Chapter 14 Astraea
Astraea
I’d never been surrounded by so many people while the world seemed to hold its breath in a mournful silence. Even if it weren’t for the starlight matter Auster had injected me with again this morning before our pre-wedding walk through the city, the people seemed so quiet.
This day should have been full of cheers and hope, a prospective marriage for the new rulers of Solanis promising a union that would uplift the nation and strengthen protection for them.
Yet, instead, my eyes pricked to the occasional face weighed down in sorrow I could make out through the lace veil covering my face, paired with the starlight matter that occasionally blurred my vision.
I was free and walking, yet a prisoner of substance once more.
I kept trying to reach Lightsdeath, touching it with sparks emitting from my fingertips, but I couldn’t summon enough magick to harness it fully.
I thought if I let that power consume me it might expel the starlight matter, and I only hoped once I was freed from it, I wouldn’t suffer the addiction again.
With my hand looped through the arm of the man I despised, I thought of many ways I could steal a weapon from him or a nearby guard just to keep myself calm.
As we made it to the lower level of the city, mostly occupied by humans and fae, hands started to reach toward me.
I extended a hand, brushing fingers with many of the people, which started to kindle a flame inside me.
I retreated, only to remove my glove, and every touch of skin on skin ignited my flame higher.
Auster’s hand closed over mine on his arm and gave a warning squeeze, likely for removing my glove, which was uncustomary. I didn’t care.
Only now did the crowd’s murmurs pick up.
My senses were still dulled under the drug, so I couldn’t make out their words, but occasionally I caught sad eyes lifting with hope and wonder as I met them.
I captured the smiles of all ages as I kept my hand running along the supple flesh of those who hadn’t given up on me.
A warm bundle was pressed into my palm. I carefully let the deep purple cloth stretch out, and when I saw the black wings … the key and constellation proudly adorned between … I stopped walking.
Glancing back, I didn’t know who had given it to me—the new banner of the star-maiden—and I almost lifted my veil to glance deeper through the crowd.
Auster pulled me closer to him before I could.
The guard detail, which followed, tightened around Auster and me, and I wondered if they detected something I couldn’t or if it was because Auster saw what had been given to me.
Auster subtly snatched the banner from me. I tried reaching for it, but my movements were too sluggish.
“Drown the world in starlight!”
The yell came from deep in the crowd, a battle cry from one of the people.
It caused the guards to arm themselves as what followed engulfed us all in clouds of deep purple smoke from an explosion that rumbled in my ears.
It was followed by a succession of blasts, and my senses were too dull to keep up.
I became separated from Auster somehow, pushing through the crowd and coughing on the plumes I inhaled with my panicked breaths.
Pull yourself together.
I ripped off my veil and found my dress and skin smudged with purple streaks.
As I shook my head, my adrenaline brought back some sharpness to my senses and I scanned the people pushing around me.
Some were fighting the celestials. Those in Auster’s uniform.
My eyes started to find many bands wrapped around biceps—my banner.
I flexed my fingers, searching for Lightsdeath this time as the only thing that might help me. I will be in control. I won’t hurt innocents. Once again, only pinpricks reached my fingertips, but I kept plunging deeper and deeper, fighting through the numbing effects of the starlight matter.
“Protect the maiden!” That was Auster’s men shouting. They didn’t want to protect me; they wanted to capture me.
Through the crowds I searched frantically for Auster, not in concern, but with a flash of anger that didn’t want to let him get away so easily. These people rebelled because they didn’t believe his lies, and he wasn’t getting to slither away from the confrontation like a coward.
There was too much purple smoke, too many bodies. I searched for the tether to him that would always live within me from our bond, unless he was dead. Spinning, I pinned his direction, catching a small, tight band of guards, who could only be guiding one important person.
Pushing through the bodies, my balance was precarious, but adrenaline kept me stumbling through the crowd toward my target.
“AUSTER!” I yelled.
He heard me. His harsh brown eyes cut into me through the gap in his guard detail.
Auster began to face forward again, intending to resume his retreat.
My vengeance overcame my reason.
