“Can we stay here… just a little longer?”
In the dim, glacial blue of Aoraki’s early dawn, a flicker of orange light briefly glided Astra’s cheekbones as it flared across the tip of her cigarette before fading into curling smoke.
Snow fell softly over Astra’s silver hair and the pale fur rim of her hood. Wearing only a single outer layer, she felt the faint bite of cold and instinctively sensed the temperature hovering around minus ten degrees Celsius. It had been stable lately, yet on that first visit with Eydis, it had been noticeably warr.
As though a powerful force of living had once fought to thaw the ice.
She drew a slow drag from her cigarette, exhaled, and let Eydis’s question turn over and over in her mind.
“Can we stay…”
Of course Astra would agree; she had learned how much harder it had beco to deny Eydis anything she asked. More than that, with the threat still hanging over everyone they cared about, leaving this place now would be beyond irresponsible.
But the way Eydis had said it—asked it—with rare tentativeness and vulnerability kept replaying in Astra’s mind.
Why…
Why did it feel so much like goodbye? As though going back to their world would an…
They could never be together again?
As though her quiet “I’m yours” was a thing that could only exist here.
Astra inhaled once more and blew out a ring of smoke. Then she added another. And another. Her black-polished fingers sliced through the last circle, leaving thin grey tendrils curling around her fingertips.
What have you done, Eydis?
Her gaze dropped to the two oversized suitcases waiting beside her.
Would ignorance be bliss? Or would it be unforgivably irresponsible to go on pretending she had seen nothing—
nothing of how this world’s surface peace depended entirely on perfect obedience to the will of those who held power,
how fairness was little more than smoke and mirrors, that there were people here who decided who would live and who would die.
Her hand glowed gold at the thought and she scoffed out a bitter laugh into the freezing air.
Was she being hypocritical now? Astra wondered whether Callista—this other version of her, seen only through flashes of mories—had ever felt the weight of playing God with such power.
How had it felt at ten years old to see grown n and won drop to their knees before her, gazing up with the fevered devotion of true believers?
The Virtuous Saintess. The Living Vessel. The Goddess Incarnate. She had heard the titles whispered like prayers and had tasted the echo of an emotion that had twisted through Callista back then. Sothing corrosive lingered in her youthful heart. That felt like…
Re…vulsion?
Hearing approaching footsteps against the snow, followed by the wide, dark circle of a large umbrella that eclipsed the agre glacial light, Astra closed her fist, snuffing the golden glow back into her palm. She ground her combat boot over the discarded cigarette and shifted slightly to face the newcor.
Dawn now resembled dusk more than morning.
Déjà vu.
“Beautiful weather, isn’t it?” The aroma of freshly brewed tea always preceded Indigo; it had beco as much a part of him as his falcon-shaped golden cufflinks, which glinted even in the dreary dawn.
She gestured towards the collapsed base of the Van Nassau. The ‘Children’ hadn’t bothered to return here, which ant they were confident nothing of importance remained.
“Try to recover anything you can,” she said, hands resting on the two luggage handles.
“In a mont.” Indigo’s brows furrowed as he lifted his gaze subtly from her cigarette lying on the snow, to the luggage, to her eyes. “How are you? You don’t look so…”
“You know nothing can touch , Indigo.”
“Physically, yes,” Indigo said. “But you were happy when you left Alchymia. Genuinely happy. Sothing’s changed.”
Ignoring his probing, concerned gaze, she bent over and twisted the lock into their usual combination, opening both pieces of luggage.
Huka, face ice cold, frozen and perfectly preserved. Inside the other one, Taika, knees to his chest, chest still rising and falling in tandem with his even breathing.
Indigo pressed a hand on Taika’s forehead, his brown eyes bled into gold, then contracted sharply. “This… this is new.”
Astra’s crimson eyes narrowed at his brief, yet uncharacteristic crack in composure. “You’ve seen it before.”
“No,” Indigo pulled his hand back and snapped the luggage shut. “It’s simply that I have never encountered a Gift capable of stripping a mind so completely. Not until Tiffany.”
“Tiffany?”
His eyes darkened to brown. “Untouchable. I could only read the Academy’s report.”
