Chapter 49 Astraea #2
“You’re right. You have me surrounded.” She approached with the predatory intent of a snake. I backed away until I cried out, stumbling forward when I touched the edge of the dome that singed my arm through the leather.
Dawn caught me by my arms, and I stared fearfully into her cruel eyes.
“You are nothing but stardust,” she said. “If I can’t have you, no one can.”
“No.” That denial left me in a breath of horror as a familiar tingling began at my fingertips. My eyes snapped down, unable to fight or save my skin, which began to break off in glittering particles.
I scrunched my eyes shut. It’s not real. It’s not real.
When I opened them again, I sobbed, seeing that my hands were gone. Dawn released me, pacing a few strides backward as she watched me disintegrate and the dust float skyward.
“Make it stop,” I cried.
“I’ll see you in the sky.”
A shattering sound crashed at my left and I winced. When I saw the purple flaring tip of the key piecing through the dome, I gasped. Someone retracted it then swiftly thrust into the same impact point which shattered an opening.
To my shock and horror … Zephyr lunged through it.
He charged with a mighty roar, holding the key high like a battle spear.
I screamed. I begged him to stop, but he couldn’t hear me, lost in his own wrath and need for vengeance.
Dawn conjured a sphere of molten light, but it was smothered by darkness. My head snapped to where Nyte stood in the dome’s opening, aiding Zephyr’s advance.
But Nyte knew Zephyr couldn’t kill her even with the key. It had to be me.
Then time … slowed.
Zephyr’s raging advance now seemed like he was floating. Advancing only fractions. Dawn’s shock and anger started trying to form a defense against his charging wrath but he would win. He would reach her before she could.
I shifted my sight to the opening in the dome. Nyte was captured in slowed time too. Because Kairos was next to him, his hands poised elegantly with his face contorted in concentration.
“I can’t hold this for longer than thirty seconds tops,” he rasped.
Kairos was granting me this chance to save my friend, but horror flooded over me. Scrambling to my feet, I examined my missing hands. With Dawn’s focus stolen, my flesh stopped turning to stardust, beginning to return. But not fast enough.
“You have to hold it longer!” I begged.
Sweat beaded Kairos’s forehead. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice strained as though he were lifting a boulder, about to cave under its weight.
I ran. As fast as I could I ran for Zephyr who was about to reach Dawn. I willed my hand to return to flesh, feeling my palms now and that was enough. I just had to reach him before …
“I’m so sorry,” Kairos said. “I tried.”
A scream tore from me as time resumed its natural pace.
Zephyr reached his target before I could reach him.
“How dare you steal her face!” Zephyr cried out, plunging the key through Dawn’s chest.
My run staggered to a stop when a flare of blinding light erupted. Forcing my eyes to bear the sting of the bright, I wept at the sight before me, struck deeply by the intensity of Zephyr’s pain as he gripped the key, forced to stare into his wife’s eyes with an imposter behind them.
There was no greater tragedy to behold.
In his final seconds, Zephyr’s terrified eyes met mine. “Protect my children, Astraea.”
The key delivered its consequence before I could promise him I would. Having been used by an outsider, it would demand Zephyr’s life … he knew this.
The moment I could flex my fingers, my grief had me racing toward Dawn and Zephyr once more.
My friend made no sound as his body was engulfed in light, and when it faded … he was gone.
The sound that tore from me was anguish pulled from the heavens.
Lightsdeath surged through me as I gripped the key as Dawn fell to her knees, locking her wide eyes with mine.
“You cannot have my life!” I screamed. “You cannot have my friends. You cannot have my world … Eos.”
I twisted the key as I spoke her name, and Dawn’s head was thrown back. As though sunlight grew a sphere inside her, rays pierced through her mortal flesh until she … erupted.
Nyte reached me right in time to use Eltanin’s magick and cast a shield of darkness around us as we crouched and huddled.
The land roared, splitting deeply and vastly around us. Chasms opened, threatening to swallow all life upon its surface because of the imbalance it now suffered without the Goddess of Dawn.
I couldn’t scramble to my feet fast enough before I was pulled down by a fresh scar that shot like lightning across the land.
Nyte’s hand wrapped my forearm before I could plummet down into the deep tear, and he pulled me up swiftly. I curled into him, feeling his heart beat as violently as mine under my ear.
I couldn’t move.
More thunderous cracks echoed distantly, as if the world was tearing itself apart in retribution for what I’d done.
I cupped my hands over my ears and my eyes slammed shut. But in the darkness of my own mind all I could see on repeat was Zephyr’s final charge, his brave sacrifice, his absolute devastation.
He didn’t deserve that end. Katerina didn’t deserve to be a puppet for Dawn.
“I don’t want to fight anymore,” I croaked.
I was so tired. So terribly tired of the losses stacking in my chest.
“I know, love,” Nyte said, his voice utterly heartbroken.
He held me tight, stroking my hair as the world tore itself apart.
“What have I done?” I whispered.
Had it all been a trick? A lie? Had death given me this power to kill Dusk and Dawn knowing it would destroy this world?
