Anna saw Montague turn and walk away through the broken crowd and out of sight. He was walking unusually fast. He knows something, she thought. What happened in that council room? Montague hadn’t told her anything. All he’d said in response to her questions about the outcome of Rayne’s trial was, ‘it has been settled.’ She followed him all the way back to the Ikarus library. Before Montague pushed his key into the lock on his door, he collapsed to the ground and vomited.
“Monte!” Anna cried. She knelt down by his side.
“I knew someone was following me,” he said, catching his breath.
“Please tell me you know something. Tell me that Rayne is alive and safe. Tell me you know where he is. Please.” Anna begged him to tell her this. But if it wasn’t true, she didn’t want to know.
“I can’t,” said Montague.
For the first time Anna saw Montague shed a tear.
On the way home from her evening classes, Anna Lott sampled numerous sweet and salty spices throughout the inner village markets and bought some of her favorites. She just finished teaching a lesson on the constellations to her nine-year-old students.
The purple and blue skies reflected off the milky backdrop of clouds hurling towards the western horizon. She watched as a band of three stars blinked in synchronistic patterns. They grew bright then flattened, then bright once again before dimming down to little specks.
It had been nearly two years since Anna had last seen Rayne. Today, the boy would have turned ten. The moons and the stars were aligned just like the night he was born. This significance revived painful memories of that terrible night when the queen had died, but also the joy of when she and Indrid were young and when Rayne was home. They were the only happy thoughts that she carried nowadays. With Montague and Gretchen as their caretakers, she, Indrid, and Rayne were once a family. But that warm embrace had been broken. Anna missed her stepbrother more than she could have ever imagined. He might have only been alive for eight years, but he’d looked older than Anna, who was at the brink of adulthood. Even his mind was far more mature than the average teenager. Anna couldn’t deny the feelings she’d begun to feel for her much younger stepbrother. But she feared that her love for Rayne would seem perverted to others. So she never spoke of it. Not even in confession. She’d attended the temple every week and prayed to Gabriel, asking him to shine light on her lost stepbrother’s way home to her. She still didn’t accept his death. And she believed Montague didn’t either. He’d been quiet and refused to entertain the subject.
But now as an adult, Anna tried to move past losing Rayne. Perhaps, he’d run away in fear for his life, she thought. Whatever the case, there would be no future with Rayne in it.
She dreamed of starting a family and having children, but she was afraid to fall in love and give her heart to someone, fearing the possibility of losing him again. She felt that she had enough people in whom she’d invested her feelings: Indrid, Greta, Monte, and her young students. She loved children, but without having her own, the next best option was to teach them. She shared the Ikarus library basement with Montague to hold her classes. And what better subject to focus on than what she loved most: astronomy. Talking about the heavens, just like the discussions she once had with Rayne down by The Ponds, reminded her of home.
Home, she thought. The capital was lonely without Rayne.
Unlike her living stepbrother, Indrid, she wasn’t waiting to return anywhere. After her uncle had died at the burning of Grale and Mern, her royal relatives never demanded her return. Of course, her homeland had written letters to her over the years expressing an interest in seeing her again. But Anna’s written request to be reunited with her blood-born family had been denied by King Alexandal. Nevertheless, she’d entertained the idea of going without permission yet she didn’t have transportation to get there unnoticed. Because of her royal relation to the high maidens, the men at the docks would recognize her and report her emigration to the king. And she couldn’t reach Mern without a boat. The Mern kingdom included a series of small islands with hundreds of capes and bays of crystal clear water supporting massive coral reef systems. The white sandy beaches sparkled like crystals underwater. Maybe, she thought, a change in location would help her cope with her loss.
At the edge of the market, beyond the vegetable baskets, bushels of flowers stood at the street corner. She sifted through the variety, sniffing in the aroma of each gardenia, orchid, and rose. There was a mirror behind the multi-colored arrangements of petals reflecting the green of the stem leaves upon her face.
When Anna looked into the mirror, a frost stretched out from each corner of the frame before her eyes. She watched the clouding glass surface shape as the outline of a human hand appeared. Startled, she dropped her books and knocked over a basket of flowers, scattering dead leaves across the cobblestone street.
She took five deep breaths. Calm down, she said to herself. The day’s significance was pulling on her emotional strings. Rayne had been on her mind all day and she became impatient to visit the memorial that was dedicated to the lost boy king. If she wanted to make it back to Ikarus before curfew, she’d have to leave soon. The sky looked darker every time she looked up.
When Anna bent down to clean up the flowers and gather her things, someone pressed up against her buttocks. “Excuse me!” she said,
