Page 2 of Heavenly Bodies
Dread crept up her spine. They were taking her to Helios.
It took every ounce of control within Elara’s body not to struggle then and there, as she realized she was being led into enemy territory. Not just by some bored Asterian thugs, but by Helions. Soldiers, by the sounds of it.
The force who had plagued her kingdom with raids and blockades for years. Who had encouraged the rest of the world to shun her people. All thanks to the man at the helm of it all, the one who had waged the War on Darkness against her father, two decades ago. King Idris D’Oro.
‘You know, for one of the King’s Guard, you’re not the most adept at espionage,’ she said. ‘Shouldn’t you be, I don’t know…guarding your king?’
There was a beat, before the first voice—the leader, she assumed—replied, ‘What makes you think we’re the King’s Guard?’
‘You don’t exactly use inside voices,’ she replied.
There were muttered curses, enough so that Elara counted between five or six other people within the cart, before the leader spoke again with a note of finality. ‘No more questions.’
‘You may as well save us the journey, and drag me outside to kill me now,’ she said. It would be death, or a fate far worseif she set foot in the Palace of Light, so if there was any chance of escape near the border, she’d take it.
‘We’re not going to hurt you,’ he replied.
Elara tried subtly to work her wrists against their binding again. As she shifted, she felt her dagger press into her thigh. It was relief that washed over her first—the soldiers hadn’t discovered it. Shortly followed by a string of mental curses as she realized how far it was away from her incapacitated hands.
Finally, the cart ground to a stop followed by a sharp rap to her left.
‘State your business,’ came a voice heavy with the accent of the Asterian Borderlands.
Elara took a deep breath, ready to scream, but a solid hand clamped down on her lips, gifting her a mouthful of sack. She coughed against it, but the hand held firm, another pushing down upon her shoulder when she tried to struggle.
There was an inaudible murmur from the driver up front, and the sound of coins clinking.
There was another rap on the cart, and it trundled on, until finally the hand released her. She spluttered and spat the burlap out of her mouth, as she blinked down once more at the slice of light. To her horror, it had shifted from her familiar lilac-blue to fierce orange. She was across the border.
The sack was yanked off her head, and Elara winced at the horrid burnished glare of Helion light that flooded her sight. It was so much more garish than the comforting tones of home, casting the cart in a bright gold. When she blinked it away, a man was looking at her, a very handsome man, a slight frown on his face. His eyes were warm brown, skin brown too, and he had the closely shorn haircut of the militia, though with an intricate pattern shaved more closely on one side of his head, which stretched into straight lines of the Light’s rays. Oh, he was Helion all right.
‘Who are you?’ she demanded, before taking quick account of the rest of the group, draped in golden armour.
‘Leonardo Acardi,’ said the brown-eyed man.
Her stomach plummeted. ‘You’re the general of the Helion army. The King’s Thunderbolt.’
He shrugged, something like a twinkle in his eye. ‘Is that what they call me?’
She forced her gaze off him, if only to look desperately back to her home as they rolled further into Helios, the border growing further and further away. She caught sight of the Temple of Piscea, Asteria’s patron Star, which signified the entrance into Asteria. A familiar resentment clung to her chest as she glanced at the glossy black obsidian pillars—perfect and out of place within the soft twilight hues of her kingdom. Piscea’s prayer stood out in glittering silverstone, a fairly new one that had only been coined a few decades before.
So worship her. So fear her.
Apt, for the goddess of terror, of fate and darkness. Though she slumbered now, thank the Stars. Elara raised her eyes to the sky, and the split torn through it, the patch of gold and orange growing larger as her sapphire sky diminished.
‘The palace horses are waiting on the outskirts of Sol,’ Leonardo said. ‘We’ll leave this cart there,’ he said to a comrade.
Elara reached back to her geography lessons. It was just as she’d thought—she was being taken to the capital of Helios, where the Palace of Light waited. She remained silent as she settled back, and waited, spiralling into her magick. As she moved, the dampness of blood on her dress pinched at her, and nausea roiled through her, along with unwanted memories.
The blood.
The starlight.
‘Run!’
She squeezed her eyes shut again until the images had disappeared once more. When she looked out from the cart, she saw dusty streets rather than the lush, dark vegetation that lined every road in Asteria. Though the sounds were muffled through the wood it sounded louder than her home too, and gods, it was sweltering. Her thick woollen dress felt cloistering, her corset beneath digging into her chest and waist uncomfortably as sweat began to gather at the base of her spine. But she cared not, when she didn’t plan on staying in the Stars-forsaken city for a minute longer than she had to.
When the wagon stopped, and the doors were flung open, Elara was ready.