Chapter 18 Astraea #2
I was about to make a sarcastic remark, but something in the tone of those last two words made me stumble internally.
I thought they tapered off with vulnerability.
Was it possible that the more time he spent with me, the more Nyte’s truer, good feelings grew?
I’d noticed how irritable and on edge Nightsdeath had become in recent days.
How he often looked at me with the will to kill but something was making him hesitate even from torturing me.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said, barely a whisper as I held his glowing amber eyes. “We’re getting that thing together.”
I snatched the blindfold from him, only to step closer and reach up while standing on my toes to tie it around his eyes.
His hands immediately shot over mine as the material stole his sight.
We stood there for a few wild heartbeats before his grip relaxed, and he let me tie it behind his head.
When I let go, he hissed as the material tightened by some form of magick, making it impossible to remove now until we’d retrieved the key piece.
For a moment I was stunned by his vulnerability. The shadows around him still primed and swirled with more anger than ever, but he’d given his trust to me for this. If I ran out of the temple now, would he ever be free of that blindfold?
“Now what?” he asked, so quietly it was the first inkling of uncertainty he’d ever shown.
I went to reach for his hand, but suddenly the ground disappeared beneath my feet, and I hadn’t unglamoured my wings yet.
Falling rapidly only lasted a few seconds before an arm wrapped around me, stopping my plummet.
Then we were floating around midnight swirls and broken constellations. His wings of shadow suspended us there.
“Might want to release those wings,” he commented, a slight huskiness in his tone over how our bodies were forcibly pressed together. My legs wrapped tightly around his waist. Even if he couldn’t feel me physically, was he affected by the proximity?
I tried to reach my wings but they felt … missing. Then realization dawned.
“I can’t,” I breathed, clutching him tighter now that I understood he was the only thing that kept me from plunging into an abyss. “Trust has two sides. Don’t drop me.”
When he realized what I meant, Nightsdeath stiffened, and one terrible note of dread that he might let go slithered up my spine.
Instead, his arm tightened, then his other hand hooked under my thigh, prompting me to wrap my legs around him more securely.
My pulse skipped, and I was unable to resist pressing myself against him as tightly as I could.
“Best get comfortable then. Who knows what other surprises there might be. So likewise, don’t let go,” he said. His breath fanned across my lips, and I could have whimpered as I forced back the desire for him to kiss me.
Nightsdeath flew and I glanced over my shoulder to direct him. “Lower.” Then, “Left. No, my left, your right.” I bit my lip against the amusement bubbling inside me from how ridiculous this was.
“We should have swapped places,” he mumbled, but when I caught a glance, I thought a curl fought onto his mouth too.
“That wasn’t the instruction. Lower—not that much!”
The fact that I didn’t have my own wings to let go so I could dive straight for the floating key piece was becoming increasingly frustrating.
Nightsdeath stopped moving to hover in the air with me, and I turned my face back to him.
With his eyes covered I couldn’t read his expression to understand why he’d stalled.
“I want to feel you,” he said, five words that stunned me, coiling in my stomach. The faint flex of his fingers on my waist and thigh left no mistaking what type of feel he meant. “It’s the only thing that makes me envy Rainyte.”
Without thinking, my fingers threaded through the back of his hair. “Physical touch … the yearning for it … has to come from a feeling within first.”
“Lust doesn’t need attachment.”
“Is that all you feel for me? Lust?”
He thought for a moment. “No. I feel a deep, unending desire to kill you. Because you making me contemplate such trivial things as lust is a terrible distraction. It’s what makes Rainyte fail time and time again.”
A swelling grew in my chest, perhaps made of sheer desperation that birthed a new hope in my mind.
What if reaching the parts of Nyte that were suppressed in Nightsdeath could wake his physical body?
Maybe it was a grasp in the dark, but my light was fading further the longer he lay cursed and out of my reach.
No, not out of my reach—he was right here. Wrapped around me.
“Come back to me,” I whispered, then pressed my lips to his.
It took a second to bend the dark, but then he was kissing me back. Needy and desperate and searching. It was the dark welcoming the light, colliding as night and stars, accepting the inevitability and chaos of each other.
