33. Astraea
33
A straea
I tried to meditate, but it seemed I needed a lot of teaching to even come close to mastering silence of the mind. Even though my thoughts were foggy right now, they wouldn’t stop battering my head.
Groaning, I gave up, massaging my temples.
“You can do this,” Katerina encouraged.
I was enlightened by her to the fact that my past self had conquered the effects of Nebulora and had been able to find my magick through it. With my hopeless attempts that weren’t so much as slightly warming my skin with magick, I was beginning to lose trust in that fact more than anything Katerina had told me so far.
“I haven’t even felt my full power yet in full health, never mind pushing through this. Everything is heavy and cloudy.”
“Now is the time. Find it for you and for all of us, dammit.”
My head turned to her, stunned and mildly irritated by her tone.
Katerina giggled. “Sorry, it was worth a try. You preferred to give and take tough love a lot as your old self.”
I huffed a laugh with her. “I don’t know what I prefer now.”
It was a lie, I thought, as I remembered how responsive I became to Nyte when he was harsh in the woods, attacking without holding back.
The scraping of metal and stone would never fail to make me wince, but my heart skipped a beat when it came from below this time.
Two humans dragged someone in and my cage wobbled as I stepped closer to the edge. My world silenced at the blood that trailed them—at the gruesome sight of the man’s torn back. Two sharp, bleeding lines. My hand covered my mouth and the other gripped the bar with the wave of dizziness and sickness that overcame me.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. That all the times I’d stood above in this keep my people were being barbarically stripped of their wings and held captive for their blood below.
My eyes filled with tears of grief and agony at first. But they quickly turned hot. My pulse spiked. I watched them drag the man who couldn’t walk through the door at the opposite end and I snapped with rage.
“He’s not getting away with this,” I snarled.
I took deep inhales as I sat back down, crossed my legs, and straightened my spine. I dove deep within myself to find what I needed to break free of this damn poison. Meeting the raging fire around my magick with more willpower than ever, I gritted my teeth painfully and reached through it.
My name is Astraea.
I pushed with everything I had through the haze of my mind. My pulse raced dangerously. It was like passing a hand through scorching fire, which took me to the very edge of my resistance. Every time I’d come this close I’d had to retreat when it threatened to devour me completely. It could kill me… or free me.
I am the daughter of Dusk and Dawn.
A whimper escaped my lips but I let the inferno take me within and gripped the magick behind it with everything I was.
I am the star-maiden.
That light magick… I became it.
My eyes snapped open and my world was touched in starlight. Shimmering and beautiful, but dangerously lethal. My skin warmed to banish all chill and I found my silver markings glowing. My hand lifted and the Starlight Void opened for me, as natural as breathing. I reached inside, gripped my key, and stood as it came to life in my hand, flaring a stunning purple and touching in my chest like an embracing alliance.
“You did it,” Katerina said with an air of wonder.
“We’re getting our people the hell out of here.”
The key answered me, and with a cry I swiped horizontally and expelled a sheet of light magick that cut through the bars. The floor fell away but instinct awakened in me, like I was unlocking skills I’d known before, and exhilaration pumped through my blood.
I jumped before I could fall the long way down. The key disappeared into the void and my hands wrapped around the top bars. Half of the cage clamored so loudly against the stone that it wavered my focus in a wince and pierced my ears.
Now, we were on a countdown before guards flooded in from the commotion.
It was only now that I came to the terrifying conclusion that while I might know how to do this, I hadn’t accounted for my current lack of physical strength in my brazenness. My arms tore in pain from the lack of muscle but I couldn’t fall; I didn’t think I would survive it.
“Where’s your wings?” Katerina asked with a note of panic from seeing my struggle now.
“I can’t—,” I wheezed.
I tried to focus and find them but right now my panic and the remnants of the Nebulora made it impossible.
I sobbed from the pain as I swung my legs, enough to gain a push, let go, and barely manage to grip the next bar. Three more to go. Then the biggest challenge would be whether I could pull myself up to the top of the cage.
By the time urgent voices sounded, about to burst in, I cried out at the last hurdle to pull myself up. It took every ounce of physical strength that I had to pause for breath that was hard to draw with my midriff being crushed by a thick pole I was bent over. When the blackness at the edge of my vision passed, I seized all my determination to swing my leg around until I got in the position to balance myself on top of the cage just as the door below slammed open.
