy studying,” she said, emphasizing the last word like the name of a contagious disease. Airi turned on her heel and strode from the room, her seishen floating behind her in the air.
Master Vita turned his disapproving gaze to Azura.
“What?” she asked, feigning ignorance.
“You know what. You’re better than that.”
“She brings out the worst in me,” Azura admitted. “She makes me so furious!”
“She’s a troubled young lady. She will push your buttons, but your job is to rise above it.”
“I’ll try,” Azura grumbled.
Master Vita took pity on Azura and released her early from her lesson. Azura and Lyra walked out of the library into the warm night air, reveling in the unexpected freedom. It was a clear night and the stars twinkled cheerfully above them. The lightening of the sky in the east hinted that the sun would rise soon and it would be time for bed.
Azura stretched, the muscles in her back and neck protesting. “I swear after a few hours in there, I feel like a caged animal,” she complained to Lyra. “In a very small cage.” Only the bars of her cage were invisible. And they had names like duty and honor.
“Do you want to go for a ride?” Lyra asked, sensing Azura’s mood.
“Yes,” she said, the word like a sigh. “Will you go and sneak a little something from the kitchen, maybe some spiced buns or honeycakes?” Azura suggested. “I’ll meet you in the stable.”
“On it!” Lyra said, darting off across the courtyard. Lyra had a devious streak and relished any rebellious mission Azura gave her.
“I wonder where she got that,” Azura muttered under her breath.
Lyra had been Azura’s constant companion since Azura had first started to mature five years ago. When a moonburner began transitioning from girlhood to adulthood, the changes started. A young moonburner could sense the moon and begin pulling its power into herself, harnessing it. Her hair turned to pure silver, and for a few, the lucky few, their seishen companion appeared. Lyra could walk through walls, communicate telepathically with other seishen, and find just about anything or anyone by closing her eyes. Lyra was a magical, mysterious, talking extension of Azura, with two paws in the spirit world and two paws on the earth. But more importantly, she was the only thing that kept Azura from vaulting out a window and running until the bright lights of the citadel were far behind her. Lyra was Azura’s life preserver in a life that pushed down on her with relentless pressure.
“Hello, Ash,” Azura said, stroking the equine head that popped out of the stall door at her approach. “Would you like to get out of here for a bit?”
Her horse, Ash, whinnied and nosed her shoulder with his velvet head.
“Me too,” she said.
She grabbed his tack and began saddling him. She had to stand on her tip-toes to throw the saddle over his tall back.
As Azura finished, Lyra leaped onto Ash’s stall door, a cloth napkin clutched in her mouth.
“Any trouble?” Azura asked as she relieved Lyra of her burden, tucking the food into her saddlebag.
“Smooth sailing,” Lyra said, jumping onto the saddle. Ash flicked his ears backwards in annoyance, but didn’t react otherwise. He was used to Lyra’s presence.
Azura grabbed her navy cloak from its nearby hook and led Ash out of the stall by his reins. The stall door creaked, causing the raven-haired stable boy to poke his head out of another stall.
When he saw her, he smiled, shaking a finger at her.
Azura winked and held up a finger to her lips, asking for his silence. She would have it. She had found that her kindness was the surest currency to buy silence, and so servants all around the citadel facilitated her secret rides: the cook, the stable boy, and her maids. She wasn’t supposed to leave the citadel walls without at least one moonburner guard, but she didn’t see the harm. She could defend herself. And Azura liked to think that the staff understood that sometimes a woman of seventeen needed to be alone. Even if she was a princess.
Azura’s route wound her through the cobblestone streets of Kyuden, the capital city of Miina. Ash had made the backstreet journey so many times that she hardly needed to nudge him with her reins. It wasn’t unusual to see a silver-haired moonburner out and about, but Azura kept the deep hood of her cloak up just in case. Lyra sat in her lap, Azura’s cloak draped over her, obscuring her from view.
Azura passed through the full gamut of Kyuden’s neighborhoods: fancy whitewashed buildings with blue tiled roofs, quiet market squares, and slums filled with beggars digging through trash heaps. While her mother was a good queen, Miina was not a paradise. They had the war to thank for that. Maybe if they could reach a ceasefire with the sunburners, her mother and her moonburner army could begin to turn their attention inward.
Finally Azura reached one of Kyuden’s many side-gates, the narrow exit that she preferred for her rides out of the city. She had yet another compatriot here, a guard named Potsu with a shock of black hair and a ridiculous handlebar mustache. He recognized Ash and waved her through the open gate with a nod of his head. Soon the sun would rise and the city gates would be closed. In Miina, the city slept under the light of the sun, and worked under the lunar cycle. When the ruling class and warriors drew their power from the rays of the moon, it was the only schedule that made sense.
Once Azura passed the high stone walls of Kyuden, she was met by wide green fields. Though farmsteads dotted the road, the farmers were already tucked in for the day, and she, Ash, and Lyra would not be bothered. In the peace of this open space, Azura could almost forget, for a time, that she was heir to the throne of a country torn by war, and that in a few short months, she would be forced to marry her mortal enemy.
CHAPTER 2
Azura
Azura lay on a grassy hillside beside a great tree, her cloak spread beneath her, her eyes closed, soaking up the early morning sun. Azura felt an affinity for the sun that she couldn’t quite explain. Of course, she loved the moon—its face half-hiding itself in inky blackness, its caress cool and mysterious. The moon gave her power. She could pull its strength inside herself, burning its rays into heat, light, or a sharp blade that could cauterize flesh.
But the sun was warm by its very nature, cheerful and welcoming. She felt a twinge of guilt even as the thought flitted through her mind. The sun was the realm of Kita and its sunburners—golden-haired men who drew power from its rays and cast fire down with destructive force onto her people. The sun and the sunburners were her enemies.
Ash jangled his bridal and Azura opened her eyes, suddenly ale
rt.
“Azura,” Lyra hissed.
There was movement to her left. A rider crested the hill on the main road, headed towards Kyuden. In the buttery morning light, his horse shone like gold.
Azura shrank back, trying to put the tree between herself and the stranger. She did a silent inventory. Her link, a silver bracelet that served as a little well of moonlight, was clasped around her right wrist. If she needed to, she could slit the stranger’s throat in an instant. And if she ran out of moonlight, she had a long-handled carving knife in her saddlebag, the one she used in the garden behind the hospital ward to neatly slice herbs and leaves from their roots. She had been trained by Headmistress Lakota herself in hand-to-hand combat. She could defend herself. But still, being silently passed by was preferable to any of these options.
Luck did not appear to be with her. The rider had caught sight of her and was altering his course.
Azura briefly considered putting her cloak on to hide her tell-tale silver hair, but then thought the better of it. She was a powerful moonburner, just shy of earning her Master status. She wouldn’t hide.
“Hello,” the man called as he approached, waving.
Her eyes widened as she realized that the color of his horse’s coat was not a trick of the light. His mount truly had a coat of gold, bright and burnished as the gem-encrusted goblets her mother reserved for their most important dinner guests. She found herself mesmerized by the flicker of the sun against the sleek-muscled steed, by his flaxen-haired mane as it fluttered in the light breeze. The horse’s brown eyes were intelligent, examining her with the same appraising eye she gave him. This was no ordinary beast.
“Seishen,” Lyra whispered, seemingly to herself.
“He is impressive, isn’t he,” the man said, swinging down from the saddle gracefully and patting his seishen on the neck.
