52. Astraea
Being claimed by a new god was like I had bled the old blood inside me. My body was weightless, suspended in time and space. In a pure, dark oblivion while fire crept over my skin and boiled in my veins.
I didn’t know how long the torture held me in its grasp, but I knew when it let me go, I would never be the same again.
My memories… they came crashing back. As if this was a gift the God of Death granted for my suffering to join him.
They drowned me. Images, feelings, thoughts. I was dying under the crushing weight of it all that was barreling into me relentlessly. Too much to consume at once that I couldn’t sort reality from dream. Past from present.
Until the fire stopped devouring and my body came down in the ashes.
Floating.
Then falling.
And it wasn’t anything physical that would shatter me because my heart was already obliterated.
Before I returned to my plane of existence, the God of Death uttered one final thing to me.
When this dawn ends, eternal night will fall.
I gasped, choking on ashy air and struggling to grapple a clear image when everything was so bright.
Then I remembered what happened to put me here.
Drystan.
My eyes snapped up. The sudden movement amplified my splitting headache and I whimpered.
I found him lying on the ground so still; his head was in Nadia’s lap and I tried to crawl to him. I was too heavy. My whole body. I couldn’t peel myself up.
Then I caught a flicker of my wings splayed limply on either side of me. They were black.
Death’s mark, as Nyte had once called it.
There was no hiding what I’d done now. Who I’d sold my soul to.
“He’s breathing,” Nadia called to me.
The relief that weighed me down almost buckled my elbows, the only support against my cheek meeting the puddle of rain.
“What have you done, Starlight?” Nyte’s voice was so quiet in agony.
What had I done?
My mind was a swirling pool of memory and I didn’t know where to begin. Until only one dominated above all else and I couldn’t believe it… all this time.
The heart-shattering revelation I only remembered now caused my silver markings to glow and my power felt world-ending. I didn’t know what was happening to me. Color was stolen from my vision, I could only see dark and light. I pushed up, swaying into Nyte, who steadied me. His hands on my arms were so dark it was like he was made entirely of shadow and I was pure shimmering starlight.
“Lightsdeath,” I whispered, both haunted and exhilarated by the prospect of this power I became.
“You’re going to be okay,” Nyte said, I’d never head him so fearful. Uncertain.
Blinking, I pushed back the growing power inside me to focus on his beautiful face. The light couldn’t exist without the dark but Nyte was so much that I feared I could be repelled by him. As Nightsdeath and Lightsdeath… we would only want to end each other and that realization nearly buckled me.
I had to tame the power inside me.
So I thought only of the parts of us that were perfect for each other.
“Nyte,” I whispered. “I watched you too. Every day.”
He searched my eyes in confusion. Tears filled mine when his brow smoothed out as he understood what I meant.
“You remember?”
I nodded, choking a sob. “Not everything… but I think I will.”
Utter misery split in his eyes, like he wished I hadn’t seen him from the sky. So much had changed and yet it was like no time had passed at all. Only because no matter what, the one thing that remained absolute… was that I loved him. I loved him so much that it was pure, unending agony.
Before I could bask in any piece of blessing that I would get to remember what we had before and tie it with all we built in this life, I had to confront one devastating thing.
“The last memory you showed me wasn’t the day I died, only the beginning of many battles between our sides. You didn’t show me the day we fought. How I left you that final day and I went to him… didn’t I?”
Nyte stiffened. He pulled back and contemplated his answer.
“You didn’t want to hide us anymore and I didn’t think it was safe for you to expose us. We argued about it that night, yes. We were at war, with battles raging near every day.”
“I left to tell Auster anyway, thinking it might result in a ceasefire for a while.”
“But you never made it to Althenia.”
Pushing Nyte’s chest, I could hardly grapple stability for the weight that gathered in my knees.
“Because he wasn’t there.”
Feeling into the void, I still couldn’t find my key and that was the final snap of my control.
Fine. I didn’t need it.
“Astraea, what are you—?”
