Escaping with nothing but a wide smile and copious nodding from a dull video comm with an important official from the disease prevention department, Kai let the link fall silent and shoved a hand into his hair. He huffed in laughter and glanced up at Torin, sitting in an armchair.

"Wow, could that guy talk!" Kai shoved away from his desk and sprang to his feet, leaning over to shuffle through the papers and documents he still needed to scrawl a signature onto. "On and on. I don't even know what 'estimated guesses' means. Do you know what that was supposed to mean? That was nonsense. He kept saying it, though."

Torin sighed, his stop-making-fun-of-the-highly-respected-official-and-start-working-on-the-important-paperwork-his-people-have-been-handing-you-all-day sigh, the one he reserved specially for when Kai was feeling especially immature. "Hung-dàren does not deserve your mockery. He's done excellent things."

Kai paused and glanced up at Torin, in the middle of turning a page. "Oh, for sure. But-" he squinted and turned the corners of his mouth down, "our estimated guesses? I would say he deserves it just a little bit."

Torin sighed again and stood, this time the kind of sigh that suggested Kai was aging him with each word he spoke. "While you've been playing, about three more acts have to be surveyed and approved. Get to work."

Kai groaned and collapsed back into his chair, dutifully scooching forward and picking up a pen. Torin was just about to leave the office when a comm sprang up on Kai's portscreen, filling the room with a loud ringing.

Kai glanced at it once and then did a double take, setting his pen down with his brow furrowed, confused. The palace defense was comming him directly. He picked up the portscreen and hit the accept comm button hesitantly. A strained voice came from the other end, sounding as though it was close to panic, and cut right to the chase, without even giving Kai a chance to greet.

"We're very sorry to bother you, your Majesty, but we thought you might be interested to know that we're receiving an incoming video transmission from a royal Lunar podship."

Kai froze.

He blinked once, twice. His entire world had gone dizzy for just one moment, and then he was back, and Torin had forgotten his plans to leave and was now back in front of his desk, a question in his eyes.

"What?" stuttered Kai, gripping the edges of the portscreen and scanning the skies outside his windows as if he would be able to see it up there. "This is a joke. Tell me you're not serious."

"I'm afraid I am, your Majesty. They are attempting to enter Earth's atmosphere. It seems to be quite urgent. Would you like to see the transmission?"

Kai nodded hastily. "Yes, yes, of course, patch it through!"

A video comm popped up on Kai's screen, and he dragged it larger and turned up the volume. A Lunar guard was sitting in the cockpit, and Kai recognised him with a start as the blond guard who wouldn't stop staring at Selene's head thaumaturge when he had first arrived. He looked very different now. His long hair was disheveled and messy, and his eyes were frenzied with panic and horror uncharacteristic for a stoic Lunar guard to show.

"-request immediate asylum in the Eastern Commonwealth," came the transmission."I repeat, we are under heavy attack. We are unarmed. We request immediate asylum in the Eastern Commonwealth!"

The guard shouted as something bright flashed before him, and an important looking wire popped free and sparked in the dark carriage behind him.

"Please, this is royal Lunar pod number 01557 requesting immediate permission for entry into the Eastern Commonwealth. I am carrying the queen and she is experiencing intense symptoms of psychosis and needs immediate medical attention-"

Kai's breath stopped.

"What?" he asked no one in particular, his chest stilled and quiet. "What?"

A frenzied female shriek sounded on the other side of the link, and Kai's heart nearly stopped beating. The guard's head whipped around before he remembered he was piloting a podship. The video shook with his ship as he glanced back down at his transmitter. "We request immediate asylum in the Eastern Commonwealth. Please, we need-"

With a sudden bout of static, the video cut out and the office was free from the fraying wires and thundering shakes of the Lunar podship in the sky. Kai was returned to his call with the Palace Defense.

"Let them in!" Kai cried, almost throttling the portscreen. "Help them, now."

"But your Majesty, this is a royal Lunar podship we're talking about--"

"I know exactly who we're talking about. Let them in, and help them land safely. Now. If anything happens to them, I'm holding you personally responsible!" Kai hung up the comm and slammed his portscreen down onto his desk hard, closing his eyes and trying to slow his breathing. Trying to calm down his heartbeat. He thought he was done with this. He thought he was done with this, but one more appearance and he was just as broken and shattered as the day she left. What was wrong with him?

Torin didn't stop Kai when he sprang to his feet and paced back and forth beside the window. He didn't stop him when he pressed his forehead against the glass. He didn't even stop him when Kai started to kick the window. But he stood and stared past him as a shadow shot across the sky. Kai looked up.

A trail of smoke drew a violent line where a Lunar podship was hurtling down from the sky, straight toward the Commonwealth palace. Kai swallowed the lump in his throat and blinked the mist out of his eyes and shoved the panic out of his chest.

Either this pilot was very crazy or very unconscious. The ship wouldn't slow down.

Kai didn't hesitate. Without even grabbing a jacket against the autumn cool, Kai flung open his office door and started to run. He caught an elevator and slammed his shoulder against the wall. He was a fiery ball of jittery nerves and horrible apprehension, and he could not stop thinking about that podship. All that smoke. A huge shadow pressed in and misted all of of his judgment with a deep blackness, and Kai choked on his own breath as the elevator moved. It was too slow. To slow. Kai pressed his hand into the wall and tried to keep himself from hyperventilating, from letting the panic that stirred up in his stomach from overflowing. He took deep breaths, but it was not enough. The elevator doors opened.

Kai rushed out onto the landing pad, flashing with lights and signals. He squinted up at the sky and watched the smoking podship spin in strange circles.