I retrieved the key, not sure if it would work, and I aimed it and called my magick through it. The bridge of light it produced could plummet me down if it was as hollow as it looked, but I was out of time for caution.
I jumped.
Landing on the strip of light I released a delirious noise of relief and shot across. The voices were commanding each other on the ground, and it was only a matter of time before they burst through the balcony I landed on too. But I made it across, and then it was only my adrenaline pushing through every tired muscle and sharp breath cutting my throat.
I reeled in Katerina’s cage despite the pain lancing through me with every heavy pull. I couldn’t manage the whole way as my arms gave out and I heaved a dry sob.
“Can you jump from there?” I asked through wheezing gasps.
“Yes.”
Using magick was a temporary reprieve even though it drained strength from me after. In the moment it coursed through my body, I felt dangerously invincible. It could destroy me if I didn’t remember my limits.
“Ready?”
She nodded.
I cut through Katerina’s cage the same way as before and she almost didn’t make the leap across. Both of us shot arms out for each other and by some miracle from the gods she tumbled my way instead of the opposite. We crashed to the balcony ground in a tangle of limbs and agony.
Then the door tore open.
I angled my arms and pushed myself up as they wobbled. Flicking my sight up, I saw four men file in, braced with swords.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” I panted, managing to clutch the key staff and use it as an aid to rise.
The closest man gave a chuckle, but it wasn’t fully arrogant as he eyed the key carefully. As if it was the only threat but the person who wielded it was nothing more than a cockroach to crush.
“You’re the one who’s going to get hurt, girl.”
“Stop,” I warned.
He didn’t listen.
I had no choice.
All it took was lifting the key and slamming it to the ground to split through the slab between us. The other three shouted and managed to usher themselves back before the stone balcony crumbled. The one who’d advanced was swallowed in the crumbing debris that fell with him.
“We have to go,” Katerina said, pulling my arm, but I couldn’t help the seconds of regret that tainted me when I saw he wouldn’t survive that fall.
Then I squared my shoulders, knowing this was the world I lived in, and that it was at war for peace.
We jogged across the balcony until we found stairs and ran down them. When more men tried to intercept us I used magick to get them out our way until they started retreating.
Then we emerged into a new large space like the one we’d been held in but horror slowed my jog until I stood in the center, turning to see every cage on the ground level, then the second level, then the third.
They were all. Full.
Dozens of captive celestials edged timidly out of shadow, peeking through their cages at our abrupt intrusion.
“It’s the star-maiden!” someone called out.
It snapped me back from my reeling shock. Voices broke out, most of them muttering the same thing with a growing buzz of hope. Hope that they were getting to go home.
“Astraea!”
I gasped, spinning toward the direction of my name, and my eyes filled with overwhelming relief at the head of pink hair I saw. Zath was with Rose, to my immense relief.
Rushing over to them, I examined Rose head to toe. Aside from tousled hair and a few scratches, likely from her resistance, she appeared unharmed.
My eyes dropped to in concern to where Zath was clutching his abdomen but he waved me off before I could say anything.
“Just a nasty beating, I’ll be okay,” he said.
Even Rose looked at him with worry.
“I have to get you out,” I said, mulling over how.
My hand lifted to the lock, and threads of magick pulled out of me to break it.
I was learning it was so many things. Like clay to a sculptor and paint to an artist—it could do many things and was my craft to learn.
When my magick retracted back into me, however, I didn’t know how much longer I could go on in my current state and I glanced helplessly around all the cages.
Rose’s hands were on me the moment she was free, as if knowing my stability was about to fail.
“We have to get you out of here. We can come back with more forces for them,” Rose said quietly.
I shook my head, watching Katerina at one of the cages and the bright hope of the tattered older woman within one… I couldn’t leave them another moment in here.
“You can’t fight anymore,” Zath said softly in a plea. I’d never seen him so concerned for me.
“I have to.”
Taking a long breath that felt like fire expanding in my chest, I used the help of my key to walk, trying to gauge how I was going to do this. One cage at a time? That would take too long, guards would flood the room soon.
Then I realized…
“Where’s all the guards?” I asked.
Surely Reihan would have guessed this was where I would go. We should have been swarmed by forces by now.
