Chapter 20 Nyte
Nyte
Waking was like plummeting from the heavens, my soul hurtling downward only to be crushed into a body too frail to withstand the impact.
Consciousness returned in pieces, cutting through the darkness.
I could see, just barely—a fractured haze of light and shadow hovering above me—but no breath came to fill my lungs.
My chest felt as though it were encased in stone, each rib straining against some invisible weight that pinned me down, holding me captive within my own flesh.
Every muscle was locked tight, frozen in shock, as if my very bones remembered the fall, the ground rushing up to meet me.
My fingers twitched, a faint echo of life pulsing within them, but no more.
My lips parted, aching to form a word, a sound, anything to break the silence, but even that simple effort turned to dust.
Panic stirred beneath the stillness, a faint, fluttering thing buried deep within me, but my body refused to heed it. All I could do was stare up at the hazy shapes above, caught in the terrible stillness, bound to a form that felt foreign—as though I were a stranger trapped within my own skin.
And in that moment, suspended between the waking world and whatever lay beyond, I wondered if I had truly returned … or if some part of me had been left behind in that endless fall.
Sound trickled into my senses with part of an answer to the questions of where I was and why.
At first, there was a gentle wind and shaken foliage.
Then peace turned to violence with the mighty unmistakable roar that rattled through my body.
The dragon’s cry was a rope to grapple and pull myself out of the void I was drifting in.
“We waited as long as we could. Astraea is right: this is the best hope for now.” I knew that voice. The little rogue vampire was here—Nadia.
My pain, my confusion, nothing fucking mattered when I heard the one name that forced every weakness away so I could finally take a deep inhale.
Astraea.
Memory of how I lay so disorientated and immobilized came back to me in horrifying flashes of clarity. Dusk and Dawn had won, inflicting their curse of eternal rest on me, but … I was awake. How long had I been gone?
Everything in me barked in protest against moving, but my Starlight was out there, and I didn’t care if I had to trek to her with shattered bones and my body in flames.
“I don’t know if we’ll ever get to make it back here.” That was Drystan who spoke next.
With the two of them together, not sounding like they were trying to kill each other, was I truly awake?
“If this is you saying you’ll miss me, I know you will,” Nadia said, but it lacked a little of her usual arrogance.
“Just—” Drystan didn’t finish his sentence, but footsteps compacted the soft snow.
I forced my eyes to open and immediately squinted from the light; the pair seemed close.
So close that I tried to focus my vision to be sure the rogue didn’t have a blade lodged in my brother’s chest. I didn’t get to confirm that when the ground beneath me moved as I tried to roll onto my side; then I barely registered that I was falling before I slammed with a groan onto snow thick enough to soften the landing, but not completely.
“Shit!” Nadia exclaimed.
I couldn’t see them as I blinked up, realizing now I was previously lying on the saddle of a black dragon, but he was too big to be …
The fact Eltanin wasn’t as small as I remembered bolted me upright against every agonizing pulse in my head and shooting pain in my bones.
“Where is she?” I demanded. Adrenaline was a drug I consumed greedily to numb the warnings of my body.
“How the fuck are you awake?” Drystan said, marching over and staring at me as if I were a ghost.
“No need to sound so thrilled about it, brother,” I said hoarsely, losing shreds of dignity with each passing second I lay here.
I tried to look around, hoping but already knowing Astraea wasn’t here right now.
The cold started to seep into me, and when Drystan leaned down, I accepted his help up, immediately needing to lean against Eltanin.
His feathers against my skin tingled, and with that sensation a thread pulled within me.
“How long?” I asked, barely a daunted whisper because I feared the answer. Eltanin was as big as Athebyne now.
“A month,” Nadia said. “Give or take. You’ve been in dreamland for around a month.”
I closed my eyes to accept the lost time. It could have been far more … it should have been forever. My mind was storming with questions, but only one thing mattered right now.
“Where is Astraea?” I asked again.
Seeing Drystan’s wince, I braced for an answer I wasn’t going to like.
“She’s … with Auster.”
My fist tightened and I took a pause to collect my sanity.
“Against her will?”
“It’s kind of complicated.”
“Then uncomplicate it,” I snarled.
“Not even months of sleep can make you less grumpy,” Nadia muttered, folding her arms.
I knew exactly where I was when I cast a glance sideward and saw a wooden home so tall that my neck ached when I tried to scan to the top of the structure. We were at Nadir’s home.
“Where were you taking me?”
Drystan tried to hide another wince, scratching the back of his neck.
“North Star.”
My eyes blazed wide. There was only one reason to go to that island in Althenia.
“You were going to try crossing realms with me,” I confirmed, barely able to contain the outrage in my tone. “Taking me away from her?”
Drystan shifted his stance, squaring himself defensively.
But it was Nadia who pointed a finger at me, her brow furrowed with anger. “You don’t get to wake up and be pissed,” she snapped. “He’s been studying tirelessly to figure out a way to bring you back from your damned beauty sleep you let yourself get tricked into.”
As much as the idea of what Drystan was going to do enraged me, and how the little rogue dared to speak to me, I had to swallow my feelings after hearing this. Slipping a look at my brother, I felt guilt creep in to cool my body as I took in the tiredness of his face now.