Nyte didn’t get to finish before I splayed my wings and shot to the sky. Wrath beat between my shoulder blades to numb the ache of my body. My mind swirled with a mess of thoughts and memories but I had to find Auster.
The city was burning so fiercely that not even the rainfall could smother the fires. I swept through the smoke-clogged air, following the tether inside me that would lead to him from being his Bonded despite the fact that I wanted to tear out all essence of him from my being.
“AUSTER!” I cried into the night of heartache and ruin.
I felt his lightning before I saw it, pivoting in time to miss it, and I cast out a gale of light in the direction it came from. The clouds were too thick to see through.
Now, I was fucking livid.
Stars, too many thoughts and emotions were coming back to me from the past in confusing flashes and waves. Nyte wasn’t the only reason Dusk and Dawn took my memories.
I floated in the sky when I became overwhelmed by myself. All my emotions made me volatile and there was a new, endless power within me that threatened to change my vision again. I was glowing, and as I glanced through the angry gray clouds I gasped at the illusionary giant form it was like the clouds rolled and darkened to create—Death. The depthless black hood was a void that could swallow me whole. His scythe was a glinting black metal with a missing chip on the underside of the lethal curve. The legendary weapon could claim a thousand souls in one swipe.
“What do you want from me?” I asked, barely a haunted whisper.
“The end of Dusk and Dawn.”
“I can’t kill gods.”
“They are your beginning, and you will be their end.”
It didn’t make sense, but the second I opened my mouth to speak again Death’s form was cut through as he was made of nothing more than clouds and smoke. In my distraction, I didn’t brace fast enough before Aquilo’s wind slammed into me, knocking me out of flight.
I should have known. Auster never did fight his battles alone.
Coward.
Tucking my wings in, I turned to dive, but when I was met with Auster shooting up for me I tried to splay my wings to retreat.
I was too slow.
Once he touched me I was wrapped in the familiar pull of the void.
My body fell to stone next and I groaned with the pain shooting over my hip and shoulder.
Everything was so much quieter here that the sudden change was punishing to my head. Pushing up on my hands, I caught my breath and cast my furious stare up.
There was nothing kind or warm in Auster’s brown eyes. He examined my black wings and disgust flexed over his expression.
I looked down at his metal left hand… which I hadn’t remembered was his dominant side.
Despite my anger I was tormented, utterly broken.
He’d lost it in battle, that wasn’t a lie.
Only he left out the grim, shocking truth about exactly how.
“It was you.” I faced the truth. By far the very worst of every wicked memory to have come back to me from the past so far.
Getting to my knees, I couldn’t look away from him. I stood, and then we faced off in the present but my memory flashed us to the devastating scene of our past.
From this still temple hall to a wailing, smoke-clogged battlefield.
Past to present. Past to present.
From this moment to the last moment he held me before I died.
“That’s how you lost your arm,” I said. My soul ached, like it knew all this time but had been so deeply buried in denial to protect itself. “It was you who used the key and killed me.”
“Yes,” he said, so matter-of-factly. Not an ounce of regret.
“It was you? ” Nyte’s snarl echoed with a glacial note of death.
I turned to watch Nightsdeath take over him in an instant and he launched toward us.
He couldn’t reach me.
I winced at the high-pitched collision between him and the magick veil that kept him back. I only managed one step toward Nyte before I cried out at a searing wrap around my wrist, quickly followed by the same type of thick shackle being clamped around my other. It happened so fast and the Nebulora burned deeply.
With all he strength I had left, I glamoured my wings.
“Hide them for now,” Auster taunted. “Before I rip out the abomination.”
I breathed to calm myself. I knew how to push through the effects of Neb ulora but Auster must have figured that out too when the flesh of my back was then scored by a blade and the poison quickly roared through my blood, bringing me to my knees.
“I’m going to make the rubble of your castle look like a fucking mercy,” Nyte snarled.
“I’m okay,” I said though it wasn’t convincing with my labored breaths. I couldn’t lift my eyes with the tiredness bearing down on me.
“I can’t lose my arm twice,” Auster said.
