Chapter 54 Astraea
Astraea
I’d soared through nights so clear they felt like endless oceans of stars, but this was different.
Here, I stood motionless, the brilliance of midnight wrapping around me in perfect stillness.
It was as if I’d been placed in the heart of a vast, shimmering snow globe, each star a delicate fleck of light suspended in the dark, turning the world into something quiet and magical.
My hand reached out, so weightless, like water carried me. I could feel the vastness stretching out on all sides, yet I was cocooned, held in a moment that felt impossibly pure. The air was crisp, every breath tasting of cold and wonder, while the silence settled like snow around me.
“Oh, Astraea.”
I whirled, my breath caught, but my heart … I had no beat in my chest in this place.
“Cassia?” I said in denial. She wasn’t the only face to shock me. “Calix?”
My dear lost friends smiled. Cassia’s was a kind so personal to her delicate face, one I never thought I’d see again, and my eyes welled with tears. I didn’t know where I was, and though I was overjoyed to be reunited with Cassia in my death, Nyte was absent and that began to split my soul.
We were supposed to stay together.
“Are you real?” I dared to ask.
She didn’t answer in words. Her hand reached to my face, and her palm felt firm. The moment I knew that, I fell into her, holding her tightly as I sobbed.
“It’s not your time to pass yet,” she said gently.
When I found the will to let her go, Cassia wiped my tears tenderly. The warmth in her deep blue eyes freed some of the ache in me; she always did have that effect, a comforting aura that could lift the world off my shoulders when I was in her company.
“I think it’s long past my time,” I said. “But I have to find Nyte. Do you know where he is?”
“You’ll be with him soon.”
Cassia’s assurance eased my soul.
“Have you come to take me?”
She held my hands. Calix stood patiently by her side, his face a mask of pure contentment. I was so relieved to see their souls had reunited after their mortal time.
“We’ve come to take your place,” he said.
More confusion deepened my brow.
“I don’t understand.”
“You harbored our souls,” Calix explained. “We have enough of your essence and your power to take your place as the God of Dawn. We just need the one thing you’re holding onto.”
My next inhale staggered.
Take my place as Dawn?
No. That wasn’t the plan. If Nyte had to give himself to become Dusk, I was going with him.
As the Dawn and the Dusk. That was our promise.
“I’m so proud of you, Astraea,” Cassia said. “Watching all you’ve become … you’re living for both of us.”
My vision flooded again; the wound of losing her tore open to bleed me freely.
“I couldn’t have done it without you,” I croaked. Then my gaze slipped to Calix, who smiled. “Both of you.”
“I don’t believe that,” Cassia mused playfully. Her expression turned into bittersweet gratitude. “Thank you for sending him to me. For keeping us both safe even when you didn’t realize it.”
Cassia took her hands back from mine, now holding the vial of Dawn’s blood that Nyte had given me.
“Keep shining brightly. We’ll always be with you in every dawn.”
“What are you—?”
Cassia uncorked the bottle and brought it to her lips. An invisible hold kept me back, and I watched with growing dread as she handed the rest to Calix, who finished it.
“I need it!” I cried. “I need it to be with him.”
Oh gods. Nyte had found a way for us to stay together, and I’d let it slip from my hands. My friends thought they were helping, but they didn’t understand I wanted this. I couldn’t return to the mortal realm without him.
Calix took Cassia’s hand, and their forms began to fade.
“Please!” I cried.
I lost him. I lost everyone.
I was once again all alone in this void of night and starlight. Alone with my sobs rattling in my hollow chest and shredding at my split soul.
I lost.
I lost him.
“Nyte!” I yelled. I called his name again and again until my throat was hoarse and my cheeks were stained with endless tears.
He couldn’t leave me. I couldn’t leave him.
“We were supposed to be infinite together,” I whispered, an unheard breath of shattered hope lost in this void.
I stood alone and lost. So terribly lost. The silence grew thick with my building grief and complete denial. My knees threatened to buckle because I didn’t want to go back. I would rather stay here in torment for my failure to Nyte than face a world where he didn’t exist.
“I told you I’d always reach you when you call.”
My next breath left me in disbelief, and I was afraid to turn around and have him be a figment of my desperate imagination.
“Starlight.”
I couldn’t fight the pull of that name, which lassoed around me, and faced the only person to ever call me that.
Nyte stood just a short distance away, watching me with an expression that pulled me forward, my steps shaky at first as I stumbled toward him.
His image was perfect. All dark hair, ethereal gold eyes, and that scar …
the most perfectly imperfect piece of him he’d kept to remember us.
That our story was love and war. It was many battles, many heartbreaks, and in every trial and tribulation, it was triumphant.
Before I knew it, my pace quickened—I was running. The space between us closed with every step, and then he was moving too, his strides mirroring my own, closing the distance with an intensity that made the void blur around us.
We were stars colliding and night defying.
My arms wrapped around his neck, and Nyte’s powerful arms lifted me. I clamped around him, too afraid that he would disappear, that this embrace was as fragile as a dream.
“Astraea,” he sighed into my hair; his warm breath fanned my neck.
“Nyte,” I whispered, clutching him tighter. “Oh, Nyte.”
“Yes.”
His arms slackened, and my toes set back on the ground.
“Yes?” I questioned.
Nyte’s golden eyes were the most beautiful things in the world. My North Star. My guide home.
“Yes … we won.”
My face crumpled with the pure joy that pierced me.
“We won,” I echoed. “Is this real? Are you real? Cassia and Calix took Dawn’s blood, and I couldn’t … I thought I’d lost you and I—”
Nyte’s lips slanted over mine, dissolving my frantic web of words. I kissed him back desperately, as if our last breath was shared within it.
He was the one to pull back, resting his forehead against mine.
“We win, Astraea. Not to sacrifice ourselves this time; we’re going home together. To your lands that you will restore as the people’s queen, as their star-maiden. And I’m going to be right there beside you, as the darkness that will always make sure you shine your brightest.”
I sobbed in pure joy and elation.
A bright light began to grow over his face, making him shine with the night in his hair and the sun in his eyes.
“Let’s go home to our friends,” I said, not quite believing my precious words would come true yet. Then the term didn’t feel strong enough, and I amended, “Our family.”
Nyte cupped my cheek and inched his face closer to mine. “Yes,” he said as the light devoured us both. “Our friends. Our family.”