50. Astraea
50
A straea
I followed Nyte’s trace when he disappeared through the Starlight Void. He stood in front of the Nova castle and the crowd outside ran from him in a chaos of screams and terror—because it was Nightsdeath who dominated the courtyard in a display of angry shadows that brewed a starless storm around him. I’d seen his dark side before… but not like this.
Nyte gave over so completely that I feared he was beyond reaching even by me. The black vines crawled over his jaw now, his eyes glowed the brightest I’d ever seen, and his skin inked around them. He stood there like the sun defying the night. Utterly breathtaking, but absolutely terrifying.
I tracked him carefully, trying to gauge what he was going to do, as the people cleared the courtyard. His focused sight targeted the castle and I anticipated his next move with seconds to spare.
As his hand lifted, I stepped through the void. Appearing in his path, I shifted my leg back, bracing for the impact of his dark magick that slammed into me as I angled the key to battle it. I cried out and gritted my teeth at the intensity of the power that awakened in me to contend with Nyte.
I am his bonded. His equal.
We’d been here before, and I had it in me to match his power even though my mind was chanting that he was too strong for me.
I am the star-maiden.
Nyte had shown me pieces of our past. He didn’t withhold how much he believed in me then even as his enemy.
We are the stars and night itself.
My silver markings glowed and the world became so bright that I could feel the dark precisely. With a battle cry, I shifted stance, gripped Nyte’s power with mine, and sent our anguish to the heavens.
The infusion of shadows and starlight became a beautifully devastating firework that could have taken out the entire island.
I heaved with exertion and stared off with the calm, simmering fury of Nightsdeath.
“Zath and Rose are in there,” I yelled to him. He might not care for innocents with his mind given over to his dark side, but I hoped their names might bring something of him back.
“Do you think I care for you standing there? If you want your bones to become dust with his then so be it.”
I didn’t know if I was really thinking straight. No—only in desperation. Before Nyte could strike again, I channeled through the void, appearing in the ballroom that was still full.
“Astraea!” Rose called my name but I didn’t have a spare second.
Nyte’s magick vibrated through me, and the moment it collided into the building, mine surged out of me to flood light through the cracks the darkness made. My skin was slick and my arms trembled to hold this place from shattering.
“Everyone get out!” I screamed. Shit, my bones were aching. I didn’t think I could hold it long.
To my relief people ran out of every exit they could. Many could leave through the balconies with their wings and yet I was panicking that not everyone would make it.
“What’s happening?” Zath barked. He and Rose scrambled up to me.
“Please,” I said through a labored breath. “I can’t hold this long and you need to get out.”
“We’re not leaving you here,” Rose said firmly.
“I’ll be okay, I promise. But I can’t protect you too.”
“She’s right,” Zath said, his tone defeated, but I was so damn glad he didn’t doubt and fight me right now. “You can use the void, right?”
“Exactly,” I wheezed.
He nodded though it was stiff with reluctance. Rose took a bit of pulling to get her to leave with him but when they slipped out the door I closed my eyes.
Nyte’s magick didn’t battle me past the initial impact but I couldn’t let go when he’d struck hard enough to collapse the castle. I breathed through the fire creeping up my throat to control this amount of power.
It’s not him. It’s not Nyte. His pain made him this and Nightsdeath had no family. No love. No mercy.
I couldn’t hold on anymore, but I also didn’t know how to retreat the power without it slamming back into me. It was out of my control now and I yielded, gasping with the implosion in me. Then I was falling as no more than a piece of stone or glass that was plummeting to the ground around me. All I could do was brace for the impact when I was out of time, and couldn’t even feel for the void.
Arms wrapped me, a body shielded me, then a blast deafened me. But I was unharmed by the debris of the castle. I lied on the ground and managed to open my eyes, blinking to clear the blurriness. I stared up at the most hauntingly beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
Nyte had caught me and shielded us both from the wreckage he made. For a moment I thought I might reach him, pull him back from the course of vengeance that was unpredictable. Until he let me go. Nightsdeath stood, towering over me for a second with his anguish raging like the sun swirled around his irises. Then he walked a few paces away.
