Chapter 24 Nyte
Nyte
I mounted Eltanin, and we took to the skies as quickly as we could, following Astraea from the temple, yet she’d gained an impossible distance away from us so fast and I knew then she had to have used the void for some reason.
Desperation to reach her pounded through my blood. Eltanin flew fast and mighty, a stroke of shadow through the night storm that broke. We cut through the rain that fell mercilessly. Astraea was still fighting; the echoes of her anguish and rage pulsed through me.
Then the world stood still. My next breath held as I straightened at the phantom eruption of pain in my side.
Astraea’s pain.
A roar of wrath and vengeance tore through me and Eltanin. I leaned forward as the dragon flew faster.
“No,” I breathed. Because it wasn’t just any mortal wound.
That bastard wasn’t getting to take her from me again.
I didn’t know how far we’d flown as I followed our bond to her. She was close now.
So close.
I found her with a strike of terror in my soul.
Astraea plummeted through the air. I scanned around as if something had struck her, but Auster wasn’t in the skies. I reared up on Eltanin.
“Fly!” I yelled. I didn’t think he could go any faster, but Eltanin did, and we dived to catch our falling star
She was too far away. Falling too fast. She is out of my reach.
The taunts circled my mind as the rain slashed my skin and blurred my vision.
“Come on,” I snarled.
She was so. Fucking. Close.
When Eltanin dipped again, challenging his ability to fly low, Astraea was right above us and I’d never felt relief like I did when my arms wrapped around her.
Capturing her tightly to me with my legs clamping tighter around the saddle.
Eltanin strained to glide up again but couldn’t make it without pummeling into the tops of some trees.
Astraea’s wings hung limp over the saddle sides, but I shielded her body with mine, curling into her as sharp branches tore at my arms and face and legs.
It didn’t matter. So long as she was safe now.
Eltanin managed to clear the trees and climb high again, and once we broke through the clouds and I could let go of my strenuous purchase on the saddle, I straightened, scanning Astraea for injuries.
Noticing the rise and fall of her chest released my first sane breath.
“Nyte,” she said, barely a whisper, so quiet that I thought I’d conjured it from the whistling wind in my desperation.
“I’ve got you. Fuck, I’ve got you.” I kissed her head, and when her eyes fluttered open, everything in me slumped with utter relief.
“You’re alive,” she croaked.
“I’m alive. We’re both alive.”
Astraea’s hand reached weakly over my chest.
“You’re real,” she whispered, her eyes glittered with tears, and the first one to fall was like a knife dragged over my heart. “You came back.”
“As long as you’re here,” I said, resting my hand over hers. “I’ll always come back to you.”
It was the kind of vow that felt almost too fragile for this world, a quiet assurance that transcended distance, even time. And though I knew there would be moments of silence, stretches when she might feel further away, the simple truth of my words was anchoring for both of us.
Gods, I missed her so agonizingly.
Unbuttoning my jacket, I untucked my shirt as the only measure I could think of to help her right now.
Her soft sigh when her palm flattened on my bare abdomen was a sound I’d bleed to hear.
Her other joined it and I tensed at her frozen touch, but I would endure every measure of pain she was going through now if I could take it all from her.
“Can you glamour your wings? It’ll be more comfortable until we get to land,” I said gently.
Her face pinched to attempt the glamour and she cried softly, trying not to by biting her lip as her body locked.
“So brave,” I murmured, kissing her head and shifting to hold her closer now that her wings were gone.
“I missed you,” she said sleepily. “I missed you so much I was dying from it.”
“I know. Gods, I know. I have you in my arms and I still fucking miss you.”
“It worked…? Nightsdeath…”
“Is gone. You brought me back.”
Astraea watched the stars, her eyes glistening, and I watched her, entranced by the most perfect creature to exist. Right now, she appeared so precious it hurt.
I traced a cut along her cheek, and she leaned into my touch.
Every mark I found on her built on a need to inflict them a hundred times more on whoever caused them.
“I’m scared…” she whispered, haunted.
My sight raked down her body to where her hand pressed against her stomach. Her pale hand drowned in crimson almost made me lose my damned mind. Not just from the wound but from the all-consuming terror that came back to me.
“What happened, Starlight?”
I dreaded hearing the answer I already knew from the cry within my soul.
“The blade, it … it had your blood on it.”
My world shifted. Cracked. And it took everything in me not to fall into the depths of the despair that clawed from it.
