Chapter 15 #2
His eyes flicked her lips, desire burning behind those flaming eyes. He angled his mouth to her ear. “Let’s see how dangerous you really are.”
She shivered. Damn him.
Without warning, steel sang from his back—and his blade came down, swift and brutal, toward Astraia’s head. The sound of steel meeting steel echoed in the night as she barely managed to raise the sword up to meet his strike.
But he did not relent. Her parry only spurred his enthusiasm as another set of blows rained down on her.
It took a few strikes for Astraia to familiarize herself with the sword in her hand and Draven’s fight pattern. At first, the movements were mechanical. Blocks, swings, dodges. Draven corrected her form only when necessary, saying little.
But then she began to move with more fire. Her footwork sped. Her strikes gained intent. She could almost anticipate his next move.
Then the thick blanket of warmth thrummed from her spine, weaving its way outward into her mind, her arms, her legs.
“I can feel it,” she gasped between strikes, sweat beading on her forehead.
“Good. Don’t run from it. Anchor yourself first,” Draven breathed, halting his assault.
Astraia swam into the depths of her mind, where she kept that precious box protected.
Her Elion, her tether—always ready to save her, to pull her back to herself.
She pried the lid open, gently coaxing the memory forward.
The light of his laughter echoed in her consciousness. His smile flashed before her eyes.
She took a deep breath, focusing on her tether.
“Are you anchored?” Draven asked firmly and took a few steps toward her, his boots muffled by the mossy earth surrounding them.
“Yes,” she breathed. “I’m anchored.”
“Now, I want you to let it extend beyond you. Your anchor isn’t just about keeping yourself rooted. You need to extend the anchor to the world around you. Push it to the heavens.”
She hesitated, panic starting to cloud her vision. “But what if I flare and I can’t control it?”
“Traia, look at me,” he commanded. He placed a finger under her chin, tipping it upward, and their eyes met. Not an ounce of fear in his gaze. “Elion’s death is not your fault. The bond does not own you. You command it.”
The words hit her like a current.
She loosened her grip on her tether, allowing it to surface from her mind, and compelled it forward. She willed it to seep into the earth, move with the wind, crash into streams, fly toward the barren night sky.
She flared. Not completely—the glow of her Power bond coated her body, illuminating the glen around them in white light.
A smile crept onto her face as she stared at her hands, embracing her second bond for the first time in her life without fear.
Her eyes lifted to meet Draven’s. A slow, dangerous smile curved his mouth, and she sensed it—the raw, terrifying pull defying gravity, drawing them closer. Stars, it was unfair that he could look at her like that. Like he’d already chosen to burn for her.
She lowered the blade, panting, chest heaving with the force of it all.
“Well, I guess you’re not as hopeless as I thought,” Draven said, pulling the sword from Astraia’s hand, and winked at her.
“I can still gut you, bounty hunter,” she quipped, her glow ebbing as she sealed her memories away.
“I have no doubt, Starborne, but before you do, I’m going to bathe and sleep. I suggest you do the same,” he said over his shoulder as he walked toward the wide stream flowing by their camp.
Astraia huffed and made her way over to Orion to retrieve the vanilla soap she had taken with her from the Capri Inn.
Standing next to her horse, giving him well deserved neck scratches, she glanced up at the black void, and for a second, she thought she saw a glimmer of light in the dense blackness. Blinking, she shook her head and looked ahead at the stream a few yards away.
Regret filled her. There in the moonlit waters was Draven, shirtless. His muscles rippled in the moonbeams. His hair glistened with the luminescence. She had the sudden thought of being held in those arms, running her fingers through his untamed hair as he held her close to him.
Heat rose to her face, knowing full well that it was not her bond flaring causing this reaction.
“Stars save me,” she whispered, unable to tear her gaze away from the sight of him.
He turned, his back to her, shadowed by the night. Astraia noticed several elaborate tattoos covering most of his torso and arms as well as scars, long slashes that marred his perfect body. She wondered what could have made those scars, or who.
Just then, she noticed a different set of markings, right in the middle of his spine. These were different, not as dark as the tattoos, but not as light as healed scars. She squinted in the dark, trying to decipher the markings, when he turned.
Draven’s eyes found hers, almost as if he sensed her watching him.
She averted her eyes, returning to the task of retrieving her vanilla soap, forcing down her embarrassment.
Splashing and quiet footsteps approached the campfire.
“Enjoying the view, Starborne?” His voice was low, husky again, a hint of a challenge in his tone.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, bounty hunter,” she snapped, yanking her cloak from Orion’s saddlebag and storming off toward the stream.
She made sure to stay behind a tree beside the stream to bathe, preventing any further embarrassment by overexposing herself. The water was cool, but not unbearable as she scrubbed off the sweat from traveling and training.
