Chapter 30 Astraea
Astraea
I raised my hand, and with a whisper of magick, the snow began to melt away from the dragon painting.
The ice dissolved into rivulets of water, trickling down the stone in shimmering streams. Light gathered at my fingertips, dancing like tiny stars as it moved over the surface, illuminating the hidden masterpiece beneath.
When the glow finally dimmed, a collective gasp rippled through Nyte, Drystan, and me. The painting was magnificent, its color impossibly vivid despite the passage of time. The dragon stretched across the stone floor in sweeping arcs of crimson, its scales catching the faint light like real fire.
We stood in awe, marveling at the artistry, the sheer presence of the creature captured in the stone.
Around it, faint etchings of ancient script curled like smoke, whispering secrets we couldn’t yet understand.
For a moment, the cold and the snow outside were forgotten.
All that mattered was the dragon and the strange, thrilling sense that it was watching, waiting for us.
“It’s red like Athebyne,” I said wondrously, admiring the fiery depiction, alive against the dull gray stone. “How many colors of dragon are there?”
Drystan crouched, running a hand over the long curling horns of its head.
He said, “The world began in chaos. A battle of storm, fire, wind, sea, and darkness. From each birthed a creature that embodied the land’s wraths.
The dragon with scales of flame and a breath that bears the heat of the sun.
The dragon with scales of tanzanite and a breath that strikes the lightning of vicious storms. The dragon with scales of the forest and a breath of lethal gales.
The dragon that appeared to be made of water that could flood islands.
Then the feathered dragons to rule the rest, those of black or white, with breath of starfire that could rob the senses of humans, decay any life it touched, and what kept the other dragons submissive to them was that the celestial dragons could take away the magickal power of any other living thing with their magick. ”
My mind played out the different descriptions, imagining a time when there once were countless dragons on our land. Now, if what Drystan predicted was true, there were only eighteen in existence if we freed them all.
“How did the age of the dragon fall if they were so unparalleled in power?” Nyte asked, standing cross-armed, as invested as I was in the history.
“The same thing that collapses all empires in the end,” Drystan said as he rose.
“Greed and envy. Those who couldn’t secure dragon bonds started hunting them.
Dragon scales, their blood, their bones—it all could be used for various extremely powerful dark magicks and remedies.
A civil war broke out, no one species against the other.
It was carnage until someone by the name of Master Decotu, along with seventeen other mages, cast the last seventeen dragons into these paintings to protect their legacy.
It killed him and the others, leaving his own white celestial dragon, Fesarrah, as the last who would birth an egg foretold to free the dragons again when the Queen of the Kings reigns. ”
That last part struck a memory. I’d heard it before. Cassia had spoken of the Queen of the Kings in the way she liked to tell her favorite stories.
“We’ll free it after we get the key piece,” Nyte said, the first to step away from the painting to head toward the temple.
Drystan didn’t linger either, following his brother, but I stalled, lost for a moment in my own mind, which was swimming with wonder and terror over the tales about the dragons.
“Astraea,” Nyte called.
I tore my sight up from the red paint and started toward him, only getting a few paces before I gasped at the energy I collided into that staggered me back. Nyte immediately approached, but an invisible force rippled at his touch too.
We were separated.
“Looks like this trial is ours alone, brother,” Drystan said.
Nyte and I exchanged looks of concern. His jaw locked as he looked like he was calculating a way to shatter the veil before he left me here.
“I’ll be okay,” I insisted.
“Here,” Drystan said. I barely caught the glint of him throwing something before I caught it. The bottle of Eltanin’s tears. “Free the dragon while we get your precious key piece.”
The bottle came to me as if no shield existed, but when I reached tentative fingers toward the veil, it hummed with a static again. How annoying I must sit out the excitement.
“You know how to call for me,” Nyte said quietly, pained to be leaving me.
I gave him a convincing smile. “I do. Let’s not be separated for longer than necessary. Go. I’ll be right here.”
He answered with a tight nod before he turned, heading toward the temple that was smaller than the others I’d seen before. Only a uniform block which had an opening inside to go underground.
Nyte looked back at me as Drystan slipped inside first. He spoke through our bond: “Behave.”
“Speak for yourself. Try not to strangle each other.”
I shivered at the internal stroke of my senses, like his fingers brushed down the length of my spine. Then when I was alone, I sighed. My seconds of sulking over being left out were forgotten the moment my eyes fell on the vial I held, and I turned back to the painting.
I braced myself to unleash another fantastic beast into this realm. It was the greatest honor.
“Oh, my dear.” A familiar feminine voice said with resignation from behind me.
As I spun around, my eyes caught on the blond hair and blue eyes of Katerina, and delight surged in me. Until my growing smile vanished in an instant.
A slam of terror weakened my knees.
