Chapter 21 Steele
STEELE
The moment her body began to convulse in my arms, I dropped to my knees and lowered her onto the courtyard stone with a gentleness that felt so at odds with the chaos howling around us.
Her weight sagged against me, twitching with every new burst of light that surged through her veins—golden fire arcing beneath her skin like starlight trying to escape. Her breath hitched once, then fractured entirely, body writhing as if her actions no longer belonged to her.
“Kieran.” Her name caught in my throat like a knife. “Kieran, look at me.”
But her eyes were glassed, flickering beneath half-closed lids. She didn’t respond. Her lips were parted, and I could see the faintest shimmer of light behind her teeth as if the stars themselves were burning her from the inside out.
Too much. It’s too much. She’s not built to hold this.
I gripped her arm with one hand and kissed her forehead as I pulled my runic dagger forward. “Stay with me, Princess. Just hold on a little longer. Please.”
The metal of the blade was already warm to the touch—humming with stored power, waiting for my command.
I started the first rune on her forearm with deliberate strokes, recalling a rune meant to ground and stabilize.
A pattern I’d memorized since my apprenticeship, one I could draw blindfolded, drunk, or bleeding out, and mixed it with the one Bastian had said tasted good.
But as soon as the final stroke landed, her skin hissed, flared and burned it away.
“No—no, no, no…” I adjusted, pivoted to a rune meant for endurance magic and made the second attempt. The rune glowed for a breath, clinging to her like it wanted to hold and then singed her skin.
A jagged cry ripped from Kieran’s throat.
Her back arched violently as a new surge of light crashed down from above us and slammed through her.
The air around us warped with the heat; the stone beneath my knees cracked at the impact.
Her wings spasmed beneath her against the ground, feathers wilting from the heat bleeding off her.
I could smell it now: the scent of burning silk and ozone, of starfire eating flesh from the inside.
My hand trembled against her cheek as I tried to soothe her.
“You’re not leaving me. Do you hear me? I haven’t said it yet—I haven’t told you,” My breath fractured, my words breaking apart around the sentiment. “I love you, Kieran.”
Her eyelids fluttered.
“I love you too.” Her voice was a whisper, more breath than sound. “You don’t have to save me to prove it. It’s okay if you can’t create the rune… I don’t blame you, Steele.”
She was…absolving me of the guilt she already knew would eat me alive. That was the selfless, brave woman that fucking owned me.
A whimper tore out of my throat before I could stop it.
“Don’t you dare say goodbye,” I ground out as emotions flooded me at the thought of losing her here and now because of my own inability.
My dagger rose again to her arm, trembling as I tried to summon another rune. But my vision blurred and I blinked rapidly, furious at the tears that clung to my lashes, clouding the precise lines I needed to draw.
I shoved my forearm across my face, wiping them away with a harsh swipe.
“I can’t see—I need to see you—fuck—”
Then her body jerked again, spine bowing into the air, a raw sob catching behind her teeth.
Two more stars slammed into her like celestial spears, the power coursing through her so violently that the ground cracked under us.
A network of golden light exploded beneath her skin in the shape of a spiderweb, crawling up her neck, across her arms, through her ribs, weaving through her body as though she was becoming the sky itself.
Blisters bloomed at the edges of the glowing veins, swelling like tiny suns beneath her skin.
They rose and burst, leaving ribbons of molten gold weeping down her arms. The scent of scorched skin and starlight filled the air.
I could feel the heat radiating off her in waves but didn’t dare move back.
If she burned me, then so be it. I’d take whatever the universe threw at me until I found a way to draw this rune.
Her breathing hitched and then faltered. A faint, rattling sound trembled from her chest and it was one I knew all too well from previous battles and the time I’d spent in the hospital looking after Amelia. It was the kind of sound that meant the body was preparing to die.
“I’m losing her,” I whispered, the words splitting as they left me. My hand hovered uselessly above her heart, too terrified to feel her heartbeat slowing. “I’m fucking losing her.”
The truth of it hollowed me. It echoed in the space between one heartbeat and the next beneath my palm until all I could hear was that rhythm faltering.
The part of me that had always been so damned steady fractured in the moment. The logical, methodical part that counted breaths and could command an entire army was gone.
She was glowing from the inside out, her light beginning to swallow the courtyard. My eyes burned from the blazing inferno as I lifted my dagger again, hesitating over her skin that was already blistering away.
“I don’t know what to do,” I whispered. “I don’t—” My voice broke. “Please. Please, Kieran. You can’t give up now. You can’t leave us. You can’t leave me.”
A fissure split the air as another star screamed down through the atmosphere, and the ground shook once more as her body absorbed it. I threw myself over her, muscles trembling, praying to the Creator that the next star would strike me instead—to let it burn through me, if it meant sparing her.
All I could do was whisper, “Don’t you dare go where I can’t follow, Princess.”