“Foolish Maiden,” he snarled. The ominous echo in his voice sent a chill down my spine.
“You don’t have to be this.” I coughed with the dust choking my throat.
“Why should I be anything better to a world that spread my worst and hid my best?”
“Because I see you,” I said, rolling onto my hands and knees. I took a moment to collect my breath, surveying the catastrophe of stone and glass with the air now infused with smoke and dust. “In all this destruction I see your pain, Nyte, and you’re not alone.”
His boots crunched over the debris toward me. Nyte kneeled, and his face was a heartbroken nightmare. The black vines crawled around his eyes, but he didn’t attack.
“You are my only redemption,” he said, searching me. “But you are such a small and breakable thing. If you were smart you would protect yourself from me.”
“I’m never safer than with you.”
“You’re wrong.”
“No, you are. ”
Pushing to my feet, I stumbled over loose stone but I blazed at him.
“I was created by gods who wanted to control me too. I have a power people sought to use me for. Everyone looked at me as an example but no one saw me. Until you. I might not remember yet, but it’s why the brightest star needs the darkest night.”
“Then let’s end this.” Nightsdeath came closer. The darkness that wanted to shroud me not accept the light. His hand slipped over my jaw. “Together, my love.”
“Not like this.”
“What has the world ever done for us?”
“It gave us friends we care about.”
“ People that can be used against us.”
“That’s the sacrifice we choose for love.… Nyte.” His name slipped out of me in a breath as I reached up to his face too, desperate to keep him from giving over to his darkness completely. “The world has always tried to paint you as a monster but you’re hurting because you loved those who were taken from you. It’s not weakness, it’s your humanity.”
“Humanity is weakness.”
“Please,” I said, pressing myself to him tighter. “You said my heart beats in your chest—feel me, and don’t give up on yourself like they’re trying to make you do. Fight for you, and for me. For our friends we still have to protect and a world I plan to stand by your side to restore. We are the night and the stars. The dark and the light. We will right everything together.”
“You’re so bright,” he whispered, lips inching to mine.
I could have whimpered when those words meant something more to me. That he wasn’t repelled by it so long as he accepted it. Craved it.
“Astraea!” Auster called.
It broke us apart suddenly, and I turned cold, cursing his interruption at the worst moment. I almost pulled him back, but now Nyte had found his target, and it was chilling to watch him stalk over glass and stone toward him. So frighteningly calm.
I gritted my teeth reaching down for the key staff; I used it to aid me walking to follow.
Auster stood with his three brothers, and I passed a look to Zephyr who was the only one who scanned me head to toe, brow furrowed assessing my state. I gave a small nod, though I was so tired I don’t think it convinced him I was fine.
“All you do is kill and destroy,” Auster spat. Nyte stopped far enough away that he had to raise his voice to be heard.
Amber from the fires around us glowed against the night.
“Then we’re not so different after all,” Nyte answered.
“You are an abomination on this land,” Notus seethed.
Aquilo added, “A disgrace and monstrosity to the world.”
Nyte paced sideways, stalking them. Every nerve cell in my body was sharp and on edge.
“You made me your villain only because you have always been mine. You condemned me by the color of my wings and the blood under my skin.”
“We judged you by the blood on your skin. The blood you bathed in for centuries. Do you deny it?” Auster said.
“I deny nothing because your judgment is absolute by the scale of your own superiority. What would I care for the opinions of four privileged celestials that hide their worst, when your hands are just as crimson as mine.”
Celestial soldiers started arriving around us. Screams and panic still echoed in the distance, picking up more, and it was an effort not to divert my attention to find out what was causing it if not Nyte himself. My strength was coming back enough to keep fighting.
“You cannot defeat all of us alone,” Aquilo snarled.
“He’s not alone,” I said.