The clang of metal on metal chilled me to my core. I didn’t have to look up to know what it was.
Auster had the key.
Forcing myself to see the fatal error on my part in having allowed him the opportunity to have seized it at some point in all the chaos, I watched in terror as he fit it into the hook of his thumb on his silver hand. As if he remembered the exact grip of the key to have had his hand crafted to hold it perfectly for this moment again. To repeat history.
Nyte paced in front of the veil like a caged beast, eyes blazing on Auster as if he could kill with that look alone. There had to be something blocking Auster’s mind. The veil?
I couldn’t think. The past was still filling my mind with confusion and I covered my ears, scrunching my eyes shut to try and get it to stop. Perhaps if it did I would find something to help us out of this.
“I’m right here with you,” Nyte said in my mind. It was a reprieve in the storm that was gathering. “Stay with me.”
“Please make it stop,” I said. Too many things were clashing, making me a helpless mess in pain.
“I can’t reach you, love.”
A new searing sensation hit me but I quickly knew it was only an echo of something that hurt Nyte.
My eyes snapped up, horrified by the sight of the bloodied arrow tip through his shoulder.
He was on his knees in front of me now, so uncanny in light of how we’d met so many times during the Libertatem. Separated cruelly by a thin but powerful veil.
“Stop!” I yelled.
My palms raised to the veil; maybe if I could figure out how to use Lights death at will I could break it, but as I did my chains were tugged harshly to rip my hands back.
“Your death will be so slow you’ll forget time under your agony,” Nyte seethed at Auster, every promise he delivered in ice. “Your hours will feel like weeks. Your weeks like years. Every day you’ll beg for death, always on the cusp of it, before I bring you back to my hell.”
“I don’t think so,” Auster said calmly. So sinister and triumphant. “Though for a moment, you’re going to get what you both want. You’re going to bond.”
“No,” I said venomously.
The chains attached to my wrists were pulled suddenly and forcefully. I yelped, slamming to the ground with no way to catch myself. My head ricocheted off the stone, blurring my consciousness but I fought with everything to stay present. It was only then I realized it was Aquilo who held the end of my leash made of iron. He gave a snicker at my pain. I never liked him in the past. Notus was near him, hands clasped behind himself and face completely emotionless. Zephyr wasn’t here.
Nyte stood, tearing the arrow free from himself before he threw it with such force at the veil that it obliterated into splinters. Then all the shadows of the room flooded toward him and I braced myself against the velocity of magick he summoned.
He struck, palm cast out.
Waves and waves of raw, furious power rebounded off the veil. Every vampire that had filed in behind him screamed as their flesh melted off their bones from his world-ending power. It shook through the temple, splitting cracks in the ancient walls, and if he kept going he might bury us all in the debris.
I shuffled to my knees. He couldn’t keep this up, but a small flicker of hope surfaced at the cracks forming in the veil.
He could do it. He could break it to reach me.
I gasped at the spear of energy that pressed against my spine.
The key.
“Break that veil, and I’ll kill her before you can reach her,” Auster warned.
I didn’t know if Nyte could even hear him through the hurricane of dark power that blasted around his side of the veil. Nyte stood there like a god defiant. So still and unwavering in his focused, targeted fury.
The stone in the tip of the key crafted to a staff dug into my skin deeper and my teeth clenched with the added surge of power Auster pushed through it.
Nyte’s magick stopped all at once and I whimpered, hanging my head in defeat.
“Just get out of here, Nyte,” I projected loudly in my thoughts. “Please.”
“Never,” he growled.
“On your knees,” Auster ordered him.
Nyte trembled with his rage. He didn’t look at me, only Auster, as he calculated with simmering vengeance.
“How could you?” Nyte seethed at Auster. “All this time. She fucking trusted you.”
“She betrayed me,” Auster spat, digging the key against me again. “She betrayed all of us for you. A vile plague on our land. I did what I had to for my people, everyone she turned her back on.”
“You despise me so much,” Nyte said, so chillingly. “Only because you’re looking in a fucking mirror. No less monstrous. No less villainous. But completely fucking spineless.”
