“These are the friends we need to keep by our side?” I grumbled, reaching for a lavender balm for her hair.
“This may sound a little contradictory right now, given their interruption, but they are part of our peace, I’m afraid.”
I hooked a finger under her chin to tilt her head back, kissing her lips.
“The things I tolerate for you.”
A dear smile bloomed on her. “Your denial that you care for them all is amusing.”
“I care that you care for them.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
I smiled too, though she didn’t see it as she ran a sudsy sponge along herleg lifted gloriously out of the water while I rinsed her hair. Her glistening, tattooed silver skin was mesmerizing. If I hadn’t been so considerate of her need to heal after her ordeal, I would have acted on the desirous impulses stirring in me.
For now, however, I treasured our gentle touches and this silence filled with contentment far more after what we’d endured today. The war wasn’t over, but we deserved to bask in the triumph of an ages long battle against my father finally won.
PARTFOUR
As theDusk and theDawn
47Astraea—Past
Astraea was holding a quarterly council with the reigning lords throughout the five surrounding kingdoms of Solanis when the news came in.
An ambush. A slaughter. A battle raging on a mountain fringe just past the Sterling Mountains.
She didn’t waste a moment.
The informant couldn’t tell her who’d led the attack, but she didn’t miss the fearful whispers of Nightsdeath from the lords as she left. She didn’t pay them any mind. If Nyte’s father was behind this, she would have known about it. Unless it was another attack he’d called for without Nyte’s knowledge.
She didn’t have time to seek out Nyte for an explanation. Astraea flew right to the battle that expanded in a bloodbath below her. This wasn’t a battle that had just broken out, and anger surged through her over how it had taken this long for someone to summon her.
Dropping from the sky, she reached into the void for her key, but… she couldn’t feel it. Astraea had never misplaced the key, but she didn’t have a spare breath to consider where else it might be before a nightcrawler made a target out of her.
Astraea only had her dagger, but it was enough.
Launching into the sky at the last moment, she twisted in a flip around the nightcrawler, plunging her dagger into the membrane below his right talon, and it ripped down the full length of his wing as she landed behind him.
He wailed until she grabbed a fistful of his hair, yanking his head back and slicing across his throat. Then she lost herself in a mindless enemy-killing spree.
When she cut down enough of the enemy to take a pause, she scanned for someone in charge on her side, but this field was chaos. No order, only savagery. At least one of the High Celestials should be here, but she couldn’t see any of them.
It was as if this battle was secret. A pen of blood and violence tucked into a lonely pass between mountains. The location was odd. Not an attack on a village or city.
A sense of dread started to knot in her stomach.
Astraea turned around, intending to fly to Auster’s province for aid. Maybe he would have answers.
A figure dropped into her path before she could unglamour her wings.
They might have passed for an anonymous masked assassin to anyone else, but Astraea would know Auster from any angle, no matter that he wore all black, his hood was drawn, and his face covering left only his hazel eyes on display.
Relief relaxed her tense shoulders.
“I was just about to come to you. Did you know about this?” she asked.
The battle was dying out now. All that was left was the last of the soldiers with too much fury in their bones to retreat and the dying that were strewn across the land.