The four High Celestials targeted me. Even Nyte looked over his shoulder and thought his appearance was still changed, I thought he’d managed to push Nightsdeath back enough to not be so unfeeling. He wouldn’t hurt me. I came up by his side.
“I do not want you, nor do I need you,” he said, devoid of any emotion.
“I’ll keep fighting you as Nightsdeath.”
“I am one and the same,” he snarled.
His hand lashed around my throat and the High Celestial’s shifted. He didn’t choke me but he trembled against the impulse to.
“Not to me.”
My hands gripped his, Nyte hissed at the magick I burned him with, letting me go. I caught the key staff before it fell and took careful backward paces toward the celestials, keeping my daring stare locked on Nyte. I didn’t go far, now standing as a barrier between the devastating forces that could erupt from both enemy sides.
“Look at what he’s already done. You would turn on your people for him?” Notus yelled.
Nyte’s jaw shifted, and maybe he believed this was me standing against him.
“They might be my people, but Nyte is my person. I wouldn’t deserve the best of either if I didn’t stand by the moments of their worst. That’s humanity too. And I choose to turn on neither.”
His gold eyes flexed at that but I turned around to meet the furious gaze of Auster. I could feel Nyte’s magick more acutely if he decided to attack me and didn’t fear giving him my back.
More distractingly than this volatile confrontation right now, the commotion through the towns was getting worse, growing louder.
“We’re under attack!” someone yelled distantly.
The soldiers that had come to the aid of their High Celestials shifted, their focus turning toward the towns.
“He brought an army to slaughter your people,” Auster spat. “That is the monster you love.”
I had to look at Nyte then with a flash of horror.
“You brought an army with you?”
“I have no need for one. I only came for him.”
Zadkiel came racing toward Auster. “Vampires. Too many of them have made it over the bridge and are attacking through the city. I don’t know how they made it so far so fast without our detection.”
My eyes caught on flickers of darkness in the sky. Nightcrawlers. The veil was gone—all that had stopped them from passing and savaging before. Nyte had destroyed it in passing through… but he was also the reason they had a century of peace before now.
In contrast to the dark night, a flare of light brought my sight back down to Auster. His brothers had already retreated to command forces against the vampire attack, but he stayed. I found the source of moving light in his hands. Lightning. Blue jagged strokes emitted around his hand of flesh. Of course… he had the power of storm. How could I not have realized sooner?
“You attacked us in the sky,” I whispered. Not really looking for him to confirm that when it made sense now. That day, I’d finally found my wings, and Nyte was struck by lightning.
“It was intended only for him. I tried to give you a chance to choose right in this life, Astraea. But it’s clear you will always be as much our enemy as he is in choosing him.”
I braced with wide eyes when his lightning charged for me. Caught unawares that he would move to strike me, I didn’t think I would avoid the impact of it.
A rolling wall of darkness surged up from the ground and I watched in stunned awe as the blue strokes broke over it. Nyte stood in front of me now.
“As if I needed any more motivation to end your spineless existence,” Nyte said when the darkness cleared.
Then he attacked back.
The two of them quickly became a blur of lightning and darkness colliding. I was torn over what to do. The city was crying, innocents were being slaughtered, but Nyte and Auster had to be stopped before they wrecked the world in their wrath.
Zadkiel ran to me, looking just as flustered and terrified as I felt.
“What do we do?” he asked, and for a second I was confused why he came to me.
“How bad is the vampire threat?”
“ Bad, ” he informed me. “Seems like a mixed bunch of them but the most brutal and merciless of all the vampire races. Do you think Nyte is responsible?”
“No.” To anyone else it would be my pining heart that clouded my judgment of Nyte, but I knew him. It wouldn’t make any sense for him to lead this kind of savagery. “He said he saw his father. I think he provoked Nyte to break the veil; it has to be him behind this.”
I closed my eyes to think though it was agony to sway my focus from Nyte and Auster.
“We need to find the king to end this,” I said.
“I’ll gather a force,” Zadkiel said.
He took my instruction like a soldier to a general and my shoulders squared at that.
