Chapter 44
Chapter Forty-Four
“Do something!” the Taureon Adjacent cried.
“This is good for her,” Eros replied.
“Good for her? She’s going to kill my brother!”
“Who abused his power as Primary. Not to mention manipulated her and had her tortured. By you.”
The farthest corners of the universe that had never been exposed to heat were warmer than the glare he fixed on Tala. She scrambled away from him, her features turning ashen. Eros turned his attention back to Aela, who had Tarek sputtering and twitching beneath her. His cries went unheard by her.
Her rage was a palpable thing. Eros lifted his hand, stroking nothing but the air around them, yet there was an otherness, a shimmer to the air.
He could almost taste it. She was a maelstrom.
Swirling rock and debris whipped around her in a vicious cyclone as her air element eroded rock and grit from the temple. Eros smirked.
She was a vision—wonderfully flaying Tarek within an inch of his life. Fissures appeared along Tarek’s skin, and Eros’ smirk bloomed into a full grin. She was going to burn him out.
He had meant what he said in the Neser courtyard, that any celestial that had harmed her or wished her harm would not go unpunished. While there were a few debts he still needed to collect, Tarek’s life would be hers to claim.
He could see it now. Remorse and resolve settled onto Tarek’s face as he gazed upon his death. The one he tried to tame and groom to use for his own gain stood above him, holding his life in the palm of her hand. She was a Goddess.
In this one and only instance, Eros meant it for the compliment it should be. Not how he viewed… them. Aela’s power stalled, then whooshed back into her, her back arching delicately, absorbing all her mighty, devastating power.
Burn me without name, she’s exquisite.
Aela formed a blade of water, freezing it to ice, then plunged it into Tarek’s chest. She pried his chest cavity open and clawed his heart out. Holding his still-beating heart in the palm of her hand, she looked down at her captor and burned him to ash.
Blazing white light from the selenite winked out. As the last of Tarek’s light faded, Tala’s crystal band disintegrated from her wrist.
Aela was a blur of golden-lavender light as she shot off past the wards.
He left Tala clutching her stomach, her eyes fixed on where her brother’s body should be.
Nothing but a smear of bloody ashes remained.
Eros took measured steps and looked down at Tarek’s pathetic mark on the ground.
He clucked his tongue and clasped his hands behind his back.
“Tarek, Tarek, Tarek, what a magnificent disappointment you were.”
The storm Aela had conjured inside the temple shielded what had occurred within from the Taureon celestials, who were now on their knees. The thrumming connection of power had ceased the moment Aela burned the Primary of Taurus without name.
Eros pitched his head toward Tala and said, “Stay out of my way, and I’ll stay out of yours.” With a final look at the future of House Taurus, Eros dipped his chin before billowing into a dark cloud of nothingness and raced across the temple grounds after Aela.
Aela flew in search of the second death she would claim.
She tuned out the sounds of Avarice in turmoil.
She couldn’t afford any distractions. Surprisingly, Seba had listened to her and left at some point in her flight away from Tarek’s ashes, even though he knew what she intended to do.
Tala would do the right thing. She was sure of it.
However it pained the Adjacent, she would make an exemplary Primary Star.
After dealing with Tarek, Aela had spied a host of Aries stars led by Zosma as she hunted her quarry. He was helping celestials ease into their earthen element as best they could while the Aries sentinels assisted the Taureons.
Slowing her flight, Aela didn’t make a sound as she touched down and approached Elnath on the highest bridge of the Avarice palace.
Clad in a deep crimson tactical suit, Elnath’s back was to her, overlooking the city in chaos beneath them.
The Taureons, now free from their crystal bands, were releasing their pent-up rage from millennia of being caged.
“What have you done?” Aela asked with lethal calm.
Elnath slowly turned to face Aela, a demented gleam in her dark purple eyes.
“Who do you think raised those insolent brats after the nebulae spat them out? Aldebaran was mine! And his precious soulmate’s death—good riddance—ruined him!
He couldn’t move beyond it. He became a shell of his former self, all because of their beloved Heirs,” she sneered.
“I was his Adjacent, I was to be his bonded, we were to rule side by side, and this is the thanks I get!” Elnath abruptly stopped herself, her chest heaving with buried emotion.
“I couldn’t care less about your jilted heart or about Aldebaran and Alcyone.” Aela said unimpressed, prowling closer. Her scaled armor caught the morning light overhead. “But there is a personal matter I am here to collect.”
“Oh?”
“As if you needed reminding.”
