Chapter 34 Nyte #3
“Now you’ve upset her,” I said, teeth grinding with the echoes of Astraea’s sadness rippling through me.
Before I could move, her warm hand took mine.
“I apologize,” Balthezar said carefully, looking at me like I’d planted a minefield around this office and one wrong step would trigger me to come for him again. “Regardless, my price is a sample of her blood and a lock of her hair.”
Astraea’s voice filtered through my head. “You think it might be the monocular from the Wanderer’s Trove, don’t you?”
“It’s possible, but also just as likely to be a very old and ordinary monocular. I could just erase it from his mind. I was trying to be civil, but I don’t like where it gets me.”
“We can’t keep taking what we want. You never know when the most unexpected acquaintances could come back into your life one day.”
I curled a lock of her stunning silver hair around my finger. “I don’t like to share,” I said aloud.
“That’s what we do for friends,” she said, casting a sweet smile at Balthezar.
I sighed, pulling a knife from my side and holding it to the lock I held.
“Are you sure?” I asked though the bond.
“It’ll grow back.”
It pained me to cut even one tress of her hair, and more so to put it in the hands of a man I didn’t trust.
“What will you do with it?” I asked, watching him marvel over the lock that kept its unique glittering property even when cut.
“I’m not sure yet,” he said, as though his mind was churning through a million options for what would give him the most gain. My fist tightened.
Balthezar opened a drawer of his desk and lifted out a small box. He tied the hair with a purple ribbon—how fitting—before storing it away.
Next he produced a small bottle, looking up expectantly. I turned to find Astraea holding her stormstone dagger, but I caught her wrist.
“Let me,” I said, slipping into her mind to take away the sting as I cut the palm of her hand.
She realized what I’d done, staring at the cut with surprise, then smiled at me in gratitude.
So damn precious. My teeth sharpened in my mouth at the scent of her blood.
A feeling of dominance at the thought of another male receiving it clawed within me.
More so than the hair, it physically challenged me not to reach across the desk and spill his blood by pulling the heart from his chest.
“You’re radiating violence,” Astraea said in my mind.
She soothed my senses from within, and I kissed her temple before wandering over to a tapestry on the wall.
“Is this ancient or important?” I asked, indicating the hung material.
Balthezar looked up when he corked the bottle of Astraea’s blood. “It was an honorable gift I received from a wealthy—”
He choked on the ending of his tale when I ripped the bottom of it.
“Part of our exchange,” I explained, and tied the strip of material around Astraea’s cut palm.
“How long until we reach Volanis?” she asked Balthezar.
He regarded a device above the fire that kept time with sand and metallic spheres rolling through it.
“Should the sea stay calm, we’ll reach shore by morning.
But the evernight has made the sea rather angry.
I fear the longer this imbalance lasts without daylight, it will surely start to rebel far more viciously. ”
I didn’t fear the imbalance like everyone did. I wouldn’t care if this world collapsed when I could take Astraea to another, to as many as it took to find peace. But it was for her I had to care. For she had friends and a duty she loved here.
It was past midnight and Astraea spoke for both of our fatigue after the unexpected hitch in our journey.
“Is there a place we can rest for a few hours?” Astraea inquired.
“You can rest here.”
“Thank you,” she said, smiling kindly and slipping her hand into mine. “I’ve never been on a boat before; I’d like to see the waters from the deck before I retire.”
My knuckle stroked her cheek. “Anything you want.”
We left Balthezar, but I couldn’t put my mind at ease about the company of strangers, pirates, we were surrounded by. I didn’t think I would be resting tonight.
Astraea tried to let go of my hand, heading toward the ship’s edge across the deck. I grasped her tighter, so she pulled me along instead.
She watched the stars. More of them shot across the sky than ever before, falling and causing devastation we couldn’t see. Occasionally I could hear the land cracking, splitting. If the stars kept pummeling the land, there would be nothing left but rock and ash.
“It was all a lie,” she said, not to me or even to herself.
I held her to me around the waist from behind, watching the sky that was both beautiful and heartbreaking. A sky of trapped souls. Death had exposed the lie of this world to her—that the celestials gain higher power than any other being by tapping into the prison of souls.
Astraea’s role now as Death’s Maiden was to free them all and let them pass onto Death’s realm for rest. Time was running out with more souls dying, more true stars falling, and the world as we knew it set on a countdown toward ruin.
“I believe you’ll bring the new dawn,” I said.
“I have to kill my parents. Dusk and Dawn. What if our world can never find balance again without them?”
“Then I’ll bring the new dusk.”
She lowered her gaze from the sky, and she turned in my arms.
“I’m scared,” she whispered. “I’m scared that my parents are right and I am nothing more than stardust. People look at me and see me as parts of gods. My magick, my blood, my hair.”
I cupped her cheek, utterly enamored with her in this moment when I couldn’t explain how she made the night alive within me.
“By the stars, you are absolutely exquisite against the moonlight.” I had to kiss her for a small relief to my building ache for her. “Do you want to know what I think?”
“Yes.”
“That no opinion, even mine, matters but your own. Your parents think you insolent; I think you brave. Auster thought you incapable of leading a kingdom; I think you capable of leading empires. What matters is what you believe about yourself in your heart. And if there’s something you aspire to be, I’m going to be with you every step of the way. ”
Her silver eyes glistened. “I want to be brave and powerful.”
“Then what are you going to do about it?”
She took a deep, confident breath. “I wasn’t finished.”
My mouth quirked.
“I want to be so many things, and I will be. But I want you. The past had me believing there was always a sacrifice. That I couldn’t be everything I wanted for the people and have you. I refuse that fate.”
Hearing that satisfied my soul.
I promised her, “As the dusk and the dawn, as the night and the stars, as darkness and as light, it’s you and me defying fate until the end of time.”