“I am the realm’s savior,” Auster spat.
I will not break.
I will not die today.
Nyte’s fist clenched as he shifted a step. Anger flexed his jaw.
“Rejection really drove you to this kind of madness?” Nyte continued.
“I said on. Your. Knees .”
“You’re a fucking coward. Hiding all this time.”
“Biding time, in fact. When she came back I wanted her to choose me, and she might have if you’d stayed away. I found her first, you know? Except she’d awoken with her memories for a while and remembered what I’d done when she saw me in that temple. She managed to escape us and we lost track of her. I recently learned your brother was the next to find her running scared through the woods but he let her go. We tried to find her again. I sent out groups daily to scour the land for where Drystan had hid her. Did you know he had a protection charm on that manor? Inside, no celestial could see her.”
I knew Drystan had found me, but not the extra measure.
“When I learned from Zadkiel that she seemed to not recognize him, nor herself, I thought perhaps there was a chance to right the wrong of the past. This was Dusk and Dawn’s way of giving us a fresh start. To let me step in and save her from your corruption so she could be the Maiden she was supposed to be.” Auster leaned down to me but I couldn’t look at him. Not until he forced me by directing my chin with the tip of the key. “This could have all been avoided, but just like the past, every death and devastation is all your fault.”
My lip wobbled.
It’s not true.
“Your evil is not my fault,” I said through my teeth.
A flash of fury twitched his expression, so different from the kindness I’d been lured into without my memories. He wasn’t the friend I remembered from ages past. Even now my heart shattered at the moment of betrayal I never saw coming. Never would have believed he wanted me dead despite every thing. I loved Nyte, but I didn’t want to lose Auster, who I’d grown up with as a dear friend. My heartache turned to rage so fast I trembled with it.
“You just couldn’t accept I didn’t love you the way I do Nyte,” I spat. You’re right; my memories can be taken, our story can be rewritten, but come five years or five hundred I will always choose him .”
I knew my words and defiance would enrage him but I didn’t care. He wanted my fear and submission and if I was to die here, I would not feed his sick satisfaction.
The back of his hand connected with sharp force to my cheek, snapping my head to the side. Tears welled in my eyes but I gritted my teeth, taking deep breaths against the throbbing pain.
What concerned me more was how everything done to me inflicted worse in Nyte.
“I said, fucking kneel, ” Auster roared to him.
Nyte’s stare was nothing short of absolutely lethal. He lowered slowly, never taking that promise of death off Auster.
“You won’t win,” Nyte said with deceiving calm. “Even if you find a way to kill me, it will not be enough to stop me from coming for you.”
“I have a way to kill you,” Auster said with a beat of triumph.
“Thanks to me.” A new voice spoke. I shuddered at the waking nightmare it had become.
The king walked out behind Nyte and the moment he saw his father he tried to lunge up. It might have been the whine of pain that slipped through my tight lips that stopped his advance. Auster was prodding me, taunting me with my weapon, and I was building in anger. No . It was hot livid fury I boiled with.
“I gave you everything, Rainyte. Now it’s time I take it away when you’ve served as nothing more than my biggest disappointment,” the king said.
I couldn’t decide who I wanted to kill more. Nyte’s father or Auster. Both. It was just a matter of who first.
More bodies flooded to Nyte’s side and mine. We were completely outnumbered, but the power inside me didn’t see odds, only survival.
“We can fight them,” I said in my thoughts.
“No, Starlight.”
My teeth ground in frustration. How could he back away from a fight now? It couldn’t be over.
“Every weapon in this room has been coated in Astraea’s blood. Once you’re bonded, all it will take is the right strike to your heart,” the king said. As if he’d already won.
No. That couldn’t happen.
Nyte threatened to burn Auster’s province but I didn’t think I would stop until I stood in a world of ashes if they took him from me.
I hissed when Auster grabbed a fistful of my hair, forcing me to stand. I couldn’t look at Nyte when I knew he would be shaking with his inability to do anything but watch.