Then, as if he realized what wanting this would cost, his hold slackened, releasing me.
I would have kept my hold on him regardless but a blast hit my body, striking a pain through me that left no option but to let go.
It wasn’t Nightsdeath’s power that sent me falling.
I saw strikes of blue lightning in the darkness, and I knew who’d come. But soon, I would be lost in complete endless nothing if I kept falling through the abyss, and Nightsdeath and Auster would vanish from my sight. I didn’t have wings, but I could still feel my magick.
My survival came in a rush of adrenaline.
As I twisted, my magick created a sheet of light beneath me and I braced to land on it.
The impact shook through my body, but I had no time to think, casting out another step of light, and another, and another.
Climbing like I’d done in the void between life and death.
The key piece floated above me, and I raced up my light steps one by one as they disappeared behind me.
Then, to my horror, my magick started to dull, as if this trial saw it as a cheat, like my wings. Nightsdeath and I had to retrieve the key piece together—a test of trust. But surely we’d passed that part in our willingness to get this far?
I kept going regardless. I was so. Close. Leaping off my final step I was going to reach it … I was going to …
My fingers grazed the metal, spinning the shard faster. Then I fell again with no way to catch myself this time. Down and down and down. Through a void of lonely dark.
A gust of air enveloped my entire body before something firmer took hold of me. I gripped it back with everything I had; then we were shooting high.
Nightsdeath had come.
“You caught me,” I breathed.
He said nothing, and the stars came back around and the key piece was within reach again. This time I clutched it tightly, pulling it to my chest while Nightsdeath cradled me, flying higher and higher.
Emerging into the temple was a new breath of fresh air.
When he landed, the ground beneath our feet was dull, cracked beige stone again. The illusion dizzied me for a second, but we’d done it—retrieved the first key piece.
I beamed at Nightsdeath, who was able to remove his eye cover now, but when he did those amber eyes were blazing with the heat of the sun, targeting me, then over my shoulder. My whole body stiffened as I recalled the intrusion on our trial.
It hadn’t been part of the game. Auster was truly here. Along with his two brothers, Tarran, and a guard of celestials.
“We’ll take that,” Auster said, holding out his hand for the key piece I held.
Nightsdeath stepped toward me, but at the same time, I stepped toward Auster.
My pulse skipped erratically as I reached him and placed the key piece in his awaiting hand. My gut pulled in knots when I turned back. Nightsdeath watched in pure, still fury.
“I see how it is. Trust is more powerful than love,” he recited from me. What I’d said days ago, and it tore deeply in my heart. “Because trust makes the sharpest blade. Well played, Maiden. You almost had me fooled.”
My chest could hardly contain the devastating storm behind my ribs. I couldn’t stop my quick look toward Tarran. All he gave was a barely detectable nod, and I heard the unspoken words.
You have to kill Nightsdeath.
I’d heard it first from my guardian at the Temple in Alisus and immediately rejected it. Then Tarran recited it back at the castle when we’d found a moment of privacy in the kitchens.
I understood now.
“You of all wicked beings shouldn’t be surprised by this,” I said coldly to Nightsdeath.
His amber eyes flared a shade brighter. He took a daring step closer. Auster’s guards shifted, but I took a step to meet him too.
“Not surprised. Disappointed. You’re just as weak as I thought you to be to allow yourself to rule under one so spineless. We could have conquered the world together.”
“I rule under no one. I am the star-maiden.”
“A title is just a word. In all I see before me, you two deserve each other, and I deserve to break the world apart for all the betrayal it brews, the greed it feeds, and the fucking pain it inflicts.”
Light formed in my palms, and Nightsdeath regarded it with his shadows swirling angrily.
Knowing this place would become rubble the moment we unleashed our magick against each other, I channeled through the void.
In a heartbeat, the mild temperature of the temple was replaced with the numbing winter air, so sharp and powerful this high, as I enticed Nightsdeath to strike me out here instead.
He didn’t waste a breath.
A familiar stroke of dark awareness slithered across my nape, all the warning I had to spin and throw out a bright flare to clash with his starless blast.