Chapter 10 Astraea
Astraea
Nightsdeath had killed me three times now. Each awakening took longer, and the suffering when I returned became more punishing. A tear rolled down the side of my face, falling onto the cold marble I lay against.
My blurry sight could make out only his black boots, spilled with shadows that seemed to writhe and twist around them, alive with an eerie, unnatural motion.
Above me, he lounged upon my purple throne, its once-vivid fabric now dulled in his presence, as though it too had surrendered to his dominion.
He leaned back with a casual ease, one hand resting on the arm of the chair, the other draped lazily across his lap.
Yet there was nothing casual about the weight of his gaze—though I couldn’t lift my head to meet it, I felt its icy pull dragging me down.
And there I was, sprawled at his feet, helpless and humiliated.
My chest burned, each breath shallow and painful, but it was nothing compared to the ache in my soul.
This was my throne, my kingdom—yet I lay broken, a shattered remnant of the power I once held, as he sat above me like a conqueror surveying his spoils.
It wasn’t for my physical pain I cried soundlessly, but for the ache of how every time I awoke from death or sleep, I was being terrorized by every vicious part of Nyte. Worst of all, it hurt because I couldn’t even hate Nightsdeath, couldn’t fight him; my heart still reached to love him.
“I know you’re fighting to contain Lightsdeath. Let it free, Astraea. Let me see how bright you shine,” Nightsdeath said, soft as a lullaby.
He was right. That dangerous power rattled within me at the torture he inflicted, and I grappled to keep a tight hold on stopping it from rushing to the surface and taking control of my actions and feelings.
The fact that Nightsdeath wanted me to become it gave me enough reason to keep it smothered.
If he could speak to Lightsdeath, and they could ally together …
I could lose my right mind as Nyte had lost his battle with Nightsdeath sometimes.
“Why are you so afraid to play with your newfound power? You could turn this castle to stardust with a thought and kill your enemies—the High Celestials—within.”
I scrunched my eyes shut and my skin ran hotter to contain the beast inside me. He made it sound so tempting, so easy and without consequence. But there was always a consequence to violence so mindless.
“There are too many innocents. My war is not with them,” I rasped.
Nightsdeath groaned. “Your morals are what make you weak and keep you at Auster’s mercy. It’s a tragedy, to watch one so mighty lie so pitifully.”
An ashy taste filled my mouth, and I sucked my lip to keep from crying out at the ache of my dormant muscles trying to peel myself up off the floor.
The awful sensations were becoming familiar but no less tolerable no matter how many times I faced this.
Coming back from death was akin to, but far worse than, waking from a night of bottomless wine.
His method of torture was what left the burning sensation through my veins, and my cough felt like glass sliced in my throat as I rolled and propped myself up on a shaky elbow.
The lingering feeling of his shadows flooding through my body like icy flame left me shivering, yet my skin was slicked with a sheen of sweat.
“I should like to avoid killing you again, I’m growing bored waiting for you to come around. So tell me,” he said, leaning his forearms on his thighs to peer down closer. “Where is Rainyte’s body?”
I took a few more breaths, trying to draw a clear one free from the sensation of inhaling smoke.
“You can kill me a thousand times, I’ll never tell you.”
It was a full moon today, and I slipped my sight to the red sphere in the sky out the long stained glass window with a tight yearning in my chest. Part of me was terrified that Nyte would come, in case Nightsdeath managed to kill him and take over his body.
He would become more deadly with Nyte’s ability to bend minds.
Nyte would win.
I would fight by his side and we would win.
Nightsdeath snarled with the snap of his patience.
He hauled me up with a tight grip around my throat and I choked.
Just as fast as he reacted in violence he switched to quiet tenderness, pulling me flush to his body with an arm around my waist, his shadows caressing my skin, snaking over me curiously.
I couldn’t decide which side of him was more frightening.
“Why haven’t you tried to fight me?” he asked, almost to himself as he studied my face and tucked a lock of hair behind my ear.
“Does it harm Nyte if I do?” I dared to ask.
He sighed, a hint of disappointment. “I almost want to carve out your heart so it can stop being such a pathetic influence to your mind. I expected far more fight from you, but you’re perfect prey for me to bend and break here as I wish.
” His light fingers tipped my chin. “You are so disgustingly, terribly beautiful. I want to have you almost as much as I want to kill you.”
Being around Nightsdeath was like walking an endless plank across a deadly ocean.
I couldn’t predict him—whether the next moment would bring a soft touch, fleeting and disarming, or a poisonous strike sharp enough to cut through me, sending me plummeting into oblivion.
His presence was both magnetic and perilous, a constant tension pulling me closer even as survival demanded I keep my distance.
My heart raced, not just from fear, but from the maddening thrill of the unknown.
Every breath I took in his shadow felt like a gamble, a step deeper into the abyss where I might drown—or worse, never want to leave.
“The feeling is quite mutual,” I said, nearly lost in his deadly seduction.
But I had to start figuring out his weaknesses.
Reaching through the void, I retrieved my stormstone dagger and pulled my arm back enough for the momentum to plunge it with both hands through his heart.
My pulse slammed, filling my ears and spiking my anticipation. Nightsdeath made no sound and barely gave a flinch.
“This is more like it,” he said in delight. Reaching to wrap his hand around mine, he pulled the blade out slowly.
I didn’t know what to expect, but I’d hoped the attack would at least wound him even if it didn’t send him back to the veil between life and death.