“I didn’t know the curse would happen so soon,” I confessed.
“But you knew it would eventually and told no one,” he said resentfully.
“I hoped I would have a few decades at least and perhaps be able to find a way to break it before the eternal night came.”
I cast my sight up, scanning over the declining expanse of stars and the broken moon.
“The sky isn’t red anymore,” Nadia said, like she was airing a thought.
I didn’t know what that meant, but Drystan did. “It should be midday, so the imbalance is still active, and the stars are still plummeting.”
As he mentioned it, I saw movement, lights that shot across the sky and grew in luminance. I could hear the roars of the land in the distance, but the vibrations of wherever the star hit didn’t reach us.
“This happens often?” I inquired.
“Yes. Astraea managed to stop a meteor from destroying Vesitire right before she was taken. The people still talk about it, which reminds me, we’ve also seen a rebellion in her name. People wearing armbands of deep purple with her sigil on it—the wings are changed to black.”
My mind spun to absorb all that stunning information about Astraea. It riddled me with deep pride and immense concern.
“I’m going to get her,” I said, slipping into a dark calm at the thought of confronting Auster after where we’d left off. I was looking forward to inflicting so much pain upon him he would forget his own damned name before he begged for death.
Eltanin gave a rattle something between a chirp and a growl; his giant head twisted back, and when I met those starry, purple eyes …
a thread broke in my soul, physically stopping my breath, only for a few seconds as that thread stretched, reaching to forge something new—a bond so brave and triumphant.
It was like a star waking up inside me, a quiet burn that sent heat through every vein, pooling into a golden warmth I could barely contain.
Eltanin bonded with me as his rider.
Our minds brushed each other, tentatively and delicately, yet it was impossible to mistake the weight of the dragon’s spirit living within me. Thoughts, not words, resonated between us, each one like an echo of my own heartbeat.
“What is happening?” I asked in a whispered breath.
This wasn’t possible. Eltanin was Astraea’s dragon.
“We were hoping the dragon bond would wake you from the curse, but it didn’t.”
Drystan explained to me how Eltanin only matured enough to choose a rider after his second moon cycle.
I was drawn closer to the dragon by an invisible tether, which linked us.
It seemed too good, too much of a gift, to be true.
However, I couldn’t deny there had been something that intrigued me about the dragon the moment I saw him, which further cast away my denial.
Perhaps it had been his darkness, his shadowy magick.
I didn’t know, but I was beholden to him the moment I heard Eltanin’s first communication through our bond, not in our language, maybe not in words ever known to mankind, but somehow I understood.
I will be your wings.
It took everything in me not to fall to my knees with this utter blessing. The weight of my celestial wings wasn’t gone; they were right here, mightier than ever before. Wings that would catch me no matter how many times I fell.
My hand reached to caress his feathered mane. Eltanin’s large eyes closed, and a soft purr vibrated over his neck.
“Can you take me to her?” I asked him aloud in the common tongue.
Eltanin’s purple eyes snapped open, piercing into me with our shared determination and concern with the mention of Astraea. This celestial dragon wasn’t mine alone; he was ours, mine and Astraea’s, until the end of time.
I recoiled when Eltanin roared, a declaration of anguish knowing Astraea was in trouble. Eyeing his back, I found the impressive saddle he wore.
“You sure you’re strong enough to ride, never mind face Auster Nova?” Drystan said skeptically.
“I have one reason to be glad this curse is broken. One fucking reason to want to be awake in this hell right now, and I’m not leaving her alone with him another damned second.”
I sized up the climb to the saddle, but when Drystan didn’t respond this time, I glanced at him. His expression turned hard and guarded, then I realized the error in my angry words.
“I didn’t mean—”
“Forget it. I know she’s the only reason you live and breathe, the apple of your eye, the star to your night.” Drystan waved me off, heading toward the great red dragon, Athebyne. “Some things never change.”
He threw the comment dryly, and I swore inwardly. I was constantly letting him down. Making him feel he was insignificant to me, when it was so far from the truth.
Nadia hesitated, glancing at us in silent debate before she followed Drystan, who was about to mount his dragon.
“I don’t know where she is. Last I knew she was in Vesitire’s castle, but that was at least a week ago,” Drystan said.
I rubbed my chest, reaching to feel our bond, hoping it would to be enough to guide me to her if Auster had moved her from Vesitire.
“Drystan,” I called, but I lost what I was going to say when he glanced my way.
It was strange … this tension between us. I wanted it gone but didn’t know where to start cutting through it to reach him. Drystan read my failure to communicate, casting his sight forward and bracing himself as Athebyne shifted, ready to take flight. Nadia held onto him from behind.
“If you fall off Eltanin, I won’t catch you,” Drystan said.
I had to shield my eyes with the powerful blasts of wind throwing snow over me as the dragon launched into the sky.
“Let’s go get our Starlight,” I muttered to the dragon.
Every piece of me ached and strained to be reunited with Astraea. And every ounce of my villainous darkness itched to rain the hell of a thousand ages down upon Auster Nova for all he’d done to her in the past and present.