LIRA
LIRA HAD ALWAYS been one with the skies.
Adhira, a planet terraformed into extremes, had taught her to love living a life without having her feet on the ground.
The ground was a confusing place, with limits and laws.
The skies offered nothing but endless freedom.
They had everything to give, and demanded nothing in return.
And yet, being back on Adhira...
Home, Lira thought as she stood in the rock temple atop the mountain fortress of Rhymore, the centermost point of the terraformed world.
It had taken the transport wagon two hours to drag the ruined Marauder here from the crash site, another hour of explaining to Queen Alara’s Sentinels what had happened and another after that to finally find a moment to escape from the girls once they’d settled into a guest wing deep inside the mountain.
Their questions and the concerned looks they cast Lira’s way were too much for her already fragile emotional state to handle.
She needed a moment to settle herself again.
To rediscover her peace.
She’d slipped away from her crew while they ate lunch, walking past Dextro and Alfie as they patched in a call to General Cortas. She’d been surprised when Dex had looked up and asked her how she was feeling—she wouldn’t have believed him capable of such courtesy. She’d given him a small, stunned smile in return before slipping away.
Finally, after remembering her way through the winding tunnels of the mountain and climbing a set of stairs so tall Lira thought her legs might combust from the strain of her burning muscles, she’d made it to her destination.
Now here she stood, at the very top of Rhymore. Catching her breath, drinking sweet water from a polished red rock basin in the center of the towering temple and admiring the early afternoon view that she’d missed the most since leaving this planet four years ago.
Though the temple was small, with only room enough for a few bodies at a time, Lira found it the most spacious place in the world. Nothing but the four rock columns and the waist-high ledge stood between her and the sky, and Lira’s view was endless.
From here, she could see all of Adhira, as far as her eyes could carry her.
It was here, atop the mountain itself, that Lira had come countless times as a child.
She’d come when her father passed on to the next life. She’d come when she had her Efflorescence Ceremony, and when she simply wanted to escape from the weight of the world on her shoulders. Here, the mountain had always offered to bear her burden instead.
It was here, year after year, that a much younger Lira used to sit with a heavy woolen shawl around her shoulders, the cold wind combing across her face, and allow herself to dream.
A single, massive eyeglass stood empty and waiting in the center of the mountaintop temple. It was made from the very same varillium as the Marauder, acquired long ago in a trade with Xen Ptera.
Though the varillium was unbreakable, Lira still took care as she pressed her eye to the cold eyepiece.
A little adjusting, a few swivels and flashes of light, and Lira felt a smile spread across her face.
Her chest lightened. Her heart raced.
Although she’d seen this view a hundred times, it still took her breath away. Through the eyeglass, all of Adhira unfurled before her like a perfect, tiny map.
Heavens above, she’d missed this planet.
To the north, she could see the emerald expanse that made up Aramaeia, the terraformed rainforest full of monstrous trees, which spread all the way into the clouds and beyond. Inside those trees, entire cities buzzed with life. At Aramaeia’s edge, tucked into the trees, sat the Falls of Amorga. They boomed so loudly that it was impossible to hear anything else once you got within half a mile of their location.
She’d been to those falls. She’d swum in their depths, and explored the Sunken City beyond.
The wind blew, tickling Lira’s senses. She swiveled the eyeglass to the west, where endless green faded into deep reds and browns. The Sands of Bailet were pocked with giamounds, desert rocks that stood miles tall. The city of Lavada thrived inside the monstrous pillars, where the cityfolk milled about in a series of twisting tunnels. They weren’t the only inhabitants within those pillars. They shared it with vergs, gentle sand-colored creatures whose many eyes helped them see in the depths of the giamounds. They had almost as many legs as eyes, which helped them crawl through the deepest tunnels below ground, not yet inhabited by other Lavadian residents.
Lira shivered. She’d never been a fan of giant, wriggling bugs.
She shifted the eyeglass again, fighting against a fresh gust of wind. She adjusted the view until a vision of deep, beautiful blue appeared. The Endless Sea, a world of water that was as deep as it was wide, its people gifted with gills, webbed fingers and toes, able to live beneath the crashing waves.
And here Lira stood, far away in the sky.
In the center of it all.
She loved this place. It was here, standing alone on this very balcony, that Lira first met the greatest loves of her life.
The sky.
The stars.
And the ships that soared through them.