I might not have had much time left because of my wound, but I was fighting until my last breath to leave this world brighter for my friends I loved dearly. Now I wasn’t sure if I was only making it worse.
Then I became terror-stricken, too aware that these could be our final days, perhaps even our final hours.
“What if we don’t find each other again?” I said, pulling back to scan his face when I didn’t know how many chances I had left to just look at him. “What if we don’t recognize each other?”
“Shh.” He soothed the sharpness of my near frantic panic. “Do you trust me?”
“More than anything,” I said.
“Then fight with me one last time. I promise you we’ll reign eternally if we just win one more time.”
He was so sure and confident that it was easy to believe him. So I nodded and let Nyte raise us from the tremoring ground.
A loud crack sounded near, jolting me with alarm. We both whirled to find Nadir’s home was the cause. It was like one of the cracks in the land surged under the home then shot skyward, splitting through the tall structure.
“No!” I yelled, lunging forward with my magick priming to flood out and hold the wood together myself as Zephyr’s children were still inside.
“Astraea!” Antila’s cry of my name cooled the heat flooding through my veins.
Even though the sight of her running toward me was a relief, all of us were within the radius of the building’s collapse.
“We have to move,” Nyte urged.
I ran toward Antila. “You get Raider!” I yelled to Nyte.
I tried not to look at the massive building threatening to crush us but its groans of warning had me pushing my legs through the snow.
Then from behind her, Antila was scooped off her feet by a large arm around her middle, and I was both relieved that Zath’s long strides closed the distance faster and terrified that his life hung in the balance now too.
As soon as I reached them I would pull us all through the void.
But I wouldn’t reach them in time.
The building rattled and cracked and split, tumbling down rapidly. My eyes flew wide and a scream bubbled inside me as a huge piece of the structure plummeted toward Zath and Antila.
Then once again, time was held in the mercy of Kairos.
I reached Zath and Antila, touching them at the same time I touched the void, and pulled us all through it. I didn’t risk going far as I hadn’t travelled the void with two people before. We all landed in tumbling heaps as though spat out.
Scrambling to my feet, I pulled Antila into me as we both winced, curling into each other as Nadir’s home came crashing down in real time.
“Nyte!” I yelled as my first instinct to be sure he cleared the danger with Raider.
I saw him before he replied as he marched through the trees toward us. He scanned me head to toe and his expression relaxed to find me unharmed.
“You heroic fool.” Rose’s grumble was a little breathless as she caught up to us in a jog. She aimed her concern at Zath.
Zath’s grin was roguish. “You’re impressed though, right?”
“I’m impressed you’re still alive when you’re constantly chasing death.”
My sight drifted and I found Nadir a few paces away, staring at their collapsed and burning home, one hand in their pocket while the other lifted a pipe to their mouth. I wandered over to them.
“I’m sorry about your home,” I said.
Nadir blew out smoke. They were so nonchalant despite all they’d lost.
“I’ve been building this home taller each year. It was like a game to me, wondering how far I could test its stability before it would collapse on me.”
I couldn’t understand such a game. It seemed like a waste to me.
“Besides,” Nadir said, slipping me a sidelong glance. “I’m rather hoping for a place within the royal court once you take back your throne. Did you think I suffered the company of your whining and jeering companions all that time with no selfish goal in mind?” They winked and me and I smirked.
“You also aided and abetted my enemies,” I pointed out. “Don’t expect too high a reward for your help too soon.”
I was only partially jesting. Nadir had been invaluable help to all of us in our most desperate time.
“Auster was a powerful man. He threatened all my establishments if I didn’t give him what he wanted. He’d heard about my tinkering with the fae incapacitating material and he was relentless in his pursuit of it, knowing it would harm Rainyte greater than any other weapon.”
I understood, yet I still resented Nadir’s role in creating the material.
A strangled sound from the debris caught my attention, and when a piece of wood lifted, I gasped, racing through the snow toward it.
Nyte was right behind me, helping to lift the thick piece of wood off Kairos, and Zath helped me pull him out of the wreckage. He was bleeding across his temple, and his face was twisted in pain.
“Can you stand?” I asked, only to assess if he had broken bones.
Kairos shifted, propping his weight onto one elbow. He caught his breath. “I think so.”
I let go of a breath of relief. “Thank you. Your gift is invaluable and quite incredible.”
His eyes turned pained. “Not that incredible. I’m sorry I couldn’t hold time long enough to save your friend.”
I shook my head. “You gave him a moment to say goodbye.” To ask me to look out for his children which I vowed to with the rest of my life.
I said, “You’re probably wishing you stayed in Volanis.”
Kairos chuckled but it turned to a wince of pain. Zath helped him stand.
“Are you kidding? This is the most action and intrigue I’ve experienced in my life. I’m just wondering what’s next.”
That brought back the challenge and obstacle still in the way of reclaiming the throne of Vesitire and vanquishing the gods. I glanced at Nyte who aligned determination with me, though not without notes of fear and uncertainty.
“Next … we have one more god to kill.”