My knuckle stroked her cheek. “Anything you want.”
We left Balthezar, but I couldn’t put my mind at ease about the company of strangers, pirates, we were surrounded by. I didn’t think I would be resting tonight.
Astraea tried to let go of my hand, heading toward the ship’s edge across the deck. I grasped her tighter, so she pulled me along instead.
She watched the stars. More of them shot across the sky than ever before,falling and causing devastation we couldn’t see. Occasionally I could hear the land cracking, splitting. If the stars kept pummeling the land, there would be nothing left but rock and ash.
“It was all a lie,” she said, not to me or even to herself.
I held her to me around the waist from behind, watching the sky that was both beautiful and heartbreaking. A sky of trapped souls. Death had exposed the lie of this world to her—that the celestials gain higher power than any other being by tapping into the prison of souls.
Astraea’s role now as Death’s Maiden was to free them all and let them pass onto Death’s realm for rest. Time was running out with more souls dying, more true stars falling, and the world as we knew it set on a countdown toward ruin.
“I believe you’ll bring the new dawn,” I said.
“I have to kill my parents. Dusk and Dawn. What if our world can never find balance again without them?”
“Then I’ll bring the new dusk.”
She lowered her gaze from the sky, and she turned in my arms.
“I’m scared,” she whispered. “I’m scared that my parents are right and I am nothing more than stardust. People look at me and see me as parts of gods. My magick, my blood, my hair.”
I cupped her cheek, utterly enamored with her in this moment when I couldn’t explain how she made the night alive within me.
“By the stars, you are absolutely exquisite against the moonlight.” I had to kiss her for a small relief to my building ache for her. “Do you want to know what I think?”
“Yes.”
“That no opinion, even mine, matters but your own. Your parents think you insolent; I think you brave. Auster thought you incapable of leading a kingdom; I think you capable of leading empires. What matters is what you believe about yourself in your heart. And if there’s something you aspire to be, I’m going to be with you every step of the way.”
Her silver eyes glistened. “I want to be brave and powerful.”
“Then what are you going to do about it?”
She took a deep, confident breath. “I wasn’t finished.”
My mouth quirked.
“I want to be so many things, and I will be. But I wantyou.The past had me believing there was always a sacrifice. That I couldn’t be everything I wanted for the people and have you. I refuse that fate.”
Hearing that satisfied my soul.
I promised her, “As the dusk and the dawn, as the night and the stars, as darkness and as light, it’s you and me defying fate until the end of time.”
35Nyte
Astraea had fallen asleep on a chaise by the fire in Balthezar’s quarters. I sat by her side, hyperaware the captain was still in this room.
The door creaked open without a knock and I stood, defensive instincts on alert to the intruder. My sight fell, finding a far smaller person than I expected poking his head around the wood timidly.
“You should be asleep, my boy,” Balthezar said, setting down his quill and motioning for him to enter fully.
I didn’t expect any youth to be on board.
“I couldn’t s-sleep,” he said.
His stutter wasn’t from his timidness. He rounded the desk toward his father, and I assessed him as no older than twelve.