Auster forced me to face him, and I wished he could turn to dust from the wrath of my stare. He pressed the key to my ribs.
“You might not believe me when I say I truly hoped I wouldn’t have to do this again,” Auster said chillingly.
“NO!” Nyte yelled.
But it was too late.
Nothing could have prepared me for the searing, all-consuming agony that began with the foreign body piercing through my chest before every part of me was torched by my own magick. My body seized so tightly that I couldn’t even register the careless, rough push toward the veil when the key was ripped out of me. If it hurt to pass through, I couldn’t feel it.
My hand clutched over the wound that flooded with hot and sticky blood.
Nyte caught me, that’s all I knew—his beautiful face and our shared panic.
We’d been here before.
Right here.
“I’m going to make it go away,” he said, in a tone I only remembered from this moment in our past. “Stay with me.”
Always. My mouth opened to say it but I couldn’t choke it out.
“Time is running out, Rainyte,” Auster taunted.
Nyte cupped my nape. “Keep looking at me.”
I locked onto those golden eyes that were my orbit. Nyte took us away in our minds. Off the ground surrounded by our enemies. He changed the beige, cracked walls to the scene of the bell tower around us instead. A beautiful, peaceful fantasy.
Home. This was our small and precious home.
Pain still lanced through me like throbbing beats of a countdown. My eyes grew so heavy, but I wasn’t bleeding in this dreamscape, only held tightly in Nyte’s arms in an illusion that this wasn’t forced upon us. Our bonding.
“You-you can’t,” I said. “They can kill you if you do.”
“I don’t care,” he said gently, tucking my hair behind my ear.
His sharp teeth sliced his wrist and I tried to pull my head back. I couldn’t let this happen and be the reason he died.
“Please,” he said. “For me, please.”
My eyes filled with tears. How did we end up here again? Would this always be our cruel destiny? No matter how many times we found each other? It was tragic and so heavy on my heart, but I also thought it was worth it. For every moment that wasn’t about war, or conflict, or duty. For all the time we got to be just us, for us, nothing more or less.
Though Auster and the king thought this bond was their weapon—that this was their triumph—I wouldn’t let them have that.
I wanted Nyte. Without a doubt I wanted to bind myself to him eternally.
So I nodded, and let him bring his blood to my mouth.
The taste of him took my pain away and I indulged in it. I would never get enough of how alive I felt being this close to him. To have the essence of him running through me, which no distance could take away.
Nyte kissed my forehead and my mouth unclamped from his wrist. I gasped for breath, drunk on the high of him.
“You are my brightest star, I will find you no matter where you shine. I love you. Now, then, and always.”
He kissed my mouth and I reached for his face though my hand felt so heavy.
I wanted to repeat that promise.
Now, then, and always.
I love you.
The words were there in my mind and he deserved to hear them back. But I couldn’t free them from the trap of my mouth. I was so terribly tired.
His forehead leaned to mine as he declared the bond. His claim on me. I couldn’t hear his words anymore. I was drowning. Back in the lake the first time he’d saved me. No, not the first time.
The moment he’d come to me in this life I knew I wanted to live. I wanted the shadow he was to never stop following. He set me free.
Nyte’s teeth sank into my neck but I could hardly feel it. All I could see was the blurry rise of a new dawn through the archway window over his shoulder as he held me tight. I thought of how peaceful it would be to die here. In the arms of the other half of my soul, in the one place we found peace together, with the hope of a new day like a promise that we’d always find our way back to each other.
My pain numbed before I could fall into the beckoning oblivion.
“Stay with me,” he whispered.
His amber eyes glittered. I’d never seen them this way before. Threatening to spill his misery.
“Yes,” I croaked.
Our tranquil illusion started to break piece by piece. The darkness returned with the golden dawn changing back to the beige stone caging us in. The air turned dusty and the atmosphere became frightening.
Nyte held me the same, our faces inches apart while we caught our breath. I didn’t care for the return of the vicious audience and bleak surroundings when this new precious tie inside me made me clutch Nyte tighter.