“You’re going to be okay,” I said. The dark delusion was both cruel and defiant. “You’re still here; that must mean something. You’re staying with me.”
Astraea nodded weakly, and all I could do was hold her despite the terror coiling between us.
“The key piece Auster had was a fake. There are still fifteen temples left we need to search to find all the real pieces,” she informed.
“I don’t care about the key,” I said, stroking her hair. “Auster, is he…?”
“Dead.”
Though I rejoiced to that, I couldn’t fully bask in it when, despite all he’d done, the bastard’s death caused her pain. It was a certain kind of torment to want to kill what was already dead. To loathe someone who was gone so much I wanted to rip into the Nether just to kill him again.
“You did what you had to do. He was never going to stop. He never would have let you go,” I consoled.
“I know. I just wish things hadn’t turned out this way.”
My wish was that the threats against us died with Auster, but the truth was, we were far from done fighting for our peace.
For the happiness we deserved. My father was in pursuit of freeing the gods to walk our lands.
Two spiteful entities, who would come for Astraea with more ruthlessness than Auster.
“Nyte,” she whispered, touching my face so tenderly.
“Starlight.”
Her brow crumpled. In the silence that ticked by, with her tender touches and the thoughtful flickers over her features, she was processing that I was truly here.
After I’d left her for a month.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t here with you,” I said, tucking away the wild strands of her hair that whipped across her tired face.
Astraea gripped my jacket. “Don’t ever do that again.”
She swallowed hard, a soft whimper left her, then she pulled me down to kiss her.
Every misery became insignificant within the wrap of her affection. She didn’t know that she was my shield for survival, when I never felt stronger, more filled with purpose, than in every moment of her yearning for me.
Breaking the kiss, she tucked into me tightly and I held her.
“You bonded with Eltanin,” she mumbled into me.
“I’m still in shock about it.”
“I’m not. Ever since I first held him it was like I could feel you. I think even then I knew he wasn’t mine, not in the way he was destined to be yours.”
“He’s ours,” I promised.
Her silver eyes peered up at me with sorrow furrowed between her brows.
“Your wings…”
I tipped her chin back, kissing her softly.
“I don’t care.”
That only seemed to drop her expression more and I ached with it.
“That’s not right,” she said quietly, as if I wasn’t meant to hear it. “Your pain and suffering are not right. You speak of it as if it should be, and I want to make your father and this world pay for it.”
“Astraea … it’s not that I believe it’s right, it’s that I don’t care about any of it anymore because everything I’ve suffered brought me to you in the end. I’d walk every dark path again and again so long as it always led to you.”
She kissed me again. Every time she reached for me with a call, a touch, a kiss, I was reminded of the treasure that could be found in the darkest suffering. Her face burrowed into my neck, and her scent healed the broken threads of my soul that had frayed from being parted from her.
“Fuck, I missed you,” I muttered again. Every inch of her wrapped around me was what completeness felt like. Two undeniably perfect pieces fit back together.
“I feared you’d never come back,” she whispered.
“There’s not a realm or time I won’t fight with everything I am to make it back to you.”
It was a relief to see the spire of Nadir’s home. Our whole flight I was antsy, monitoring her heartbeat and breath. Both were labored but still strong considering her wounds.
Astraea teased me over my fussing, but I knew she was trying to hide her pain, both physical and within.
“Oh my–Nyte!?” My name came out in a squeak from Davina when she looked at me. “You’re … you’re walking! You’re awake!”
“I sure hope I am,” I said.
Her gaze widened, skimming over Astraea.
“What happened?” Davina cried.
“She needs Lilith’s help, now.”
“We’ve been coming up with all kinds of reckless plans to come for you since Drystan left with Nyte,” Lilith said, rushing across the yard to meet them.
She assessed Astraea as I carried her hurriedly into Nadir’s home.
Inside, I didn’t take her to the table; she needed warmth. Nadir straightened from their lounging position by the fire as I kneeled to lay Astraea on the rug in front. Davina fetched pillows, and Lilith began cutting away Astraea’s clothing to better tend to the wounds.
“My blood was on the blade,” I informed them.
Lilith’s eyes snapped up and the fear in them rocked through me anew.
When she peeled back the layers around Auster’s dagger wound … the whole room spun. Her skin had turned gray around the thin stab site, webbing-thin vines like those of a leaf reaching over her ribs.
“What does it mean?” I asked desperately.