I do not fear myself.
It’s the greatest power I’ll ever hold.
“No,” I said before Zadkiel took off. “I want you to lead a force to defend the bridge against any more. The king is mine.”
Wariness pinched his expression, but his moment of hesitation was gone in the dip of his head before he left, running into the thick of the soldiers.
Thunder boomed to shake through the ground. Auster’s lightning broke the angry clouds that drowned us all in a heavy rainfall.
Releasing my wings, I shot to the sky, beating hard against the obstacle added by the rain. I didn’t know how I would find the king, but I had to try if that could stop the vampires tearing through the city. The sight from above was even more devastating, displaying the shattered peace of this island of Althenia. What was once still and beautiful was now defiled in fire, blood, and ash.
Auster and Nyte had brought their battle to the skies too and I breathed through the tail blasts of their relentless attacks of magick. Right now, I had to leave them. Their war was personal but what raged below had been what everyone feared would come to pass.
I cut through the rain, trying to get a map on where the worst of the vampire forces were, but it was difficult with the focus of flying and distractions of terrorized people. Until my panic was heard as a familiar roar resounded over the screaming.
Eltanin appeared under me and I breathed in relief. He wasn’t huge, but I felt his invitation that he was strong enough to carry me. Unglamouring my wings, I free fell, my stomach flipped, and I braced. Eltanin dipped to catch me gently with gravity. Adrenaline tingled through my body as I gripped his feathered mane. I might have to get riding equipment made.
Ember sparks glowed through his dark feathers but they didn’t burn me. He was breathtaking. With the dragon taking control of our flight, I could focus myself. The skies were littered with nightcrawlers and my thighs clamped tightly around Eltanin’s body. I shifted the key to a bow and conjured three light arrows.
I do not fear myself.
Releasing them, my aim focused on one but they were made of my magick, which broke them off to strike three nightcrawlers in close proximity. I yielded a smile of triumph, then conjured another. And another. Taking down as many as I could from the skies before they could rain their terror.
Just as I let my next arrow go I was slammed into from the side, throwing me off Eltanin. The bow slipped from my grasp and the sudden pummel left me floundering, gripped by a nightcrawler whose teeth snapped in my face as we fell.
All I knew was power, survival, and complete fucking rage.
I was not weak. I was not cowardly.
Hooking my leg around him, I cried out with the force I needed to twist our positions. With his back facing the direction of the ground we would soon shatter against, I thrust a hand to his chest, releasing a flare of light that tore right through him. He died instantly and I let him go.
I tried to scramble to release my wings but I didn’t know if I could catch an updraft in time to save myself.
“Oomph!” I was caught before I had to.
By arms… but our position was too strange for it to be a celestial flying. Until I saw giant, leathery red wings out the corner of my eyes.
Stars above.
I pushed up, spinning to confirm it could only be one person. And one magnificent, huge beast.
“You’re welcome,” Drystan said.
I guess we had the same idea when I took in everything slowly in my shock. Drystan had a saddle made for the red dragon he’d found.
I didn’t expect him to be here, but I became riddled with dreadful anxiety considering the secrets he forced me into a bargain to keep last I saw him. The secrets he forced me into a bargain to keep.
“What are you doing?” I asked, shifting around to sit behind him.
“Saving you, if that wasn’t obvious.”
“Are you with your father?”
I reached through the void, feeling for the key I’d dropped in my fall, but oddly… I couldn’t find it. I had to give up when a nightcrawler dove for us and I gathered a ball of light to hit him with that sent him spiraling down.
“No. I don’t know where he is but these vampires answer to him, that’s for sure.”
Then Drystan was only here for one reason.
“I can’t do it.”
“You have to. Don’t go back on this now. You do it for him.”
“If it doesn’t work… it will break him instead.”
Eltanin flew above us, and I was becoming overwhelmed with the chaos of events unfolding all at once. The vampires and the king. Auster and Nyte. Now this.
The red dragon was known for its breath of searing red flame. I clutched the back of the saddle tightly as it projected a blast through a mass of vampires before they could reach the bridge.