If what Nyte and Drystan had seen was true … If their father had succeeded …
The confirmation became clearer the longer I stared at the face of my friend and recognized nothing in her eyes.
“Dawn,” I said through an incredulous breath.
“Have you estranged yourself so far that you would no longer call me mother?”
That term slithered up my spine with cruel intent.
“You don’t deserve that title. You are a merciless, unfeeling god, nothing more.”
“Merciless? Everything I have done is to create a perfect world. I created you, the greatest gift for mankind, and yet you chose to love a plague. It is not I who is merciless, child.”
“What did you do to Katerina?” I asked. My fists balled and trembled, but I had to admit my fear was greater than my courage in this blindsiding confrontation.
“She is still within this vessel for now. Depending how long I have to stay, she will either die or still have enough of her mind to wake when I return to my realm. I guess we could say her life is in your hands.”
“What do you want?”
“In bargaining with Death you severed your ties to us, your parental gods. We cannot allow another creature of darkness to taint the perfect order we have come to set right.”
“You’ve come to kill me?”
“Do you remember—?” she said, avoiding an answer, but a tingling formed over my body and panic rose in my chest. “When you were nothing more than stardust?”
My palms grew warm against my control and I raised them, gasping at the glow of them. Panic seized me when my fingertips started to break away as particles of glittering stardust.
“Stop. Please,” I breathed, blinking hard and hoping it was just a cruel trick. She couldn’t send me back to the stars.
“You only exist because of me and Dusk. You are nothing more than a cosmic energy.”
“You’re wrong,” I croaked.
“You are not human. You are not even a celestial. You are a god and have no place among these beings. I see that now. We chose wrong in placing you here as the pinnacle example of what mankind should aspire to be.”
My hands were gone and my arms kept dissolving; the shimmering dust of me flew toward the night sky and I watched in horror, feeling the pull toward the stars.
I can’t go back. I can’t go back.
This isn’t real.
My eyes scrunched shut, but the shallow burn crawling up my arms didn’t subside.
I tried desperately to reach within and call for Nyte, but as I thought it, my chest exploded with fire and I cried, sinking to my knees.
I will not let her win. I will not let her diminish who and what I am.
“I am more than stardust. More than just cosmic power,” I whispered to myself. My teeth gritted, and I snapped my eyes open to strike Dawn with the heat of my glare. “I am more than what you tried to make me.”
A loud caw rang through the adrenaline beginning to pound in my ears. It was quickly followed by a large raven swooping low, and Dawn shrieked when its claws sliced across her cheek. I tracked the bird with awe. A glistening raven too large to be of nature, and by the way it helped me …
It was a Guardian spirit.
I’d met the panther, the bonded spirit of my human and nightcrawler guardians, in the Sanctuary of the Soundless.
Then I remembered the serpent in the maze; it was the bonded spirit of my soulless and fae guardians.
Now my eyes watered to watch the bonded spirit of my soulless and celestial guardians aid me now.
The raven struck again and again, and with Dawn distracted, I plunged into my magick. It surged through my veins, coursed over my arms, and spilled into my palms—now flesh once more.
I was skin and bone and breakable in this realm, but I didn’t want to be anywhere else.
Gathering the light within me, I breathed deeply, tempting Lightsdeath but not letting it fully unleash.
With a bright gale swirling between my palms, I thrust forward, sending it hurtling toward Dawn, but not with enough force to kill.
Katerina still lived, and I had to believe there was a way to save her even when I killed Dawn.
I stood there panting as the snow and wind settled.
Dawn wasn’t here.
Rushing forward, I scanned desperately, but Katerina’s body wasn’t lying injured as I’d expected.
Instead, the raven cawed, landing on a tree branch.
“There is one too great of an enemy to waste focus on others who have been misled by human flaws,” the raven said, words that passed through my mind like a song instead of aloud.
“What does that mean?” I asked, taking a step closer, desperate for any guidance to navigate the many adversaries I faced.
“You know exactly what I mean, Maiden. Your heart is as human as every mortal on this land. It makes selfish choices and can be blind to those it hurts. You can forgive and never forget, but if you forget you will never forgive.”
“Wait—!”
The raven took off too fast, and I clutched a hand to my chest with an ache that beat with every push of the bird’s wings as it soared away.
I had to remember they weren’t my guardians anymore; they belonged to the realm now and held no sentiment for me. Though it made me yearn to go back to Alisus and see them in their mortal forms again now that I had my memories.
A tear slipped down my cheek and I swiped it away, turning back to the task I had to fulfill.
The dragon, even in its still, silent form, strengthened my shaken resolve. There was no greater ally to secure, but also no deadlier enemy to face.
Every dragon we released: there was no telling to which side of fate their allegiance would bond.