“Lina, compared to you, I am ancient. There are many things I’ve done in my time that have effects I haven’t witnessed yet. Please, do tell how I have hurt you,” Elnath said, glancing down at her long nails filed to sharp points.
“Don’t insult her memory by playing coy with me!
” Aela raged. Violet-white lightning shimmering with a golden haze speared out and clamped around Elnath.
Aela held her bolts from piercing through the Regent’s body completely but gave her lightning a taste where blood trickled down from multiple places as her power sank its teeth in and held.
Elnath whimpered. “You speak of Alrescha.”
Aela swallowed thickly as hot tears tracked down her face. “What. Happened. To. Her?” she bit out.
Her mother’s resting place beside Epsilon’s star was vacant. Elnath was responsible for the downfall of her House. She was the reason her mother was missing. It was taking every ounce of self-control not to obliterate the dark star in front of her.
“I led the assault on Pisces,” Elnath admitted with pride despite her injuries. “How could I not when Arieset himself told me the most powerful Primary would come from the Line of Piscaria. Anyone with any sense of self-preservation would have acted the same.”
Aela’s power almost sputtered out at the casual reveal of her Line’s secret. Recovering quickly, she latched onto her never-ending rage.
“You butchered us! We were allies!” Aela cried.
“I should have been Primary, and we were all cursed!” Elnath yelled back.
“Don’t speak from such a high position, Primary,” she spat the honorific title with such venom it was a wonder she didn’t transform into a feminine form of Seba.
“When I entered Arieset’s Trial, he said Pisces held a power that would get my House back.
What was I going to do? Ignore the means of securing what was mine by right?
It has always been every House for themselves, allies or not.
Even Alrescha knew it! She lied about you and kept you hidden for herself! ”
“I was her daughter!”
“As if that mattered!”
Aela shook her head. She couldn’t fathom a realm where one would be driven to such extremes and not bat an eye at exterminating a family and attempting to consume a youngling, all in the name of self-preservation.
“It will be a pleasure to rid the realm of such filth,” Aela whispered and called more power from the depths of her being. A simple death by strike wouldn’t be enough. Elnath had to burn without name—to nothing—for what she had done.
As her intention skittered across her mind, a tremor overtook the city and rippled the surrounding air, as if Fate were watching their interaction and wasn’t too pleased with its course. Far down in Avarice, streets were cleaved by an unseen force and buildings swayed. Screams erupted from below.
“Ah, still playing by the rules, I see,” Elnath said. Disregarding the lightning bolts sinking deeper into her skin. “I have no such constraints.”
Orange flames burned through Aela’s lighting in a powerful blaze. The fiery surge threw Aela back into the tower on her side of the bridge. Slamming into the timeworn stone, her vision momentarily darkened.
Instead of continuing her assault, Elnath spoke quietly from the distance she gained between them, “Consider my mercy a thank you for dismantling House Taurus. I couldn’t have done it better myself,” before darting off in a dark purple trail of starlight.
Aela was caught between watching Elnath flee and hearing the city beneath her be torn apart by a power they couldn’t see.
The greater need pulled her. Aela made a vow within herself before she jumped off the bridge and plummeted to the ground of Avarice, narrowly avoiding the soaring spires of the palace.
Aela landed with a shockwave that rocked the street.
The ground splintered rapidly. Motes of dust and rubble from the quaking buildings rained down into the fissures where nothingness awaited.
Aela knelt onto the cobblestones and spread her hands across the ground, trying to soothe the fractures.
Avarice shouldn’t pay the price for my vengeance.
Abruptly, the city stopped swaying, calmed by her internal words and intention.
The cracks halted their advance as Aela’s other power withdrew, the balance her vengeance had threatened restored.
The screams shifted from fear to the occasional wail or sob of relief.
Aela straightened just as Zosma jogged to her side.
“Are you alright?” he asked.
“I don’t know how to answer that. What of the city? What do they need?”
Zosma looked her over, his eyes seeing what she didn’t know how to voice. “Aries is here under my command; we’re helping the common class stars wield their magic safely.”
The news stunned her for a moment before Aela refocused on his tone. There was something wrong. “What is it?”
“We met resistance.”
“Why? What kind of resistance?”
“Some of the Asters are vying for control, many are unaccounted for while others are trying to force lesser stars—it’s chaos, to put it lightly.”
Aela groaned. “What would you have me do?”
Zosma’s brow pinched down. “Aela, you’re the Primary of Taurus.”
THE END of Book 1 in The Astral Archives
Continue Aela’s story in The Remnant of the Zodiac