Someone approached, a single set of feet running toward us, and I spun to them.
Calix slowed his pace, holding up his hands, but he didn’t keep his eyes on me; they scanned around and above and if I didn’t know any better I would have believed the ghostly expression that was disturbed by this sinister place.
“I’m going to kill him,” I seethed.
“Wait—” my step was halted by Rose and my incredulous look sliced her instead. “I hate to say this, but we might not be alive if it wasn’t for him.”
“What are you talking about?” I snapped.
Calix was a traitor and a liar.
“Reihan ordered us killed. Calix took us before they could but we couldn’t leave you. So he brought us here since they wouldn’t come looking, and kept us in the know about you until we could figure out a plan. But you seemed to have done that all on your own, as impulsive as this is. I kind of like your style.”
I tried to smile at the small attempt to ease the racing adrenaline in us from realizing that this was far from over. We had to get everyone out of here alive.
“There’s an attack outside the keep,” Calix informed.
My brow pulled together, then relaxed with a wash of cold dread as I asked, “Nyte?”
Calix quickly shook his head, approaching tentatively as if I still might turn on him. In truth, I hadn’t fully let him off the hook yet.
“I think they’re fae.”
My eyes widened and hope bloomed in my chest. Had the resistance come to aid?
It bought us time to get everyone out of here.
“Do you have keys?” I asked Calix.
His face fell apologetic and I could have groaned to see the shake of his head.
“Magick it is,” I said through a labored breath.
“You hardly seem capable to tackle them all. We can wait for help,” Zath protested.
“We don’t know how many fae there are. This could be our only chance with the distraction they’re making for us.”
I practically hobbled to the center of the room. I would rest once everyone was out. And could only hope what it took wasn’t my life.
So many eyes watched me. Hollow, tired faces that for some reason looked at me with the kind of hope they’d thought was lost.
Focusing on my breathing, I reached for the power of the key, unable to muster enough magick without it right now. Power crawled over my skin like thin prickling water. It hummed in my veins like new life, and I was just the vessel. Then it spilled from me in threads that searched for the cage locks. Starlight swirled around the room and though it was beautiful I was trembling to hold it, direct it. Those threads wound their way around every cell like I held them all in the palm of my hand and all it would take is one…
Pull.
They all broke at once but I wasn’t prepared and had not trained myself to reel the magick back into myself safely. It pummeled into me like a rebounding attack.
Rose caught me before I could fall.
“You did it,” she said, a certain wonder in her tone.
I could hardly stay awake, but I had to see. The voices grew louder yet they were all muffled. I was close to passing out. But I watched in wonder as some still had their wings—stunning, large silver wings. They helped each other from the higher cages and my chest beat with so much pride and joy.
“They’re going to be okay; now we need to start getting everyone out,” Rose assured me.
I nodded. The key staff slipped from my grasp, but my hand raised in time and the Starlight Void opened to keep it safe. I let Zath hook my waist and help me walk.
In the familiar halls of the keep above, my heart ached at the memories I had here that now felt tainted. I could distantly hear the clamor of steel and shouts of battle and my fear awakened my adrenaline to push through some of the fog threatening my consciousness.
We made it to the grand entrance before we stopped.
“Oh Astraea,” Davina sighed, rushing to me.
I could have broken in the embrace she pulled me into.
Over her shoulder, I trembled at the sight of the vicious fighting.
“We have to stop this,” I breathed.
“We’re handling it,” Davina said. “We need to get you out of here.”
“Not yet.” Reihan’s voice chilled down my spine and I turned.
My body was weak but I straightened. No matter what, I would protect my friends.
“It’s over, Reihan,” I said.
“We didn’t even get the chance to talk, maiden,” he said. So calm and unbothered by the fighting that was happening.
I didn’t know who I was staring at. Something had been wrong since the moment he captured me and I couldn’t untangle what it was.
Reaching for my key, I thought that if I kept the magick flowing through me I would be able to fight him. Whatever punishment I had to face when I let the power fade would be worth it to save my friends. My people.
Bodies crept out from behind the reigning lord but they weren’t guards. Not uniformed, and when I tracked the ground… I discovered them to be shadowless. Then I looked in the glass to confirm some were soulless by their missing reflections but what I found instead…
My heart stopped. Then sped. It felt like the ground crumbled from under me slowly and I couldn’t move.