“Admiring the view?”
Lira looked up so fast she nearly fell over.
That voice. How much she’d missed it.
“You sneaky bastard,” Lira hissed.
Then she sidestepped the eyeglass and crossed to the other side of the temple in three quick strides, where she threw herself into her twin brother’s arms.
Lon was older than her by just a few minutes, but he’d never let her forget it. He was the loud, brute strength to Lira’s calm, calculated silence. The one who’d always laughed at her for having her nose buried in the pages of books—and yet, he’d frequently spent his wages on the very best ones he could find to give to her.
“I have to admit, little sister,” Lon said, holding her out at arm’s length, “you’ve outdone yourself with your entrance this time. Destroying an entire field of hrevan crops and your ship in the process?” He grinned, his purple eyes flashing. “You’ve certainly changed.”
He always knew how to press her buttons. But Lira still smiled as she looked at her brother.
Godstars, how he’d grown.
He was at least a head taller than her now, his pale blue arms rippling with muscle, spreading up into a thick neck and strong shoulders. He wore the traditional loose, sleeveless green shirt of the Sentinels. A shiny golden Adhiran emblem was pinned on the fabric right above his heart.
“You’ve been promoted!” Lira gasped.
“Queen Alara isn’t easy to work for, as you can well imagine.” Lon grinned like a forest cat, earning another smile from Lira. He rapped his knuckles on the Adhiran emblem, the endless spiral that signified life. “A lot has happened since you’ve been away, little bug.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I thought I’d grown out of that horrendous nickname.”
He laughed, a booming thing that rivaled the mountain wind. “You can leave your planet behind, Lira. But it doesn’t change who you are inside.”
Silence swept over them, sudden and piercing.
A single scaled patch on Lon’s right cheek warmed, glowing the slightest blue. He closed his eyes and clenched his jaw, willing the emotions away.
He had always been better at controlling them than she was.
“Lon,” Lira whispered. “I’ve missed you. I think of you every day. I’ve wanted to visit, truly. It’s just that...”
That I became a criminal, she thought. That I was afraid of what you would think of me, of the person I have become.
“You stopped sending me updates,” he said. “You disappeared, Lira. All I had to keep up-to-date with you were the—” he swallowed hard, the scale flashing again on his cheek “—the updates about a certain crew of wanted girls, halfway across Mirabel. The crimes I won’t even begin to discuss.”
She closed her eyes. Looked away from the pained expression on his face, so much like her own. “Things changed out there. Situations got out of control. I...reacted.”
“There have been deaths,” Lon hissed. His voice was so low it was nearly lost in the wind.
“Not at my hand,” Lira promised. “I swear it, Lon. I swear it in this holy place.”
His jaw flexed as he gritted his teeth. “I know you aren’t a killer, Lira.”
Her heart relaxed, just slightly.
“But you left. You left me, and you chose to forget about home.”
“No.” Lira held up her hands. “I chose to protect you from who I have become, Lon.”
Silence fell between them. Somewhere down below, a bell clanged. The sound, deep and full, swept up the mountainside, trickled past Lira’s ears. It meant that Queen Alara was accepting petitions from the Adhiran people, young and old, rich and poor.
Alara was a wise leader, loving and attentive. She cared wholeheartedly for Adhira, giving her all to the care of her people.
It was something Lira could never do, could never even dream of doing.
So she’d fled. She’d made herself into someone unworthy.
She’d created demons to chase her, the kind she could never outrun.
“We don’t have much time alone together, so I’ll make this brief,” Lon said, drawing her attention back to him. “Whatever you think you’ve become...” He sighed, turning to face her. “You are still my sister. And I will always have room in my heart for you. The old you. The new you. The you that you have yet to become.” He pressed two fingers to her forehead. “I don’t have to agree with it all, Lira. But my loyalty is yours...until the mountain falls.”
Until the mountain falls.
They were the last words he’d said to her—before she ran away on a starship and took to life in the skies.
Her heart clenched again.
“It’s not all bad, what the girls and I do,” Lira said, trying to lighten the tone in her voice. She moved back toward the eyeglass and ran her fingertips across it. “You can’t even begin to imagine what’s happened in the past few days.”
“I can guess it’s quite a tale,” Lon said. “Seeing as you and your friends aren’t rotting in a cell in the belly of Rhymore right now for that crash landing. And just before Revalia, too.”