Despite everything, I smiled. A beautiful, euphoric laugh escaped me and though his face was grief-stricken, Nyte found the will to smile too. We were delusional and in some ways tragic, but it didn’t matter.
“Separate them,” the king snapped.
Our happiness in spite of what they’d done infuriated them, and that made it all the more triumphant.
Nyte was gripped by two males and the chain on my shackles was pulled sharply.
“You’re so brave, love,” Nyte said to me within.
I was used to hearing Nyte in my thoughts but that was only through his ability. Now, with our Bond fully forged, the link that ran between us shared our thoughts so much clearer. I felt them more than just heard his words as though our essence shared in them too. There was no land that could stretch between us that could prevent me from always being with him.
Our moment of joy snuffed out like a candle as our living nightmare resumed. My eyes followed the intrusion on Nyte’s side. To my never-ending horror, I found everyone I loved being dragged in through the side entrances.
Zath, Rose, Davina, and Lilith.
I was pulled back through the veil as our friends were all pushed to their knees behind Nyte. His fists trembled but he didn’t turn around.
“What have you done?” I whispered to Auster.
“What I had to for my people. This world. You had to be stopped. Then and now. It takes the strongest wills to go against everything in the heart to make the hard choices.”
“You have no heart,” I spat. “Only a thirst for power.”
“Someone has to be in power. You are too weak, too easily led.”
“You allied with the enemy,” I seethed.
“As did you, remember? We’re not so different, Astraea.”
It was not the same. Nyte was not his father.
“How do you think Nyte’s father knew you would go to Alisus?” Auster said. “It was me who told him you would return. Me who planted the idea that he needed the key. At first I only wanted it to have against you should you need to be put down again. But he went to the temple with it bravely, and found there is in fact a way to kill what is already dead. So I told him where you’d go, hoping he’d threaten you well enough to bond with Nyte, but you’re too fucking stubborn. So I tried to convince you myself but I know you—your insufferable savior complex that only arises when your monster is concerned. It didn’t have to come to this but I’m glad it did. For now, everyone will believe it was Nyte who broke the veil and led an unprovoked attack on Althenia. That their precious star-maiden stood by his side while his forces slaughtered her people. You have no allies left. No people to back you. It’s over, Astraea.”
Every sinister root of his meticulous, evil plan ran through my blood hot ter. My shock and fear didn’t last long, not with the growing rage inside me that I could barely contain.
I said, cold and promising, “Mark my words, Auster Nova, this world will know exactly what you’ve done before I turn your existence to nothing.”
“I admire your will, I always have.”
My friends tried to suppress their fear with the threat of four blades poised against their throats to take their lives.
“Did you know of the vile half-blood by your side?” Auster asked.
I puzzled over that. Lilith? I knew her mother was human and she resembled her fae father more with her green hair and small horns, but what did it matter?
When Zath was pushed forward, landing with a painful grunt onto his shoulder, my world spun too fast.
“There’s no place for filthy Nephilim in this realm,” Auster spat.
The term repeated in my mind. Nephilim.
Half human, half celestial.
But Zathrian?
My eyes locked on Nyte as Zath pushed himself back onto his knees.
“It wasn’t my secret to tell,” Nyte said through our bond, a plea in his eyes. “The celestials have always shunned the Nephilim. They use the nightcrawlers to hunt and kill them. He wasn’t ready to tell you, but he would have.”
Stars above.
It changed nothing, but seemingly everything.
Auster spoke of it with such disgust and I couldn’t understand why. He looked at my friend as if preparing to give his death sentence.
“Astraea—” Zath said.
“How dare you speak the name of a pure blood,” Auster seethed.
The groaning of a bow string rang through my senses.
“Stop! Don’t you dare hurt him,” I yelled.
“Such a weak, pitiful heart,” Auster said. “We’ll fix that soon enough.”
In this hall of judgment and sin, every second was precious.
It only took one for the arrow aimed at Zath to strike through his chest.