Of course it was Athena who’d had the final “conversation” with Tiffany. Of course Thomas had arrived imdiately after and hidden her away. She was in the Blackwood mansion now, under her mother’s care, because a brain-dead heiress was still the only legitimate claim to everything Thomas had built.
The corner of Astra’s lips lifted, but it did not reach her eyes. “Really? With your ability? Then I guess there are wonders of this world that have eluded you, Indigo. Unlike certain Electromagnetic Spectrum Gifted.”
She knew the ice in her tone was unmistakable. And she knew he would stop performing when she spoke to him this way.
His fingers flexed once on the luggage handle after he had set it upright. “So they are Boundary Breakers.”
Slowly, he lifted his gaze to et hers. “‘Were,’ I an.”
“Your secrets are yours to keep,” Astra chuckled bitterly then turned around, not wanting to face him, or feel the faint warmth that lingered in his aura and ssed with her judgent. Her planned speech. “But I can’t help but pick up so strange patterns.”
She heard him rise to his full height behind her. His umbrella shaded her once again.
“Miss Astra, elaborate, if you would be so kind.”
“The first Gifted individual I t when I… ca into consciousness, was you.” Her voice was quiet under the roaring wind. “How much of a coincidence is that?”
“As I have previously explained, I built my own system to track global—”
“Anomaly. Yes. I know,” Astra turned her head slightly. “And yet you were kind enough to ask for nothing in return for helping one.”
“Astra, I have never had any ulterior intent toward you.”
“Then explain Lionel Robin.”
Indigo’s lips remained parted, eyes widened perceptibly.
“He didn’t tell anything, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Astra’s gaze traced his eyes, partially hidden behind the glare of his glasses as the dawn brightened. “But an eighteen-year-old Lionel spinning a lie tight enough to fool the Council and the Van Nassaus? Ares in particular? Please.”
Indigo’s fingers tightened around the umbrella’s handle. He angled it farther over her as the snow thickened into white needles.
Not giving him a chance to deflect, she fully faced him. “I had always wondered why, all those months I was tailing Lionel, I ca up empty every single ti I got close. You’re the best hacker I’ve known. I’m… . And we both missed him. I should have looked into it sooner, but I was… preoccupied.”
And I was too trusting of you. That thought she kept behind her teeth.
Perhaps Eydis’s distrust of him had never been unreasonable.
But during that year following Lionel, who was wanted for leaking a classified Council surveillance project that Indigo himself had been running, had been the quietest of her life. She hadn’t needed to soak her hands in blood.
She should have known it was Indigo who handed his own damn project to Lionel in the first place. Indigo was ticulous to the finest detail; he did nothing without intention. Would Eydis complain if Astra told her they were alike?
Am I too foolish to hope that part of it was for ?
Indigo pressed his lips tight. Then, when Astra didn’t say anything else, he exhaled, cold breath clouding the air between them. “It was a necessary evil. Natalia’s power cannot be allowed to fall into the hands of soone like Ares.”
“All these years, I’ve tried to keep Ares from folding another child into his machine.” Indigo randomised the lock and stared at Taika’s luggage. “The Boundary Breakers survived, most didn’t.”
Taking a deep breath, he added, “I’m sorry I kept you in the dark, Astra. You aren’t EM-Gifted, you can’t shield your mind from him. The less you know, the safer you are.”
“Then why the hell let anywhere near Athena Van Nassau?”
Indigo’s eyes shimred then. If it was an act, he deserved every standing ovation on the planet. The warmth rolling off his aura… was suffocating.
“Because stopping you would have ant losing you.” His voice quieted beneath the snowfall. “Council secrets are one thing. Ares’s full machinery is another. I arranged for Billie to shadow you to keep it looking routine, in case Athena ever touched your mind.”
Astra felt her chest tightened. Was she really that obvious?
Had he understood her more than she gave his credit for?
Astra looked at him then; she really looked. Past the lancholic smile at his lips, past the tension in his brow. Straight into those weary brown eyes locked on hers, daring her to find the lie.
Then she studied at what moved around him instead.