Lira winced. She’d forgotten all about the peace festival. It was a yearly occurrence on Adhira, a celebration of the end of the war against Xen Ptera.
“Let me tell you my side of the story, then,” Lira said. “Let me explain to you what’s gone on, so you can try to see it in a different light.”
Lon shook his head. “Lira...I can’t.”
“Just the good things?” Lira asked, her voice settling into that little pleading tone she’d used on him when they were younger. When she desperately wanted the last bite of his moss meringue, or to play with one of his toys. “I’m a starship pilot, Lon. Just like I always dreamed I’d be.” She placed her hand on his warm arm. “I’ve even taken up that nasty little habit you try to hide from the queen.”
His eyes flashed.
“You have your secrets, too,” she teased.
“Moon Chew, little bug?” He clicked his tongue and shook his head. But then he smiled, the warmth slowly spreading back into his features as he took the bait. “What in the Godstars led you to that?”
“You can’t even imagine,” Lira said, and turned to look up at the sky. “The things we see up there, Lon. It’s...”
“Not something the queen would approve of,” Lon finished for her. He held up a finger as Lira frowned. “But she tends to be a little uptight. Which is exactly why...if you hold back the things she doesn’t need to know...I will not tell her a single detail of what you’re about to tell me.”
She opened her mouth to share, but he stopped her with a raised brow.
“Only the good things. If it has anything to do with Adhira, anything that might threaten this planet, I cannot hear it.”
“I swear it,” Lira said. “You know I’d never do anything to harm this place, Lon.”
He bowed his head. “Then go ahead, little bug.” When he looked back up, his eyes were eager. “Just...go ahead.”
And so they stood there, brother and sister, two halves of one whole, the Adhiran wind whipping through the temple as Lira told her tales.
He shook his head in amusement when she described Gilly and her fiery spirit. He smiled when she spoke of Andi’s dancing and her red polished nails and the way her music spilled through the halls of the ship. He grumbled something about cocky Guardians as Lira talked about Dex and hummed in appreciation when she described Breck’s exquisitely cooked meals. He laughed when Lira told him some of the New Vedan’s jokes and the banter Breck shared with Gilly.
He gripped Lira’s arms when she spoke of their high-speed chases. The way she could fly a ship like a tireless bird. The planets they’d visited, the amazing atmospheres they’d entered, the glorious worlds beyond this one. Planets made of ice. Planets made of diamond. Planets that never saw the light of day, so cold that the air nearly froze the engines on their ship before they could soar away.
All along, he listened, occasionally biting his lower lip in thought.
Lon always knew that Lira harbored a darkness in her soul. A little tug, a tiny whisper at the back of her mind, that led her to go above and beyond the pranks that Lon had always pulled while they were growing up here.
She’d fallen, not for a lover, but for the skies. For adventure.
She’d found a ship full of girls with their own affinity for darkness to mirror her own.
When she was done, Lon stared at her for a time.
“You were never meant to stay here,” he said. “I’ve known it since the moment you tried to leap from this very temple with wings made of leaves tied to your arms.”
Lira laughed.
He put an arm around her and pulled her close.
“Welcome home, little bug.” She felt him inhale beside her. Exhale, deeply. “I hate to ruin your strange homecoming...but...”
“What is it?” Lira pulled away.
Lon shrugged, a lopsided smile on his face. “The queen has requested a private meeting with you. And, seeing as I’m to be your personal Sentinel for the time being...I’m here to escort you to her. And ensure that you don’t escape while she delivers whatever punishment she sees fit for the damage your ship did to the hrevan fields.”
“Of course you are,” Lira said with a groan. “And my crew? Will they be there, too?”
Lon shook his head. “No. Just you. She has no desire to speak to the crew.” He lifted his hands. “Her words. Not mine.”
“Fine then,” Lira said. “If you’re such a big, terrifying Sentinel now...” She pinched his cheek, forcing the scaled patch to illuminate with a flash of anger. “You’ll have to chase me down there.”
“Lira, I don’t have time to play childhood games.”
But she was already on the move.
“You’re already losing!” She yelled as she dashed past him, deftly slipping through the hole in the ground where the temple ladder led down into the mountain tunnels below, pretending it was a ladder back on the Marauder.
“Lira!”
Lon’s booming growl echoed after her as he tried in vain to catch up.
He didn’t stand a chance.