“Vampires,” Zath muttered.
It all made sense now. World-shattering sense.
There was no time to deliberate my horror when the vampires attacked.
Rose and Zath fought with steel they had to have picked up from fallen guards. Davina shapeshifted into a large black panther to tear through bodies with her powerful claws and jaw.
None of them came for me, because I was pinned by the hungry stare of the villain in front of me.
“What do you want?” I asked. My throat was bone dry. “My blood?”
“I have enough of that for now.”
My grip tightened on the key as he took a predatory step to me.
He said, “I want an alliance, Astraea. I have the answer to the dire problem of the world. The one you couldn’t find all that time ago—a way to kill Nyte before he kills you.”
My head shook vacantly.
Reihan took one more step and I braced to shift the key—
He cried out and my sight snapped down in utter shock to the blade protruding from his abdomen. It retracted but I barely caught a glimpse of Calix who locked eyes on me with blank terror.
With goodbye.
With a plea.
My mouth opened but I didn’t get to release my scream. Reihan moved impossibly fast, hand lashing around Calix’s throat.
“No—!” I was too late to save him.
I didn’t hear the snap of his neck, but watching death glass over those familiar brown eyes and his whole body go limp in Reihan’s hold… I fell to my knees as his body was let go so carelessly to crumple to the ground.
My vision came and went but I couldn’t think of anything but that final request in Calix’s eyes that now stared hauntingly at me. I only had seconds to react, crawling to him and placing a hand over his hollow chest.
The last warmth of him engulfed my palm before shooting up my arm and settling in my chest.
“I’ll make sure you see her again,” I whispered to his soul.
I didn’t cry, but his death crushed another piece of me inside. We might have had our differences, but in the end our love for Cassia kept us bonded. I mourned for him.
I barely looked up in time to see Reihan slipping away down a hall, blood dripping from his wound.
Loathing torched my blood. Rage and vengeance and pure fucking spite.
I went after him against all alarms to let him go this time. To come back when I had full strength. But my anger knew no limits.
Down the hall I braced against the stone wall a few times to catch my breath. I reached deeper and deeper for more magick even though I knew the danger.
He was right. Here.
I had the chance to end him.
In the room I cornered him in, his guise was revealed in the mirror reflections along each wall. This was where Cassia would have lessons in ballroom dancing and a few times I’d had the joy of participating.
Reihan stood with his back to me in every perfect detail.
But it was the fallen king, Nyte’s father, who stared at me with a wickedly amused smile through every reflection.
With a cry the key became a bow and I aimed a light arrow in seconds. It pierced the top hat he wore, spearing it into the mirror that cracked, now adding a sinister tone to his image.
“What did you do to him?” I yelled in anguish.
When the king turned he wore his own flesh now, and my heart withered with what I was about to learn.
“The reigning lord is dead. But you should be thanking me after his exploitation of you. That was truth I uncovered for you.”
I blinked, then shook my head. He was trying to warp my mind.
“What do you have to gain in killing him… in being here?”
Shock smothered my fear of him. I couldn’t believe it. He’d played the part so well when we’d arrived, but the cruelty this past week had never really been Reihan.
“I knew you would come here eventually.”
“Why kill the reigning lord for it?”
“I enjoyed taking his place for a while. Having some semblance of what I once had before you destroyed it, and perhaps I came to enjoy it more. Here, the lord had true power and respect. It made me realize once and for all that what I had was always because of my son and without him most would not have feared me. But that will change. I no longer need him.”
“He’s your son.” It came out in a pained breath of incredulity after hearing him lack any care or ounce of love for his own child.
“He’s a failed experiment. Though I will admit he served his purpose well for a while. Before you got in the way.”
That brought my resentment back in a surge of heat.
“He’s every triumph you’ll never achieve. Every power you’ll never feel. You’ve always needed him, but he has never needed you.”
“Your affection for him is admirable despite the people he’s slaughtered. Your people.”
“By your order.”
“My order is a word, his actions are the crime.”
“Your word is a poisonous manipulation. And I won’t let you hurt him anymore.”
Forming another light arrow I lifted my aim, but the king’s words halted my release.
“Bond with Rainyte.”
It was such a jarring statement I frowned, puzzling over the motive.
“You know of a way to kill Nyte,” I said, becoming slowly doused in dread. “Does that have something to do with it?”
