Chapter 38 Astraea #3
“It’s not as simple as that, I’m afraid.
The veil I created around this place is quite advanced and has various talismans.
You’d have to find and destroy them all.
The opposite of a faster escape, I assure you.
” We were heading up stairs and I started to grow hesitant.
Until he added, “The grounds will be crawling with guards, and there’s a strong force of them around the palace outside.
I’m counting on you being able to call your dragon. ”
I slipped a glance at Nyte, who gave me a nod. He could call to Eltanin through their bond, and the dragon was near.
Before we got the to the top of the next staircase, Kairos stopped abruptly, spinning around to us.
“I only have one condition for my help,” he said.
Nyte groaned and his hand flexed in mine. “I’m not in a merciful mood for bargaining.”
“Take me with you,” he blurted anyway.
That hadn’t been what either of us expected.
“Not happening,” Nyte said, deadly serious.
I tried to consider. “You’re the new overlord now. You can make this place better.”
“That’s never what I’ve wanted. My mother will take over; she’s kind and gentle and nothing like my father, I assure you.”
Nyte said, “We’re to believe you’d give up ruling this entire empire for what? Becoming a fugitive? If you run with us they’ll believe you had something to do with your father’s death. So the deal is this: stay out of our way or I’ll kill you where you stand.”
Nyte stepped past him, ascending the rest of the stairs, and I followed with our hands joined.
“What if no one ever gave you a chance because they assumed you were nothing more than your father’s legacy?” Kairos called at our backs.
Nyte stiffened; I did too with how Kairos dug his claws into Nyte’s wound.
“No one ever did give me a chance beyond that,” he answered coldly.
Until now, I thought. Things were changing; people were starting to see under the many layers that made up Nyte.
“We can’t expect that cycle to break until we do it ourselves for others,” I said quietly to him.
Nyte’s jaw worked; he knew I was right.
“I have never left this palace,” Kairos admitted, seeming to grow desperate. “Or the grounds at least. I may as well be another one of his trophies in a fucking glass case.”
“Why would you not leave?” I asked.
“You think killing me would be easy, but even with your mind ability I’m willing to bet my life it won’t be so effortless. I’m a mage known as a Keraki.”
Nyte’s laugh was more of a scoff. “We don’t have time for fairytales.”
Contrary to his response, my interest was hooked. I couldn’t recall exactly where I’d heard it before in the deep pool of my old memories, but I knew it was an old term, something powerful and forgotten.
“Of all the coveted things in this palace, I am his greatest prize. I am not his true son. He stole me and raised me as his own just as he planned to double-cross Goldfell to steal you too. He knew of a prophesy: that two of the most powerful magick wielders in all of Solanis would produce an heir greater in power than even you and they would unite the five great continents of the world.”
“Now you’re really speaking in fables,” Nyte snarled.
I was swimming in my own mind, trying to find the knowledge about the other continents he spoke of.
Kairos stared at me, pleading with me when it would be hopeless with Nyte. “You were just the beginning, Astraea.”
“First your father planned to buy my mate and now you tell me the goal was to produce an heir with you, based on some nonsense prophesy?” Nyte’s tone had turned glacial. “I’m willing to prove just how powerless you are against me.”
“Don’t,” I said, tightening my hand in his.
Kairos glanced at our hands, then back up at me.
“If there is a prophesy, it was never about me. Regardless, my adoptive father believed it could be. Ironically I kept his palace safe and made sure his trades went smoothly, but it was nature, fate if you will, that was destined to kill him. I couldn’t understand how the decades kept passing after his fatal diagnosis, which should have claimed him before his time.
Now I do, and I’m sorry your blood was taken against your will. ”
I gave a nod, grateful for the condolence, but I’d buried that abuse of the past with the corpses of the men who violated me.
I spoke to Nyte through our bond. “He could make a great ally.”
“Or be the mistake that costs us the war.”
We’d spent so much time deliberating that guards had found us. Many of them. They kept flooding through the hall, and Nyte pulled my hand, but we only got two more steps before they descended toward us too.
We were trapped.
“Stand down,” Kairos ordered firmly.