“Drystan—”
“Whatever you’re going to say, save it for the other side.”
“There might not be another side,” I snapped. My grief made me sharp and my eyes began to prick.
“I don’t want to hear it. Or I’ll believe there isn’t.”
I let go of the saddle, circling my arms around him instead, and my cheek pressed to his back in the embrace. I wanted the memories of us so badly it hurt deeply, but this was enough. The feelings that broke through to assure me there was a time we were friends. Great friends.
“We need to distract my brother,” Drystan said.
The dragon flew down and I clutched Drystan tighter with the rocky landing of the huge beast. It roared powerfully and Eltanin followed, landing in front of it. Drystan dismounted, using a rope to aid his way down, and I copied.
“Astraea!”
I couldn’t believe the feminine voice that called out over the chaos. Spinning I found Davina atop a horse, galloping toward us. Behind her in the saddle was Lilith.
“What are you doing here?” I asked incredulously when they came to a stop.
“Aiding you, of course. This is what we’ve been preparing for,” she said.
Davina didn’t dismount. Behind her charged a fae army, now trapping the vampires between the celestials defending the island and the fae of the mainland.
“How did you know?”
Her sight flicked over my shoulder in answer. Drystan wasn’t looking at us because Nadia had come too.
“Our resistance forces are fighting to prevent as many vampires on the king’s side from making it this far as we can,” Nadia informed on foot. Their forces were transitioned vampires that were loyal to Drystan, not his father, all this time. It’s why he took on the position to oversee the creation of vampires from humans high in the mountains. He used his own blood when it could have been another shadowless far more ruthless and loyal to his father.
“Good, you should get out of here,” Drystan said to her.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
Nadia’s desire to kill Drystan had been true, but they’d come to a resolution for now.
“I have to go lead my division,” Davina said.
I nodded to her, and my pride swelled watching her take off with Lilith.
“About that distraction for my brother…” Drystan trailed.
When I turned back to him I gasped at the searing pain in my shoulder from the small blade Drystan lodged in it.
“No hard feelings,” he said, ripping it free, and I hissed, clutching the wound.
There was no mistaking the presence of Nyte’s shadows that surrounded us a heartbeat later. I glanced sideways to find him locked with a deadly stare on Drystan, which he diverted only for a few seconds to assess me.
“You have no reason for being here,” Nyte snarled.
“Actually I do. We have unfinished business, brother.”
“You’ve come to fight me?”
Drystan stalked around, closer to me, Eltanin gave an unexpected sound. A warning.
I watched Nyte’s fingers flex, trying to subdue Nightsdeath.
Nightsdeath has no brother.
He’d told me that. If he lost the fight to keep him back he would never forgive himself if he accidentally killed Drystan.
My bones rattled at the high pitch of Drystan freeing his long steel blade. Drystan’s gaze flicked to me, a muscle in his jaw working with impatience. I couldn’t move but inside I was furiously shaking my head.
“I think this is long overdue,” Drystan declared.
Nyte didn’t need a weapon, but he pulled his obsidian blade from the void.
“I don’t want to fight you,” Nyte said. His tone was cold but something in me split to the misery underlying in it.
Drystan smiled, goading. “After all this time, you can’t say you haven’t wanted to have it out with me.”
Nyte didn’t lift his weapon. “Get out of here, Astraea.”
I couldn’t leave.
There was no more time to deliberate when Drystan struck first, and the two brothers fought as though centuries of anguish poured out of them. Wrongs against each other they had been tricked into. Torment they had lived through together. The blood of a father that wanted this—war not love. Soldiers not sons.
It tore me apart to witness this.
“You have to end it,” Nadia said from behind me.
Her words trembled to my core. I turned from the brothers’ feud to her with the eyes of a coward.
“I’m afraid,” I said quietly.
The dragons were restless, but they didn’t intervene. Eltanin watched Nyte, pacing in distress.
“I know,” she said. “Me too.”