"What in the stars is he doing?" Kai gasped for breath, shielding his eyes. The pod jerked and sputtered black ashes, raining down on the landing pad, as the pilot slowly lowered the groaning ship down in a helixing descent. Torin and an irritated security detail rushed out behind him, his advisor griping about recklessness and bad judgment, but Kai could hardly hear as he watched the ship. He doubted the pilot would make it as he watched it slow and try to settle on shaking landing gear, but the Lunar pilot must have been better at his job than Kai had given credit for. The ship landed safely, against all odds, the smoke now engulfing it.

It was agony. Complete agony. Kai watched the Lunar podship, its shiny scales cracked and sparking and flaming, and he could see the door carved into the side, showing no signs of opening. He rubbed his wrist and shuffled his feet and waited painfully, a hot rock settling in his stomach and curdling it. He didn't think he could wait any more without going insane when the door groaned and popped out of its socket with a grand moan and grinding of metal. Gone were the fancy hydraulics Kai had seen these ships have before, and out of the black smoke and haze came two forms.

It was the pilot, blond hair dirty with oil and dirt and mussed with the effort, limping and hoisting and dragging a limp female form out of the ship. Kai nearly cried out and took a step forward, but his security blocked him from coming any closer.

The pilot was holding Selene, her arm limp around his neck and her head hung drowsily, brown hair messy and knotted. She was wearing what once might have been a lovely silk gown but was now a ripped, smoke-soiled number with the hems torn. Her feet were bare and blackened with dirt and grease, and she was very much unconscious. The pilot's face was strained and tired with the effort of dragging her uncooperative body, and he fell to his knees and laid her down on the ground.

Kai trembled a little bit, and stood on his tip-toes, peering up over the shoulder of the security guard in front of him. "Is she okay?" he called out to the exhausted pilot, kneeling next to Selene. He looked up almost as if he were surprised to see Kai, as if he'd forgotten anyone was there. He stared back down at his queen, sunken-cheeked and melancholy.

"I don't know." The pilot dug his fingers into his knees and kept his eyes on Selene.

The medical crew rolled in shouting, with a stretcher for Selene and a flurry of concerned officials flocking around the sullen pilot, who batted them away as if they annoyed him. Kai pushed past his bodyguards to approach the pilot, who pulled himself to his feet laboriously and dusted the dirt off of his pants. He eyed Kai suspiciously as the young emperor's steps faltered.

"What happened to her?" Kai asked, trying to sound impassive. Something about the way the pilot squinted at him suggested he was seeing right through him, though, and Kai deflated a little bit. "What happened to her?"

The pilot looked off toward the city. "Maybe your Imperial Majesty can help me figure it out. Your queen comes to you screaming and crying in the midst of night, looking like a walking nightmare, repeating that they're trying to kill her, over and over. She calls you by your name, which you thought she forgot years ago, and she asks for your help." He glanced at Kai. "She's hallucinating. She's kicked off her rocker with psychotic symptoms. And she keeps saying, 'The Eastern Commonwealth, the Eastern Commonwealth.' Our pod was fired on as though we were the enemy on our way off Luna. How the hell am I supposed to know what happened to her?"

Kai furrowed his brow. "I just-"

The pilot stormed off into the palace and left Kai on the rooftop, Torin at his side. He was stunned. He began to pace, back and forth across the landing pad, his head spinning.

"Please, Kaito, I don't know how you manage all this pacing," Torin said, rubbing his temple with one hand. Kai spun around to stare at him incredulously.

"How can you be so calm?" Kai exploded, waving his arm through the air. "They came from the sky. The sky, like before, and-"

Torin sighed. "Where else would they have come from? Listen, your Majesty, please don't let your imagination and emotions run wild. Keep yourself in check, and try not to be too overexcited to the queen about how she seems to be fleeing her homeland."

"You don't wonder why? How, what, why?" Kai buried his hand in his hair and spun around to face the city. "You're probably right. I just-" Kai closed his eyes and slowed his breathing and tried to replace his intense worry for Selene with something more neutral. "I just feel such extreme panic. I feel as though it's passed, and then it comes back again, again. I don't know how to get rid of it. I don't know how to make things safe again." Kai let his hand fall to his side limply. "Everything is supposed to feel right, you know? Letumosis is being cured even faster than it's spreading, and it seems every task I've had as emperor has been falling into place. But I can't feel anything other than on edge. On edge and so incredibly nervous. And there's no reason for it."

Well, that was a lie. There was a reason, and Kai knew what it was. He didn't like it. He swore to himself, because it took just one look at her face and he remembered everything he thought he had moved past as clearly as it was on that last day. The Peace Ball. Two months ago and a lifeline away from Selene, and now all of a sudden everything that Kai had suppressed away from his thoughts was back. Back, and kicking violently at him. And maybe it had been there, kicking at him, the whole time. Maybe it hadn't ever taken a break.

"I see." Torin's voice was uncharacteristically soft. "Well, I suppose that's one thing you and the queen must work out for yourselves."

Kai turned to face him. "You're my advisor, aren't you?" He tugged one corner of his lips into a half-grin against all odds and the tearing stress in his chest.

Torin smiled ever so slightly, inclining his head. "There are some things that I can tell you don't want me to advise you on. This is one. Your Majesty." Torin bowed his goodbye and smiled once more before stepping back inside the palace.

Kai turned to the city once more and sat down, rolling his shoulders back and trying to feel calm. If he thought about it, he knew that he hadn't really felt calm since Selene left. He had never felt at ease. He wondered what it was about her that had turned his world so utterly upside down.