My mouth was wide but it was Rose’s scream echoing through the cave, chilling me to my bones.
Zath’s eyes were locked on me as he fell, but Rose caught his head before it could slam to the ground.
I could hardly breathe.
“It’s weak, but his heart is still beating.” Nyte tried to calm my senses through the bond. He tried to keep hold of all that was drifting away from me.
“He’ll die,” I said, completely in denial of it.
“The Nephilim heal far faster. Don’t lose hope that he’s strong enough.”
Nyte was trying to keep me focused when the threat was far from over. Between Auster and the king, the execution rounds had just begun.
Rose’s soft cries were ripping me apart.
Don’t you dare die, Zath.
“Before I kill you, Rainyte, I plan to make my victory against you eternal,” Auster said.
Every hair on my body stood. There was no end to this nightmare.
“Show us your abomination of wings,” Auster ordered.
“No,” I breathed, yanking on my chains.
Until I was once again pulled back by them. This time it wasn’t a sharp tug that ended. I was strung up between two stone pillars. Aquilo approached me from behind, his disgusting fingers hooked into my collar and he tore. I knew then what was coming as my back became exposed.
“Or she bleeds until you do,” Auster said.
A whip cracked off the ground. Then the next second my body lurched forward at the lash across my flesh. It was more agonizing with the Nebulora coating the leather, but I grappled all my resilience to make it through this torture.
“I’m so sorry,” Nyte said to me within.
I wanted to keep being brave for him when witnessing the harm done to me would be inflicting worse punishment than his own physical pain.
Though I knew his eyes would be swimming in misery, I had to see him.
Sickness clenched tightly in my abdomen as Nyte unglamoured his stunning dark wings.
“No!” I cried again, weeping and helpless now.
Another lash cracked down on my back and my wrists strained in their bonds with the pain that seized my body tightly.
“Stop fucking hurting her!” Nyte roared.
“My brother can get carried away,” was all Auster said.
Four vampires came toward Nyte.
“Look away. Please,” Nyte said to my thoughts.
I couldn’t stop begging them to spare his beautiful wings. “Please! Auster, please.”
“Your pleas are pathetic,” he said in disgust.
I didn’t want to watch but I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t leave him alone in this. Nyte blocked his feelings from me and inside I became so numb.
“I’m right here with you,” I said back to him in our bond. Tears spilled down my face.
Davina and Lilith wept too, holding each other’s hands. Rose cradled Zath who was so motionless and still bleeding. Everyone watched Nyte for the absolute horror we were about to witness.
It took two vampires to tear one of his wings, and a piece of me died to witness the abhorrence. The absolute barbaric crime.
“Nyte,” I whispered, but he didn’t look up.
He fell forward, hand braced on the ground, trembling stiffly as he bled out from his back. They took hold of his other wing and my vision doubled. I could hardly stay conscious watching them defile him. The second wing didn’t tear free as easy and I pinched my lips tight, forcing down the nausea as a third vampire joined their efforts.
“I’m with you,” I said through our bond. “Don’t shut me out.”
“This is not your pain,” he said back, barely there.
He was fading fast. If he fell under now they would deliver him to Death’s realm for good this time with the weapons of my blood they had.
Strings groaned, too many arrows slick with crimson pointed at Nyte, and I couldn’t reach him, not physically or by magick with the veil.
“Astraea, I’d tear apart the threads of the universe to find you again. Shine bright, and I’ll meet you in the next darkness.”
Those beautiful golden eyes flicked up to me.
“No,” I whispered.
I wouldn’t lose him when it was like we’d only just met again.
“We’ll take care of your disgraceful wings too soon enough,” Auster said, leaning close to my ear like an evil lover’s promise.
The key was right there. My weapon.
I am the star-maiden.
All my past life people tried to tell me what that meant. I was a gift to the people and I should be compliant, their version of good.
I do not fear myself.
Even in the past I had doubted what my power should be used for. Two gods gave me it, but I created it.
I am… Lightsdeath.