The colours curling through his aura were warm, lacking any malice, not the way she had felt Eydis’s shadows in the first place.
Her rigid shoulders eased just a little. “You are not to put Lionel or Natalia in danger.”
“He needs to stay where he is, to divert Ares’s attention away from Natalia.” Indigo’s voice had lost its formality. “Even I don’t know what Natalia will beco. Paper can’t always smother wildfire, Astra.”
Astra let the wind move through her hair. When the edge of her vision was obstructed, she tucked the loose strands behind one ear.
She hated that everything he said made sense. That they held a logic she couldn’t find flaws. Natalia grew up close to normal. Lionel had obtained the Boundary Breaker status without breaking his mind.
And yet, sothing else did not quite make the cut.
Sothing Indigo was still keeping from her, from the night the crescent moon had burned cold over The Globe’s building.
For now, this sliver of trust would have to do. “See what you can glean from this.”
Indigo stepped forward and inspected the collapsing facility, all buried under layers of rocks and snow. “We cannot dig through all of this without alerting the Council. Or the Van Nassaus.”
“Who said anything about the facility?” Astra murmured, each hand placed on top of the luggage handles.
Indigo turned slowly. “You want to study them?”
“One of them is still biologically alive.”
“Well… that isn’t untrue.”
“The other may be available for dissection.” She said it flatly. “I kept him frozen.”
Indigo’s eyebrow climbed, then he chuckled softly. “You say the most morbid things with the straightest face.”
Astra shrugged. Back then she would have told him she didn’t believe in reincarnation, or the afterlife, or Gods. She could have told him Huka’s body was just a shell now. Just matter.
How deeply ironic that she could no longer say it so easily.
Instead, she stated matter-of-factly. “Their DNA and energy signatures may still be useful. Link that to their global trace the sa way the Council tracked . It might lead us to their next base of operation.”
Indigo’s eyes curved with gentle amusent. “You never stop surprising . I thought you didn’t care about any of this.”
Astra picked up the cigarette in the snow and wrapped a tissue around it, then shoved both her hands into the pockets of her grey leather jacket. “There are people I care for. Here.”
Indigo rummaged through his own pocket and pulled out a mint tin. “Sothing tells your girlfriend has opinions about that habit.”
Wordlessly, she accepted the mint and finally gave him with a real smile for the first ti. She watched the way his tense posture eased slightly, his face stretching into a mix of surprise and relief.
She dipped her head in a nod before turning away and leaving him behind with the two luggages, but not before adding:
“And I would stop at nothing, any obstacles, to make sure they are safe. And that includes going against the version of that you ca to know, Indigo.”
Astra didn’t look back as she leaped towards the helicopter cockpit with a swing of her legs. She popped three mints into her mouth then stared at the tin.
Eydis would scold her for this.
She took another two, just in case.
Astra tugged a strand of her silver hair and brought it to her nose. Thankfully it only slled of arctic wind and not smoke. Exhaling slowly, she let the snow hold her attention and thought about Eydis.
And then toward the dream that had been visiting her for weeks — those one hundred fifty, or sixty dream loops, returning vividly in full force. In one loop it was this: Lust’s honeyed voice speaking through a black panther’s mouth, asking her, telling her mockingly on a snowfield beneath a red moon.
“Children of Day and Shadow are ons. Gods call them betrayals, we call them delicacies. Stay with her and she will erode your light, drain you until only night remains.”
Astra pressed the ignition. The chanical roar rose to fill the cockpit, the cabin, the inside of her skull and she let it. Let it drown the voice out.
Drain until night remains huh…
“Can we stay here… just a little longer?” Eydis’s voice rose again.
Astra answered under her breath. “Forever would be nice.”
She had ant it. That was the part she kept returning to. And yet… sowhere beneath the wanting, Saintess Callista had begun to feel less like a mory and more like her real self.
Callista had obligations. Callista had duty. She had people clutching at her heels, with unwavering faith, begging her to return and save what still could be saved—save their children, their fathers, their mothers, their partners dying at the hands of monsters or people in the shadows.
Astra would stay.
But Callista. Callista had to return.
The question is where Astra ends and Callista begins.
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