The guards didn’t advance, but they exchanged looks that told me his word wasn’t going to be enough.
“My lord, they have murdered your father. We have a right to vengeance.”
Nyte’s hand tightened in mine, and I looked up to find him rubbing his forehead absentmindedly but with a locked expression that made me realize he was about to seize all of their minds.
It was too much. He’d expended that ability for too long, and it was clearly having a detrimental effect on him if he started to show it outwardly.
Lightsdeath wasn’t fully caged within me, and the mere thought of plunging into that power to get us out of this made it a struggle to contain it once more.
But it turned out that neither of us had to do anything.
Just as they started advancing again, Kairos snapped his fingers, and I couldn’t believe my eyes when the motion of the guards … slowed. As if our time continued as normal but theirs had been drastically sedated.
“H-how?” I stumbled. It was impossible. Inconceivable.
“I don’t think you want to keep standing here while I explain object time parallels to you,” Kairos grumbled.
“No, we don’t,” Nyte said, but even he looked over the guards, dazed by the concept. He snapped out of it quickly to pin Kairos firmly. “If I get even a hint of a suspicion about you, I won’t hesitate, I won’t ask questions; I will kill you and not think twice about it.”
“I would expect no less from the notorious Nightsdeath.”
Nyte sighed, but he was already heading up again, and we had to carefully maneuver around the bodies by moving fractions, still in action.
“The effect will only last another minute, so you might want to hurry up,” Kairos hissed, following behind me.
We weaved through the bodies until we got to the top and out a wooden door.
Eltanin’s roar shook the stars, and pride fluttered in my chest when I saw him, a dark stroke against the night soaring above us.
“Up there!” someone called.
“Get them!” yelled another.
There were guards on the castle wall on either side of us, but if we crossed the intersection before they did, we’d be okay.
I turned towards Kairos. “Follow Nyte. Don’t falter.”
Then we took off running. Adrenaline pushed my legs as fast as they would go. The guards were closing in on the intersection just as fast but darted past it first.
They turned to follow our straight path, hot on our heels, and I leapt up onto the wall seamlessly, not faltering my pace.
I hissed when an arrow whizzed by and scored my arm. A superficial wound, but it could just as quickly be followed by another arrow piercing through me. We were almost to the end.
Kairos cried out, and, to my horror, he stumbled, falling with the strike of an arrow through his shoulder. I swore, having no time to deliberate as I sent a flare of light toward the guards who were running toward him.
“Leave him,” Nyte said through our bond. I met eyes with him from atop the wall.
“You already know we’re not going to do that,” I responded.
Nyte’s jaw tightened, then he changed course and ran back for Kairos. I searched within myself to gather the strength I needed.
Lightsdeath is me. I am Lightsdeath.
My wings unglamoured as I leapt down, sending the force of my magick into the stone, like a star plummeting from above.
It is not a power to control me but to aid me.
The wall cracked immediately, a violent deep line splitting down the center, and the structure began to fail, crumbling toward the guards, who started running away from me now. Some were too late, swallowed in a mass of rock and dust.
It started to crumble my way too, and I spared a glance over my shoulder to be sure Nyte had managed to help Kairos. They were running again, and the sight of them leaping off the edge together was all I needed before I was falling.
Then flying. My senses turned acute with the gentle presence of Lightsdeath coursing through me to help me navigate the falling rocks.
I soared up past Eltanin, relieved to see Nyte and Kairos on his back.
Then when I was high enough I turned, staring down at the palace of chaos, but even with the damage and swarming people, screaming and frightened, it was a stunning piece of architecture that didn’t deserve to be in the hands of someone as cold and cruel as Vermont.
Slaying him liberated a final piece of me I hadn’t realized was still shackled by the ghost of Goldfell. I’d never felt freer, more powerful.
I saw the world in starlight without letting it overwhelm me.
I saw people as auras and nature as glittering dust. I didn’t know why I stalled in my retreat.
Breathing in the calm eternal night air, Lightsdeath slept within me easier now.
I’d only used a kernel of its power to break the wall; I was learning to use it without harming those I loved.
I wouldn’t let Lightsdeath be a curse. Hand in hand with it, I would win this war.