Chapter 51 Astraea
Astraea
I was a star given breath and the night given flesh. A triumphant embodiment of the lunar sky.
My city was crying, my city was in pain, and I crossed the courtyard toward the black castle like a starlight storm to eradicate the poison before it spread any further.
I was Lightsdeath, but I was also in full control of the deadly power coursing through me.
Defeating the God of Dusk was my final task, and then I would let my fate be sealed. Nyte’s blood was so close to my heart now. If I wasn’t harnessing so much power, the agony would be ripping me apart from the inside as though my heart was clawing at my flesh to escape it.
The god stood proudly across the courtyard. Expecting me. I didn’t let that waver my focus.
It wasn’t a surprise to see Notus standing with him.
“You are aware that is not Aquilo you ally with,” I said to him.
Dusk wore the High Celestial’s face, giving him full control of Aquilo Sera’s province and armies. Over a dozen archers held aim with crimson-tipped arrows at me. I didn’t balk at them in the slightest.
“You need to be stopped once and for all,” Notus seethed.
I smiled wickedly.
“I know what fate is now,” I said across the eerie silence before the break of battle.
“You created me to govern this world to your order, but the irony of life is that every evil inevitably brings about their own downfall. I am yours. I never abandoned my duty or swayed from my path. It was always supposed to lead me here. You created a means to stop your tyranny.”
“You are but a child to my existence, Astraea Lightborne. I have lived since the dawn of time, my dear. I am fate.”
“You are a god with too much greed. The Dusk that cannot exist without the Dawn, and she is dead.”
“So I have felt.”
His tone was so stripped of emotion, resembling Dawn in many ways as a god incapable of human feelings.
“You’re jealous of what I am. Mortal.”
“All your power, even that from Death himself, will be mine. You don’t have long; I can feel the countdown of your fragile time. It would be a waste for all you are to simply die. This is a gift, Astraea; your legacy will live on when I take over your form.”
“As I told Dawn before I killed her, you cannot have my life.”
I needed the true name of Dusk to kill him, and there was only one person who stood a chance of breaching his mind just enough to hear it.
The smile across Dusk’s face chilled me. Braced me.
“These arrows were never for you,” he said gleefully. “They are for him.”
Every aim shifted a few fractions and the archers fired faster than I could take a breath.
The grunt of pain behind me silenced my world.
Turning around stopped time.
My eyes tracked the arrow tips first. Eight of them pierced him. Three in his abdomen, two in his left shoulder, two in the right. And one … narrowly missing his heart.
Nyte’s wide eyes lifted from the arrows to me and I ran to him.
“You’re okay,” I said, desperate words that made no sense. They were cruel cold lies, yet more words of delusional reassurance spilled from me as my hands held his face.
“Don’t worry about me,” he rasped. His gaze lifted and rage sparked through his agony.
Nyte pushed me, somehow twisting around me before more arrows stuck him. I caught him as he fell back this time. Not as many reached him from the second fired round, but another two pierced the right side of his chest and I screamed.
I erupted.
It wasn’t just my terror and agony that tore from my throat. It expelled from me in unending waves of power.
Silver flames drowned the world.
They did not burn, not yet, but through the flickering fire glittering like starlight, fear masked the faces of everyone those flames touched.
Silver flame licked up every wall and torched every path. A sphere of energy grew overhead, trapping the world under my rain of furious starlight.
If Nyte died here, this world would feel my grief.
“Don’t burn this realm for me, Starlight,” Nyte whispered.
“I’m certain you would do worse, so you don’t get to scold me for it,” I croaked.
His smile was pained as he reached for an arrow and didn’t hesitate to pull it free.
“I’m completely villainous, but that’s one part of me you’re not allowed to become.”
“They have my blood on them,” I said in panic, wincing as I gripped one in his shoulder and ripped it free when there was no time to be gentle.
“I know. I can feel it.”
“I’m—”
“Don’t say you’re sorry. Make that bastard scream his apologies at your mercy.”
“I don’t have his name.”
Nyte panted. He blinked a few times, gathering strength.
“I’ll find it,” he promised. “We’re ending this together.”
I wanted to sob and find another way, but Dusk was storming through my fires toward us. I saw nothing but blind rage as Nyte steadied himself on his knees and I rose, gripping the key.
