Chapter 21 Astraea
Astraea
I killed Nightsdeath … and I mourned for the loss of him.
My body was sunk in a frozen embrace as my consciousness stirred, but the only place I wanted to awaken was by Nyte’s bedside.
Until I remembered he might not be there anymore.
He might not be anywhere in my realm for me to find anymore after what I’d done.
When I opened my eyes … the sky was the most beautiful color I’d ever seen. A forgotten depthless midnight cradling the lonely stars. The blood moon curse was lifted.
“Nyte.” I whispered his name like it might summon him to me from the stars.
Then my eyes pricked with the most dreadful thought that punched through me: what if the blood moon curse was lifted because Nyte was truly dead this time? What if I’d killed the only piece of Nyte I had left?
Lying here, everything within me steadily became as numb as my flesh.
Through the depths of my despair, I heard distant cries of fighting trickled over to me. Pitches of steel, cries of pain. A battle had broken out nearby, and my memory weaved back together to remember Auster was here, but who would he be fighting if Nightsdeath was gone?
I pushed up, wincing at the sharp stabbing in my muscles. Whipping my head around, through the small patch of forestry, I could make out bodies moving. Many of them. Adrenaline started to warm my body enough for me to find my footing on stable legs.
“I should have known your loyalty always has and always will lie in part with him.” I tensed at that voice, turning to find Laviana, flanked by two other vampires, approaching me.
“You followed me?”
“Of course. You can’t think us all fools who don’t know you’re hunting dragons that will grant an unparalleled advantage to the side they’re on.”
“You’ve wasted your time and lost lives for nothing. The dragon here can’t be released,” I said through gritted teeth.
“What does it take?”
I pursed my lips. That knowledge wasn’t safe to give out when, on top of Auster’s bounty that had people out to capture us, Laviana and all the vampires could leverage any of us to get to Eltanin.
“A specific stone. It’s well hidden and not with me.”
Laviana smiled, but it wasn’t friendly. “Like I said, you’re a terrible liar, Astraea. We were once allies.”
“We still are. You can’t expect me to choose sides when there are far greater things at stake right now.”
“Our dearest sister always was the one with the least patience.” Tarran’s smooth voice interrupted us from behind me.
“Last I heard, you’re not to be trusted as Auster’s little pet,” she gibed.
Tarran didn’t appreciate the term, and I winced at the look he cut toward me in accusation.
“Sometimes the best way to spy is in plain sight,” he said, slipping his hands into his pockets.
“You expect me to believe that?” Laviana scoffed.
Tarran shrugged. “I do not care, little sister.”
“Don’t call me that. None of us have been close in centuries.”
“Is that what it takes then? Severing your roots to rise to power?”
“It takes cutting out weaknesses. You’ve been gone. Then next I hear of you surfacing you’ve gathered your own following on the hunt for the key and the maiden. Did you address Astraea as your sister to them then?”
I was growing dizzy glancing between them and the air thickened with their rising tension. Distant cries continued to ring out, and I burned to join the battle so I could stop more careless blood from being spilled.
“Call off your forces,” I demanded of Laviana.
Her cold sight targeted me, flaring with offense.
“Two of Auster’s pets, I see.”
“No, not a pet. Your star-maiden. If you don’t call them off, I will.”
Her stance shifted in challenge to my assertion of authority, but I would not falter. Not anymore.
“Then do what you have to,” she said.
A fist remained wrapped around my heart, and it gave a squeeze at her declaration—her firming stance, ready to fight me. Would this always be a curse of war—friends turning into foes on the battlefield?
“She’s telling the truth,” Tarran called. “The dragon can’t be freed right now.”
“At least we know where it is, and Astraea is going to fetch what we need. It’s not a wasted trip when we’ll eliminate a band of Auster’s forces in the meantime.”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” I said with a plea in my quiet voice.
It only made Laviana smirk, as if I were an insect she would flick out of her way to join the battle behind me.
“I don’t want to hurt you either. But I won’t regret it if you leave me no choice.”
“Go,” I hissed under my breath to Tarran.
He slid a look to me and whatever he read on my face made him nod and take in Laviana one more time with a note of disturbance; then he left.
“Once a coward, always one,” Laviana muttered, watching his retreat.
As she stepped forward, so did the eight soldiering vampires with her.
For a while now I’d been building the magick in my palms, letting it heat to a prickling sensation through my veins.
With her next step, I unleashed my first attack—a blast of violet light that threw them all back.
Some hit the trees hard, a few fell over the side of the cliff, and I had to detach my emotions from the casualties.
Harnessing Lightsdeath was the only way to triumph here.
Alone on the cliff, I looked out at the beautiful, snowy mountainscape, sparkling with the moonlight. The central city was so distant from here, but the more Lightsdeath took over … everything glittered.
It was only now that I remembered why I loved to dance so much.
My body was an instrument and my magick a song.
As one would thrash a bow across the strings of a violin, my arms and legs moved, channeling magick like notes, building a melody of heartache and devastation.