The king boldly took a step toward the arrow pointed at him.
“We don’t have to be enemies. There is a way for us all to get what we desire. I would vow to reign as an equal to you and the High Celestials. No more war, no more conquest, no more failing magick. All you would have to do is give him up. He will always be destruction to your order.”
My heart cleaved in two for Nyte. To have a father so hell-bent on ending him now that he no longer served as a ruthless soldier to his gain.
“You’re absolutely despicable,” I said through gritted teeth. “You are the plague to my order, not him.”
The king moved and I reacted too. I realized all his words had been a distraction from the dagger he unsheathed and threw. It scored across my arm, knocking my arrow out of his path. From the lance of searing fire I knew it was laced with Nebulora.
A new voice intruded and if I hadn’t caught his reflection behind me, I would have thought it a trick.
“Harm her again, and I’ll kill you where you stand.”
Auster stepped in front of me, standing off against the king, and I couldn’t believe he was here. How had he known I was here and in trouble?
“Heroic of you to come for your maiden, Auster Nova,” the king said with a hint of amusement, like he’d anticipated it.
“Leave,” Auster ordered.
The king met my eyes with a gleam in his. He stepped forward, the only exit was behind me.
I intercepted him.
I was so fucking angry that I couldn’t contain it anymore.
“You don’t get to walk out of here,” I said.
Then I struck, hand cast out and with the added power of the key, the king flew back, slamming into the wall of mirror that rained down in a lethal waterfall.
“Astraea, you’re going to hurt yourself,” Auster reprimanded me, but right now he was only in my way and I couldn’t fathom why he would try to stop me with our enemy right in front of us.
The king groaned pushing himself up. I expected him to be more incapacitated by the blast. Then the mockery of laughter tightened in my bones.
“The gods granted me one more thing when I got inside that temple. It seems your creators are reevaluating who they entrust the world to,” the king said.
“What are you talking about?” I hissed.
“The key doesn’t affect me as much, because they granted me the will to use it without harm.”
Dusk and Dawn were really growing my vendetta against them. My grip around the key tightened like he could snatch it from me right now. Why would the gods who are supposed to be on our side grant such a catastrophic power to him?
They created me. This key that made me both astronomically more powerful yet also completely vulnerable. Now they’d granted it to the hand of my ultimate enemy.
In case I didn’t choose right. Because their ultimate enemy was Nyte.
My Nyte.
I despised those gods and didn’t care if it damned me to declare it.
My anger had been simmering but it skipped straight past boiling and I erupted.
A scream tore from me. Magick expelled from me.
The mirrors shattered and the walls exploded with the velocity of the power that blasted from me and from the key flaring brightly.
I am not a maiden just to serve.
I am not a weapon just to gain.
I didn’t stop until I fell to my knees, panting and slick with sweat when my energy dwindled to embers.
Every breath was like ash and flame. Every focus of my eyes from the destruction around me pounded my head sickeningly. I didn’t know what I’d done to the king or Auster but I couldn’t see either of them.
I’m dying.
There’s too much light.
I was so engulfed by it that I felt wholly set on fire.
I yearned for the darkness and it came for me.
It spilled over my splayed fingers cutting into shards of glass on the ground. I couldn’t lift my head for the boulder it felt like but within my blurry focus I saw him, wondering if I was mistaken about the dark angel that approached through the reflections of the shattered mirror pieces.
Until Nyte crouched before me, taking my face in his hands.
“There you are,” he said, so softly but it was the type of calm that hid panic. “You saved them all. I came thinking I’d be turning this place to rubble to get you out, but you did so by yourself.”
I managed to look up then.
“Nyte,” I said through breaths that felt numbered and if they were… I wanted to give them all to him anyway.
“I’m here. I’ve got you.”
“Is everyone… safe?”
“Thanks to you, they will be.”
My head was pounding, my muscles were on fire, and the air was too thick to breathe. I tried to blink and find focus and though it was all dust and rubble, no one else was with us when I thought to warn Nyte about his father… Auster…
My head slumped with the effort to look for them. “I can’t hold on.”
Nyte took me into his arms and stood.
“I’m right here. You’re going to be fine,” he promised.
My heart cried when that’s all I wanted and also everything I was afraid of. That he would always come, and I could never stay away.