I gave myself over to Lightsdeath.
The unparalleled power of it. The rage and smoke and flame of it. I spun with the key as if it were a dance. Dusk turned into the wind around me, able to disappear and reappear, trying to disorient me with the goal of disarming me of the only weapon that could kill him.
And the weapon he needed to become me.
I was spellbound to track only him, losing sight and sense of anything else. I whirled again, but he’d managed to grip the key this time as I swiped vertically and I stared face to face with the jarring mask of Aquilo.
“Give up,” he snarled.
“Never.”
He was strong. We struggled until both our hands wrapped the key staff and he managed to flip me with it. My back slammed to the stone. Agony shot up my spine, seizing my body tightly for dire seconds, which slackened my grip on the key. He yanked it from me and I panted hard.
Dusk handed off the key to Notus, who stepped through the silver flames to us.
My eyes widened when he lunged for me with the key staff. I rolled and it slammed to the ground where my chest had been with a vibrating surge of power.
I scrambled to my feet, facing off with the High Celestial.
“Using the key will kill you,” I warned, though he knew that.
“You killed my brothers,” Notus seethed. It sounded as if he was justifying his allegiance to Dusk as much to himself as to me.
“I killed one them, but that was only fair; he killed me first. Zephyr died nobly to stop the gods you aid now, and you stand beside the one who killed Aquilo to take his place. You are a traitor to them.”
Notus’s anger pulsed tangibly, but he was at war with himself more than me. His loathing for me won against his logic. He lunged for me again, and I drifted easily around his attacks.
He wouldn’t go back on his chosen side now, and I was running out of time.
I didn’t need the key to kill Notus; he was trapped in my magick already.
All it took was a lift of my hand, a mere thought, and the silver flames he stood in began to burn.
Not hot but a slow icy blaze that devoured him.
Notus screamed and I caught the key as it fell, not staying to watch as silver engulfed his body and spilled down his mouth to kill his screams. I ran for Dusk, shifting the key to a blade, raising it for a killing blow.
His hand thrust out, fingers jabbing precisely in the wound on my abdomen Auster had dealt me.
First, agony seized me, then my pain surged beyond my limits and I thought I was falling. Endlessly falling. My vision blurred, seeing flickers of the silver flames and a set of boots heading toward me.
It can’t end like this.
A battle cry tore through the silence of my suffering.
Nyte. He was still alive. We were still alive, and it couldn’t end like this.
My will to live for him dragged me to the surface of my awareness. The key was right by my head, and I rolled onto my stomach, slapping my hand over it and rising despite death’s grip squeezing my heart.
Nyte was on his knees, his head bowed at Dusk’s feet.
He was so still … so deathly still.
Then a poem weaved into my mind, a song above the battle that raged around us.
At dusk, the amber heavens sway …
Through the flames, a cry of rage and passion cut through. My dying breaths shuddered as I watched Zathrian lunge out of the arms of silver, his blade aloft to come down on Dusk.
The stars emerge, a bright ballet …
I staggered forward as Rose emerged too, attacking Dusk from two angles, but they were no match for him. Surges of twilight power struck my friends, and I screamed with heavenly anguish, charging forward as my friends risked their lives distracting Dusk.
Through twilight’s veil, where shadows play …
The night is crowned with …
“Astraeaus!” I yelled his true name with the full force of my power surging in my grasp.
He whirled to me, eyes blazing and wild.
My friends had granted me the opening to race forward with Dusk distracted.
The key shifted to a dagger … and I plunged it into his heart.
His mouth opened wide, but no sound came from him. No movement. Dusk became particles of stardust singing in the silver flames that began to die out too.
The key fell from my hand as I crumpled. My eyes barely lifted to see Nyte had fallen, lying so peacefully on his back as he bled out. I tried to crawl, but my elbow gave out as soon as my hand met the ground.
The land rumbled violently, and all I could do was look up at the sky.
The stars were falling more rapidly than ever. I didn’t know if they were souls or true cosmic sources. If they were the former, Death had lied. He’d said if I killed Dusk and Dawn he would take the souls trapped in our stars to rest in his realm where they belonged.
My eyes fluttered, too heavy to keep open anymore.
“Nyte…” I whispered. The world was breaking around us. “Did we win?”