The snow that had fallen peacefully was awoken from the ground to storm again. Storm for me.
The world was bathed in starlight and moonshine. A glittering monochrome vessel of life, death, and souls. I didn’t fight the rage of power that whispered through my thoughts and burned through my blood. I listened to Lightsdeath and joined with it.
When my dance stopped, I turned around, staring up at a huge wolf made of pure starlight towering over me.
Its massive form shimmered with an otherworldly glow that spilled over the ground in waves of silver and violet.
The wolf’s head rose above the treetops, its glowing silver eyes twin to mine, awaiting command.
The forest was hushed, every creature silent, as if the world itself dared not break the spell.
I stood, small beneath the wolf’s starlit shadow, but charge of the colossal creature was mine.
“Astraea…”
I found the voice that whispered my name and found a shadowless vampire with black and white hair who peeled herself from the ground, staring at me with horror I delighted in.
As I approached her, she staggered back, not looking at me but at the giant, looming beast that followed.
Reacting to everything I did. The beast was me.
For some reason I faltered. Stopping before reaching the shadowless, I contemplated her for a moment.
A loud roar rattled the night sky. The wolf and I looked up, seeing a stroke of darkness cut across the constellations. An impulse to drown that soaring shadow in starlight itched my skin.
So I left the insignificant vampire and headed toward the heart of the chaos where the darkness was headed.
The wolf passed through the trees without harming the precious nature. Breaking through the tree line, we came to an opening with snow as red as it was white.
Vampires, celestials, even some fae fought and fell. I couldn’t see bodies anymore, only souls in varying degrees of brightness, and I wanted to cancel out the darkest ones: those that had become nearly black, so there would be no redeeming them now.
The vicious battle started to cease as, one by one, friend and foe acknowledged the face of their reaping.
So many dark souls.
The wolf … attacked.
I followed as the souls scattered, trying to outrun their fate. The first dark soul to be reaped struck my chest like a brand and I cried, folding into myself with the pain until it faded. I barely got the chance to recover before another speared me. Then another. I took long, gasping breaths.
This was my purpose.
So I straightened and kept going.
The wolf continued to tear through the darkest first.
Another ear-piercing roar made me recoil, and I spun to eliminate the creature before it could distract me again.
Until I came face to face with the blackest soul on the entire field.
The longer I stared, the more I saw a true face forming through the shadows.
He was so devastatingly beautiful that it stirred a conflict within me, forcing me to fight the instinct to kill him. He just stood there, staring wide-eyed, assessing me and the wolf, which had stopped its slaughter to face this being too.
“Astraea.” His voice … the magick and aura that hummed from him felt like a dark duet with the song that weaved through me now.
I shook my head to expel the distraction. Something changed on his alluring face that turned awe and concern into fear and calculation.
He amended, “Lightsdeath.”
That name flared inside me, and I smiled to it.
The wolf of starlight growled behind me, within me; it was priming to devour this soul it could hardly stand to be near.
He seemed to know death was coming for him, and despite all his darkness, he didn’t have the power to contend with it. Not anymore. I thought maybe he once had, but something had changed in him. I became fascinated, and it seemed a waste to end him so soon.
“I’m right here,” he said, as if those words could soothe the storm coming for him.
I advanced slowly, but he didn’t retreat. The closer I got, the more I became entranced by the swirling dark mass within him. Something about him pulled me closer, made me search his soul deeper, as if to find … a light.
It was so small and precious, like a star deep in a depthless sky. It wasn’t smothered; it was protected.
I wanted to reach into him and pull it out. He let me walk right up to him with the wolf behind me. He didn’t run like the others. Instead, he approached me too.
“The darkest night,” I whispered, lifting a hand to his chest.
His body tensed and a hiss escaped from him. I was hurting him. The light burned through the dark. Yet still he didn’t run. His hand lifted to my cheek, and I wanted to feel it.
“My brightest star.”
I was captured by his eyes, so brilliant and blazing despite the whorls of shadow that made his soul. His lips found mine … and the night shattered the stars.
My immediate repulsion dissolved with the scent that soothed my pain. The warmth that comforted my anger. The name that severed the control Lightsdeath had over me.
“Nyte,” I whimpered, incredulous, against his lips.
Had I died again? Had I done something terrible in my irrepressible state?
“I’ve got you, Starlight.”
“It’s not real. You can’t be here.”
“I’m real, Astraea; I’m right here.”
He kissed my forehead and I cried. I broke. My knees gave out, but he caught me. His hold was so strong and sure, but my mind struggled to believe this wasn’t a trick I would wake from.
What a beautiful dream, I thought. After all my nightmares, this is such a beautiful dream.
But in a world of monsters, dreams were always illusionary, and nightmares were reality. All it took was catching a glimpse of the crimson-tipped arrow over Nyte’s shoulder aimed for his heart, to make Lightsdeath surge to the surface and take over once again to save him.