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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My thumb was bleeding. The liquid spilled out slowly, as if it were red wax pouring over a glass rim. It hung into a bead until it finally broke, catching over the silver of my ring and disappearing underneath. It hurt in a way that I was used to. A way I could ignore. I gripped the thistles between my fingers tighter and yanked it up until there was enough space for me to squeeze through two feet of prickly undergrowth and fresh mud.
I was going to the Other World.
Rain fell last night. It forced the land together in a mess of brown and made the trees above glow a furious verdant green in the humming white moonlight. Warm ozone mingled with the wet earth, a particular scent that blanketed every other smell. Even my own. Which was good. I wreaked. All Etherals do. Burning sugar when I sweat. A rotten citrus when I cry. Death when I bleed. But right now, veiled by the forest, I was virtually untraceable.
"Eda!" The deep voice of my Guardian called from behind me.
My body froze where it was, flat on the ground, shuffling underneath the thistles. I carved out this hole months ago, in the quick, impossible moments I stole for myself.
"Eda!" This time, closer.
Large hands clamped around my legs like iron anklets, and a strong yank sent me backward, until all of me returned to the boundaries of my prison: the shell of Asterism. To the others, to my Guardian, this was a haven. A place where only a few can seek safety and find it. It was impenetrable from the outside, but if someone could find cracks in its borders – someone like me – they could gain access to the world outside, lands I had never laid eyes on before.
"Alstroe," I scowled through the mud-plastered on my bottom lip.
Alstroe was my Guardian since birth, and it was a role he took seriously. My earliest memories are of him, watching me like a shadow, shepherding me through life. He was just barely four years old when he was assigned to me two decades ago, while I was still warm from my mother's womb, my doughy skin first touching the hands of my nursemaid, and then his. As I grew, so did he. We were no longer soft little things taunting each other in the safety of the gardens and in the presence of tutors. Now we tumbled beneath thorns and on the wet ground.
"Tell me, Eda, do you have a death wish?" Alstroe said above me. He locked his hands around my biceps and lifted me off of the ground until we both stood. The steady rain made it hard to see the intensity of his gaze, but his glare lit up my face.
He towered more than a head above me, because of that, I had a clear view of the annoyance translating through his furrowed brows and clicking, square jaw. Alstroe looked like most Guardians – a sternness always weighed down his broad shoulders, and his dark brows were perpetually pulled down as if calculating my next step. That was his job, after all. He kept his hair long – in fact, I had never seen him cut it. It hung down to his slender waist in a thick black sheet. He had haunting, almond-shaped eyes. Those black orbs watched me constantly – watched me eat, watched me cry, watched me laugh, and always, no matter what, watched me escape. Or attempt to escape.