I barely registered the bond flaring to life in my mind, but then the voices broke through my haze of emotion—distant but steady.
Gabe’s voice came first, low and unshaken, the same tone he’d used when we were barely out of training, when everything felt impossible and yet he still managed to make the impossible feel like a plan. “She’s still breathing, Steele. That means you haven’t lost her. Don’t stop now.”
My throat tightened, and my grip on the dagger went white-knuckled.
Then Ronan. His voice was raw, crackling with strain, but it carried the weight of his devotion in it. “She’s strong, but she can’t carry this alone. That’s why you’re there. You’re the Rune Maker to her Star Keeper. Finish it, Steele.”
Behind his voice, I felt his pain and exhaustion. The way his bones ached under the weight of every strike he’d taken to keep others standing. Still, he wasn’t thinking of himself. He was thinking of her.
Niz followed next, his thoughts fierce and relentless in his wyvern form, but the belief in his words shook me. “No one else can do this for you, Steele, and we believe in you.”
Even Bastian’s presence hummed through the bond, sharp with effort, blood coursing through him.
He didn’t speak—not in words—but I felt his focus shift, just for a breath, toward us.
Toward her. Trust passed through our connection, unspoken but real.
Like he believed I’d pull this off even as he witnessed so many of our comrades dying around him.
I felt all of them. Their wounds, their pain, and their love for Kieran.
And it hit me then that this wasn’t just about me and Kieran alone. It was about us. All of us.
Because she loved every one of them, and they loved her back with a kind of ferocity that made them worth fighting for.
Worth bleeding for. And whether I’d meant for it to happen or not, they were becoming important to me too.
A found family forged in impossible odds and the singular light that was her.
They were going to fall if we didn’t find a way to help, now. I couldn’t let her or any one of them down.
I inhaled shakily as I shifted to sit back once more, pulling the tip of my dagger to her skin.
This wasn’t the time for fear.
I had one job: create a rune that could hold the fucking heavens at bay.
And I would, because I wasn’t letting her go.
I closed my eyes and shut everything else out, even our bond. I pushed it to the background, letting it hum quietly while I folded inward, past panic and noise and helplessness, until there was only one thing left anchoring me. Her.
Kieran—who had shattered through every steel-bound wall I’d once believed unbreakable, who met every dark and ugly part of me without flinching.
Who held the worst of me in her hands and still reached for more.
The woman who had asked me to trust her with everything—and in return, had given me this: her life, her love, her belief.
I just breathed her in and let her presence fill me.
She needed me. All of me. The version of Steele that was sharp and brutal and hers—not despite it, but because of it. I inhaled, and let go. Not of her, but of the fear. I let go of the rules and runes etched by dead men who’d never known her name, or her love.
How could I possibly use a rune from someone who had never known that? This rune was for her, a shape that was wholly ours, made of her light and my resolve. Our love.
And in the silence of my own mind, it came. Not with a flash, but with a quiet stillness that felt like the eye of a storm. I didn't hesitate as it pulsed in my mind, knowing we didn’t have room for me to second-guess things now.
My eyes opened and my hand guided me toward the center of her chest and pressed the first stroke against her skin.
My magic surged in answer, burning the line into place as the rest of the rune followed, uncoiling beneath my hand like it had always been waiting for this exact moment. This exact woman. This exact love.
And when the final line sealed, the rune ignited in a golden light that marked its acceptance. It shimmered over her heart, then sank into her skin, fusing with the threads of energy already warring beneath the surface.
Her chest lifted just slightly as her lips parted to gasp in a breath.
“Kieran,” I whispered, leaning down until my forehead rested against hers. “Come back to me. We finally found it.”
The rune had been accepted, but even as hope flared in my chest, fear followed. What if it still wasn’t enough?
So I did the only thing I could, I kept going.
I dragged the dagger back into my grip and my hand hovered above the delicate curve of her shoulder above skin split in places where the light had tried to escape.
The stars were still falling, one after another, crashing into her in a relentless bombardment.
She was burning from the inside out, unraveling in real time, and all I could do was carve protection faster than the heavens could ruin her.
So I did. Rune after rune for strength and healing.
“You stay with me, Kieran. Do you hear me?” My voice cracked, but my hand didn’t waver. “You don’t get to give everything to this world and not get a future in return. Not while I’m still breathing.”
A sob clawed up my throat, twisting into a ragged sound as I forced it back down—a roar caught halfway between fury and despair.
The next rune went over her thigh, drawn with shaking fingers and absolute resolve.
My power bled into her with every stroke, until I could feel it draining out of me—still, I kept drawing runes, finding strength where none should’ve been left.
One after another until there wasn’t a part of her skin that didn’t glow with runes.
I pressed a kiss to her forehead and whispered, “I’m still here and so are you. Just hold on a little longer, Princess.”
The stars were still falling, but Kieran hadn’t given up, and neither would I.
Not while she still breathed.