I swiped a small blade from the belt of an unsuspecting person close to me, acting on nothing but pure instinct and rage.
The dagger was only in my possession for a second before it flew through the air, making its mark in the nape of the guard at Auster’s back.
When that body fell away, Auster whirled to me in outrage.
Running for him, I swiped up the sword of the guard I had killed just as Auster lifted his.
Our blades slammed against each other; the high pitch of steel against steel cried the sound of our anguish.
“You can talk big words, Auster. But your actions are always small and pathetic,” I seethed, sliding my blade against his and attacking again as best I could.
I knew I was outmatched right now. The blade I wielded was too heavy for me, the starlight matter still weakened my muscles, my dress made movement difficult, but I was so fucking angry I didn’t stop trying anyway.
“Are you behind this?” he demanded, defending himself easily against me. “Look at the bloodshed you’ve caused. These people’s lives are being carelessly lost for your cause, Astraea.”
“These people fight with purpose in their hearts. They fight against tyrants like you.”
I wanted to strike him so badly I became obsessed, needed to see him bleed even a few drops.
He said, “Your poison runs deep through these lands, but I am the antidote.”
I laughed, delirious and beyond exerted. But still my sword continued to lift and swing and fall. Until Auster backed up two long strides to avoid my next attack and I panted, collecting my breath and sanity in that pause in our battle.
“Let’s end this, Auster. Right here.”
“I won’t fight you like this.”
“Why? Only when I’m weak do you ever feel powerful.”
Auster’s stare darkened; blue lightning reflected across his eyes with a storm brewing beneath their surface.
I braced, lifting my sword when he threw a bolt of his magick toward me.
Shifting my leg back, I tightened my body for the impact, letting the steel absorb the current while the remnants coursed through me.
I was no stranger to his magick, and I would not let it strike me down.
Contrary to what he hoped to achieve with the attack, the last of the lightning humming through me helped expel more of the starlight matter’s influence, which was holding me back physically and mentally.
“Seize her,” Auster commanded.
I snarled at his cowardly order, having to split my attention between him and his guards, who closed in, herding me as I backed away.
Auster’s glare threw chips of ice at me before he began to turn, retreating from the fighting and leaving it to others to detain me.
“You cannot escape me, Auster Nova,” I yelled, causing him to pause, his shoulders to stiffen, but he didn’t look back. “For when the dark descends, I will rise from shadow … and you will fall into it. Seeing my face as your reckoning when the light goes out.”
His hands tightened into fists at his sides, and for a second I thought he might turn back, but he didn’t.
A glint in one of the guards’ hands caught my attention. More starlight matter. Were they all equipped with it and it was just a matter of who got close enough first to sedate me again?
Beginning to lose my confidence in this confrontation, I tried to calculate a way to run instead, even though the distance that stretched between me and Auster made me want to damn all odds and charge for him.
I was moments from being captured again …
Until I saw a little black bird fly over the heads of the celestials in front of me.
I wasn’t alone. Never alone. All these people who fought holding my banner now, humans and fae, they knew when to come, because as that bird swooped into the thick of the crowd it disappeared in a flash of light.
Then through the bodies, Davina winked at me.
She joined the fighting seamlessly, propelling a dagger from her fan in her graceful battle dance. It was then I knew … Rose and Zath would be somewhere here too. Davina used her influence in the fae resistance to turn it into the Maiden’s resistance, open to more walks of life than just fae now.
The day Auster stood me in front of the castle and the resistance had ruined his wedding announcement … that had been their warning call.
This … this was their first call of action in the rebellion against the High Celestial order.
Before Auster’s soldiers could reach me, others did, forming a circle around me and bracing bravely with weapons that could not contend with the might of the celestial soldiers. They shouldn’t be protecting me; it was my duty to protect them.
Drown the world in starlight.
That phrase had become a battle cry for the people, who struck a determined will in me to stand strong for them.
I am Astraea Lightborne. The star-maiden. The Daughter of Dusk and Dawn. The Goddess of Justice. I am Lightsdeath.