It might take time to master what this new power was and I knew Death wasn’t finished collecting his price for it. Right now I had to be reckless. So when Auster stood, about to signal the fire of a dozen lethal arrows to take Nyte from me, I… became.
The magick coursed through me, shooting up my arms to break the chains first. The world around me was shades of dark and light and I reached for the brightest thing that called to me.
Wrapping a hand around the key there was only one thing I could do, remembering Nyte’s warning about it.
The key is an amplifier to you. To anyone else, it’s a volatile devastation waiting to happen. It will corrupt the mind of anyone who tries to wield it when it was only intended for you. In turn, it weakens the magick you harbor in punishment for allowing it to slip out of your possession.
Then I remembered how the king had been granted the will to use the key by Dusk and Dawn without consequence. and I couldn’t risk him getting a hold of it here. So I did the only thing I could in this moment.
I used my magick to break it.
That blast exploded through the temple, taking off the roof and splitting the stone walls. The sky spilled above us with the break of a new dawn and I stood defiant in a storm of starlight, watching five pieces of the key float in the air. It wailed at being broken; something inside me yearned to fix it. Raising a palm, I sent the pieces far and wide.
I couldn’t explain how this power, Lightsdeath, made me both invincible and terrified. It pushed beyond my limits right now but I didn’t care for what I needed to do. My steps felt like I was floating as I reached the veil, and touching it detonated a new collision of deadly magick.
The archers were the first to die even though they no longer poised their arrows. At risk of them scrambling up from the blasts that knocked everyone down, I had to end them. Every soul I took now passed through me with a new purpose. Not for the stars anymore; as Lightsdeath I delivered them to Death’s realm.
Nyte was exactly where he’d been before I became this. A few others were untouched too as if I’d somehow spared them from my wrath. He still kneeled in agony, made of mostly shadows, but there was a light inside him too. A beating heart inside the darkness I yearned to protect. I couldn’t recall the names of the others behind him; they were irrelevant to this power that consumed me, but a part of me knew they were important. Not my enemy.
No. My greatest enemies were behind me and I registered that so late in my moment of distraction by the beautiful darkness in pain that when an arrow pierced my back, I was immobilized.
“Astraea.” A distant, desperate voice called within me, trying to get me to reach back.
Lightsdeath began to slumber under this agony. My vision blurred and when a sudden impact threw me off my feet I could hardly feel it.
All I knew next was muffled screams and air I choked on with every breath as I tried to grapple for consciousness.
“Astraea!” Nyte called my name though the bond with such desperation I couldn’t bear it. “Where are you!?”
Where was I?
I didn’t want to know. I wanted to sleep but for him I tried to pull myself out of that daunting state. Blinking, my horror worsened when all I could see was stone and darkness. I was buried under debris. I heard an unmistakable roar that was the only reprieve in my misery.
Drystan had come with his dragon.
He would get Nyte and the others away from here, that’s all that mattered.
So I said back to him through the bond, hoping it reached him, “Tell Drystan the key is with the dragons. He’ll know what to do to get it back.”
Someone found me . I curled into myself with a helpless whimper as they began digging toward me and all I could think of was that Auster had come.
“I’m not leaving you here.”
“Nyte…” I shielded my eyes as a large rock was pulled away and a streak of dawn hit my eyes. They were close to reaching me. “I didn’t fall for you twice because I never stopped loving you. Through everything that tried to separate us—forgotten memories, lost time—it’s always been you.”
“Starlight…”
“She’s alive!” a voice hissed.
It was familiar, and I couldn’t decide if I should be just as terrified by who had found me instead of Auster.
Once they reached me I was taken into arms I couldn’t fight and carried in a brisk pace until the commotion didn’t vibrate so much around me.
“I need to get back to him…” I tried to say.
“We can’t go back there,” he answered firmly.
I looked up then, and through the dark passages he hurriedly carried me through, I could just about make out Zephyr’s features. I was in no state to fight him as he took me farther away from Nyte and the scene of devastation I’d left him in.
My heart cleaved in two. My soul wailed in agony. But soon I was too numb to feel any of it anyway.