Chapter 17 Nightsdeath
Nightsdeath
She was such a delicate little thing. The star maiden slept soundly, her head right by my lap so the shadows around me could ward off the chill swirling into the mouth of the shallow cave.
Astraea insisted we needed to stop here for her to rest. It had been many hours since the inn, but her depleting stamina was a hindrance to our progress toward the temple. I was starting to reconsider this plan.
Astraea stirred gently, tucking her knees up tighter to her chest, as if the air she claimed was icily bitter still caught at her ankles. Every flicker and sound from her while unconscious was fascinating. Unlike when she was awake, every unthinking thing she did was a breath of pure innocence.
I couldn’t fathom how she could rest when a thousand ways to kill her surrounded her vulnerable form and she’d drifted off in naive contentment beside the worst of them.
I reached to hook a strand of her glittering silver hair.
It looked so soft, weaving through my fingers like the shadows.
The itch to truly know what it felt like irritated my mind.
She stirred again, and I stiffened to the brush of her hand against my leg, though I couldn’t physically feel it.
Then, to my complete abhorrence, she lifted her head and wiggled herself up to lay it over my lap where I sat, legs extended with crossed ankles.
My hands hovered, utterly repelled by this bright creature sleeping on me as she settled soundly again.
I battled the impulse to remove her since hideous, treacherous feelings disturbed me.
Echoes of the weak and smitten parts from the other half of me that were getting harder to ignore the more she was around.
Which, infuriatingly, was all the fucking time.
Rainyte adored her like there was no greater treasure to be found across any galaxy. Her attachment burrowed deep within him, within us, far beyond physical attraction. A kind of love that knew no reason; where Astraea was concerned, there existed no measure too great to declare it.
There was a time when I was utterly repelled by the idea of her.
Forced to retreat further and further into the shadows of Rainyte’s consciousness while he indulged in her light.
Before her, we thrived in darkness, we fed on despair, and from the moment she took root in our mind, I became smaller.
My voice diminished under her whispering words of betrayal, like care and hope.
My fingers slipped across the side of her throat now with the thoughts circling viciously.
She made us forget about the wrongs done to us, the things that made me darker and more prominent day by day in this wretched world.
I could kill her now, and eventually I would find Rainyte’s physical body even if I had to collapse this world building by building to do so.
Yet I couldn’t. Somehow the thought of smothering this precious star forever seemed so tragic, even to my depraved spirit.
She was my curse, my eternal torment. And so the only way to have her and the body I needed was to convince her to give over to Lightsdeath.
It would be a challenge to reach that powerful entity and strike a bargain, but I believed together—as light and dark incarnate—we could dominate the world and make it ours.
The urge to wrap my fingers around her neck eased with that glorious vision, and instead I lost myself in a trance invoked by her starlight hair while my darkness combed through it.
I could have kept torturing her to get her to spill the locations, to seek out the key pieces and leave her behind, but her suffering … it wasn’t an indulgence like anyone else’s. Her pain rebounded into me, and I came to the realization it had to be the mating bond.
She once tried to stab me with a pitiful weapon to hurt me, unaware that she needed no steel to accomplish that.
Astraea believed I could not hurt, but there was one way I felt my own pain: when she was in pain.
Maybe once I killed the beating heart in Rainyte’s body I would be free of that wretched weakness.
Until then I tucked back the locks of her hair to see more of her still, peaceful face.
“I want to end you, Astraea Lightborne. All I am is pain, all I know is suffering, and you drown me with your light bright enough to pierce the thickest darkness.”