In the moonlight, she could faintly make out her lumenmark. The sigil of the Constellations, a sign of being Starborne, only appeared when you were chosen by the Stars.
Not everyone was chosen for the bond. Only those who demonstrated the trait of a constellation to its highest degree were bestowed abilities.
Astraia’s Sacrifice lumenmark appeared when she was only twelve.
She had accepted blame for one of Elion’s mischievous tricks, but her father had been in an unforgiving mood.
He had whipped her with a rod, twelve times to match her age, a lashing for every year of “being a disappointment,” he had said.
That night, while she wept as Elion dressed her wounds, the lumenmark had illuminated her skin—branding her as Starborne.
Etched into the smooth flesh of the left side of her chest just below her collarbone, the mark shimmered faintly beneath her skin—a constellation of golden light, each star a precise, gleaming point woven in a graceful arc that mirrored the sacred formation of Pegasus in the heavens.
The mark was not static. It breathed with her, pulsing faintly with the rhythm of her heartbeat, waxing brighter in moments of pain, and dimming when her thoughts were calm. The central star mark, just below the curve of her shoulder, burned the brightest.
And when she flared—when the bond ignited with purpose—the entire lumenmark blazed with celestial fire, lighting her skin from within like a divine brand.
Lines of fine, thread-like gold connected the celestial points in an elegant silhouette—wings flared wide, head bowed not in defeat, but in defiant grace.
At a glance, it resembled a winged steed mid-flight—but to those who looked closer, it was a story written in Starlight: of selflessness, of strength tempered with sorrow, of a girl who would burn for others before she’d ever let them fall.
She traced her fingers gingerly over the mark. The healing abilities of Sacrifice were always a comfort to her. A drop of mending in a shattered world.
Her second lumenmark dotted the middle of her spine, a tribute to the constellation Canis Major, the white wolf. Power was one of the few constellations that had dared challenge Dominion in the Celestial War—a noble but ultimately futile effort.
Astraia had refused to acknowledge the brand on her back. She had even contemplated carving it out of her skin, as if this would somehow sever the bond with Power.
Yet tonight, for the first time in five years, she was no longer afraid of the golden etchings adorning her.
Just to prove her reformation, she let Power glide from her center, remembering Draven’s instruction to use the world as her anchor, not just her own resolve.
Warmth pooled in her core, tingling as it surged up her spine and into her limbs.
The sensation was exhilarating—like fire and light dancing through her blood.
Her skin began to glow, a pale white gold, until even the surface of the stream shimmered with refracted Starlight.
She smiled, euphoric. For the first time, she knew Power belonged to her. That she belonged to herself.
But then—a crack.
A tremor ran through her limbs. The light pulsed once, then again—brighter, hotter, erratic.
Her grin faltered.
The tether slipped. Just slightly.
A surge of power burst from her like a wave. The surface of the stream hissed, boiling in a flash of steam. The nearby trees bent under a gust of unnatural wind. Pebbles trembled across the bank. A branch split with a sharp crack.
“No—no, no, no,” Astraia gasped, heart pounding. “Not again.”
She scrambled for her tether, blindly reaching through her panic to anchor herself—but the chest in her mind was distant, like it was sinking beneath her, and she was losing her grip. The world spun with the same dizzying chaos she had felt the night she flared years ago.
“Elion,” she whispered aloud, pleading to the memory.
Stillness.
Her breath hitched—the laugh, the smile, the warmth of her brother’s memory blooming through her chest. She grabbed it like a lifeline, yanking the tether inward, willing the power back into its cage.
The light flickered. Dimmed. Dissolved.
Silence returned to the glen.
Astraia fell to her knees in the shallows, her breathing ragged, her glowing skin now dulled to its usual pale hue. Tears blurred her vision. Her body trembled—not from exhaustion, but from the suffocating weight of almost losing control again.
I could’ve hurt someone. I could’ve hurt him.
She dragged in a shaking breath, her hands clenching the water-soaked moss. Even now, after everything, she was still a danger. Still a risk.
Still…wrong.
Astraia stayed kneeling in the stream, the cool water lapping against her legs, trying to soothe the fever of fear under her skin.
She wiped at her cheeks, furious that tears had fallen. She hadn’t cried in years. She didn’t cry anymore. Not for herself.
A rustle in the dark made her freeze.
Her eyes snapped to the shoreline—and there he was. Draven was leaning against the very tree where her clothes were hanging.
His arms were crossed, half in shadow, but his expression was unreadable. Not smug. Not mocking. Something quieter. Something too still.
“Enjoying the show, bounty hunter?” she snapped, her voice sharp from the sting of shame. She crossed her arms over her chest, though the stream masked her body beneath.
“Immensely,” he said, but the usual teasing edge was dulled—faint, like a reflex rather than intent.
He pushed off the tree and turned without another word, disappearing into the glow of the firelight.