Eda has never seen life outside of Asterism, a haven to most but a prison to her. Closely watched by her mother and her assigned Guardian, Alstroe, she lives a perfect, protected life, until all she knows is destroyed by Aries, a man who will stop a...
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Balanced on his elbows and knees, Alstroe paved a path beneath the thornbush. He had rolled up his dark sleeves until tan skin revealed itself, the blue of his veins showing through like snakes coming up for water.
"You did not carve far enough," he said ahead of me, his voice swallowed by the rain.
"Here, take this." From the tight waistband hiding beneath my ruined tunic, I pulled out a gardener's trowel. On one side, the edge was rough with serrated teeth, the other smooth. I placed the tool in Alstroe's outstretched hand. "I haven't been here in a fortnight, perhaps it has grown over."
"Perhaps," he grumbled, and then, drove the trowel into the remaining thorns and thick thistle spines.
With a deep cut into the dark green foliage, a blast of cool air encircled me. Instantaneously, my skin rose with gooseflesh. I curled my hands into the loose soil beneath me, where I had pulled up roots weeks before.
"My gods," Alstroe breathed out. His broad shoulders blocked my line of sight. Framing his silhouette was the honey-colored glow of Alsterism's barrier.
Before me, before my mother, before her mother, and before her mother's mother, the grounds of Alsterism were carved. A castle was built from surrounding stone, and between the gardens and the nursery flowed a deep creek framed in cattails and sand. After each tapestry, tool, windowpane, and marble statue were put into place, the time's matriarch – my great grandmother – pulled Dust from a cloudless night and shaped the shell of Asterism. On that day, she created the sole haven for half-blooded Ethereals. For those like me.
Human blood wreaked havoc on the core of a Constellation. It dimmed their abilities, so much so that only a handful ever returned back to the night sky, where we had once been plucked from by our mothers.
"Do you bother getting out of the way, Alstroe?" I asked, pinching his shin with the sharp curl of my nails.
"Andromeda," he whispered my full name. "I believe something may be wrong."
I had enough. I pulled my tunic sleeves down to my thumbs and clung to the fabric as I crawled closer, over the nestled thorns hiding in the mud and then, Alstroe's back. It was a tight fit, in fact, it was probably the closest we had ever been before, regardless of two decades together. My chest rested on his shoulder blades, and his bated breath caused his body to rapidly rise and fall beneath me.
Like this, I witnessed my first glimpse of the Other World – the same rain that poured over Alsterism pelted down onto identical overgrowth, and above, the night sky remained the same, a deep velvet blue with Constellations gleaming through storm clouds, steadily watching the world below.
And Alstroe was right. Something was wrong, terribly wrong.
Only three meters ahead, a team of horses impatiently stamped their hooves, the glint of silver horseshoes catching the moonlight. Their impatient spindly legs were covered in splatters of mud, and each beast breathed hard. On their backs and around their heads, leather tack was fastened and strapped down. In front of the creatures, 40 men and women stood in dark iron armor, their chest plates shiny from rain.