His amber eyes became more alive, like I’d pleased him with what I’d done.
I tore my stare from them to look down at the blade as it slipped out of his body fully.
The plunge of it had felt as good as any flesh; it slid out of him with a stomach-churning slickness like a real body …
yet there was no blood. No wound. He was completely unharmed, confirming the worst of my fears: he couldn’t be killed, not even temporarily, nor could he even be wounded by any mortal weapon.
In my horror and fear of his retaliation for my attempt, I summoned my magick on instinct. He anticipated it, instantly smothering my light with his darkness, but I didn’t give up.
Lightsdeath hummed through my veins like liquid silver, peeking to the surface.
My next attack pushed distance between us, but he deflected easily, stalking me with a slow smile that dared me to keep trying. Wanted me to give in to my world-ending power completely. Only so he could manipulate it for himself.
I stopped, gathering my breath and backing myself against the wall as he closed in.
“Is that all you’ve got, my star?” he purred.
“I’m not going to give up Nyte, so get on with it,” I said coldly.
A muscle in his shadowy jaw flexed. “You desire me too,” he said, drawing me closer again with a slithering arm around my back.
“With Rainyte, you wanted to see me take over, you wanted me to crave you instead of seeing you as nothing more than an insufferable light to be extinguished. Your heart has always called to darkness.”
But you don’t get to become it.
That missing line from what Nyte had said to me before was what separated his dark mind from his good. The side of him that wanted to watch the world burn hand in hand with me and the other that wanted to help me salvage this world even if it came to that.
“You’re a kernel of dark power that only grew from his pain … and that makes you a piece of him I will always love.”
“Poetic,” he said, inching his lips closer to mine. “Then why do you resist me?”
“Because he could have become you long ago. He could have let his pain take over completely and damn the world. Yet he fought through everything to not be the merciless villain he was portrayed to be, and I won’t let that be in vain.”
“So weak and vulnerable, your mortal hearts.”
“But…” My heartbeat picked up as I slipped a hand up his chest. His shadows weaved around my fingers, and there was a certain pleasure to their caress.
“You’re right. I craved you because I wanted that part of him to love me as much as the rest of him.
I wanted to show him that Nightsdeath didn’t frighten me.
If you let me wake him, you’ll still be there in him. You’ll get to rule with me.”
“Why would I want to go back to being suppressed and ignored inside a vessel that refuses to let his pain be avenged like we deserve?”
“Because we all have that inside of us. A suffering we want to unleash upon the world, but, if we all gave up, this world would belong to no one. It would be in ruins.”
“That’s what you think I am? The embodiment of giving up?”
“Yes.”
Nightsdeath smiled, amused. “Oh my star, I haven’t even begun. I am not surrender, I am liberation.”
His lips brushed softly against mine, and it took all my willpower to not give in. The ways he touched me were always curious, as if he was searching for something though he didn’t quite know what.
We had been alone in the throne room all this time but now voices sounded outside. As they grew closer, I distinguished one of them to be Notus’s. My heart slammed and I clutched Nightsdeath with a surge of urgency. I was trapped between the bodies of two enemies, but I had to find a way to escape.
“I need your help,” I whispered.
His knuckle brushed along my cheek. “Those are beautiful words from you.”
My eyes closed, welcoming the peace, as my words escaped my lips in a few final breaths. “We’ll find the key together. But I need your help here first.”
His eyes flared a fraction at my offer right before the doors were thrown open and several footfalls marched inside.
“She was to be kept chained in the dungeons,” Notus bellowed.
Nightsdeath kept an intimate hold of me, tightening as Auster arrived close behind. As Auster noticed our proximity, his jaw tightened.
“So you’re a desperate whore even for the most despicable part of him,” Auster sneered.
Humiliation from being called that degrading term in front of so many guards standing by flushed me, but it quickly hardened to anger I hoped he felt from my piercing stare.
“Unlike you, I don’t need chains to be sure she’ll stay by my side.”
Nightsdeath goaded them both. Flaunting his power both in magick and the hold he had on my heart.
“You have no authority here,” Auster snapped.
“Go ahead, try to take her.”
No one moved.
“I thought we had an agreement,” Auster ground out.
“I’ve come to see you offer little to me, Nova,” Nightsdeath drawled. He held the power, and everyone knew it.
My mind spun, trying to calculate my own plan between their hostility. Auster had power over the people; Nightsdeath had the power to destroy everything. There was a scale to balance, and I had to have the cunning to hold them both in my palms.
“Men like to bicker over their power when the one with the most is a woman standing behind you both.”
Nightsdeath’s attention swung to me with mild surprise; Auster pinned me with challenge and caution; Notus could hardly contain his hatred.
As a demonstration, I threw up a sheet of light, separating me from them. Out of their sight, I stepped through the void onto the other side before the wall of light fell like water.
“Always behind you,” I said, making all of them whirl around to the main doors where I’d transported myself. The guards all drew their swords, but I smiled calmly. “So you might never know when I’m coming for you.”
“Restrain her,” Notus demanded to his guards in gold.
I didn’t resist, letting them approach with manacles carefully held in rags. I knew then they had to be laced with nebulora and braced for the sting. Gritting my teeth, I didn’t let them see my pain, instead widening my smile that might have looked manic considering the way Auster recoiled.
Nightsdeath studied everything with amused intrigue, and, through our stares, I believed we formed a temporary agreement of trust, a plan to be decided, as he let the High Celestials take me away.