My belief sparked enough of my suppressed magick to seize.
A scream tore from my throat to drag it out, and I dropped down, slamming a hand to the ground, striking the land, which cracked from the impact that blasted every soldier back outside the radius of people who surrounded me.
The scars of the stone flooded with liquid silver, as if my glowing tattoos flowed off my skin to web around me.
I was hypnotized by the glittering silver pools, and my mouth watered at its resemblance to starlight matter potions.
No. I do not crave that.
I do not crave that.
I scrunched my eyes shut, forcing back the creeping desire for the drug that danced metallic notes on my tongue and pricked under my skin.
My fingers flexed against the stone—still braced in position from my strike of magick—when I felt a shadowy caress over them.
As I opened my eyes, darkness spilled over my silver rivers and twined through my fingers.
Glancing up, I saw the source of the shadows stalking toward me, so calm among the chaos.
I didn’t fear Nightsdeath, but to my relief and surprise, the people around me didn’t either.
They parted, letting him approach until he was close enough to crouch at my level.
“Hello, Starlight,” he purred.
He used Nyte’s nickname for me, and I bit my lip against a whimper. Nightsdeath plucked the comb of the veil from my hair and tossed it aside. I took his hand when he offered it, rising on shaky knees with him.
I scanned over the mob still resisting the celestials trying to rally order. They used force and magick and every cry of an innocent life fleeing or falling tore soul-deep.
“Save them,” I asked him.
Nightsdeath canted his head as if the request was as humorous as it was curious. But if Nightsdeath helped the people while I couldn’t, it would show his allegiance. Right here could begin Nyte’s redemption for when I finally had all of him back.
“Please,” I said, clutching him tighter.
He cupped my check, scanning my eyes.
“Then we will go retrieve the key together,” he said, tipping my hair over my shoulder.
“Yes.”
“Very well.”
Nightsdeath became a slice of shadow that moved with the grace and precision of a blade with no hand to wield it.
I watched in fascination and horror as he was less a body and more a thick stroke of pure darkness, with only his piercing gold eyes to track, as he reaped souls and spilled blood before a single enemy saw him coming.
I only lost track of him when a pink flicker caught my eye. Rose stared at the shadows cutting through masses of celestials like her worst nightmare had come. She met my stare, wide and horror-filled. All I could do was shake my head once.
None of them could come to me. Though they’d helped in rallying allies against Auster, and would continue to while we were separated, they could not be seen by Nightsdeath.
If he found any of them, he would have a far easier time than he did with me torturing, even killing, any of them to get the location of Nyte’s body.
Zath approached, and seeing him made my heart yearn.
He hooked Rose’s arm, muttering something to her.
With Nightsdeath pulling the focus of battle, it was time for them to retreat.
Zath’s blue eyes found me, and my pulse lurched at his firm expression of concern, fearing he might break the plan and come to me because he was always so damned stubborn and protective.
He shouldn’t even be here with his injuries still healing.
Zath looked up over my head and toward the sky. I turned, locking onto the blood-red moon that dominated the sky. A brilliant, full sphere.
Then my breath caught, realizing …
I whirled back, but Zath’s expression sank my quick surge of hope. Then the single shake of his head dropped the weight of the world onto me.
Eltanin was of age to choose his rider, and either the dragon bond hadn’t worked to wake Nyte, or Eltanin hadn’t chosen him.
Maybe there’s still time. It could still work and Nyte would come for me. My desperate hope clawed against my despair.
My knees almost gave out to prevent me from following after Zath and Rose as they were quickly swept out of my sight in the frantically retreating crowds. It was my time to escape as well, hand in hand with the most unfeeling creature in the realm.
“Are you ready to go, my star? Or would you like me to keep tearing through your enemies?”
I looked up, finding no color of flesh in his form, only darkness imitating the shape of Nyte’s face with twin suns wild and blazing against the darkness. He was so hauntingly mesmerizing.
For now, this was the only piece of Nyte I had, as terrifying and unpredictable as he was. But as my fingers slipped against his made of swirling shadows, a piece of my soul felt home.